Where in the world is Emma Dish?: Sometimes the news is accompanied by dramatic music and explosive sound effects

I´m back in Babylon, as the ´rainbow´ crew so delightfully called any place where one may fall prey to a cheap watch or pair of counterfeit sunglasses. And somehow I got my timing wrong for my flight to Lima, a day early too, rather than the usual 2 hours late. I blame the Miercoles Martes combo. Two ´M´days in a row gets confusing when reading single letter weekdays from a business card calender.

The past week I´ve been at Rainbow, miraculously washing Cuba right out of my hair, without washing my hair at all. Rainbows are sort of pop up communes that last for a month. I caught the tail end of this one, after spending just over a week in Panama City. The rules are, there are no rules, but sadly, no one had any sort of knives hidden in the wheels of their dragster. Actually no Grease mega mixes anywhere, another odd universal, but plenty of sing songs to pacha mama around the fire, walks to meet the gorgeous views and hilarious, generous people that make the sweaty trip more times in a week than the fat cats that pressed your gym membership want you to know about.

The creatures were, well, there. Half a minute after refusing to momentarily house a fingernail sized spider, a translucent fleshy hermit crab looking thing with great red eyes, a TARANTULA crawled onto and was subsequently kicked from my jandeled foot. I think ¨Jesus Fuck¨ was the term I used, jumping 2 meters up and back with the greatest hacky foot flick of my short career. Whether it was the Universe or the Spiders trying to communicate with me is as yet undecided, but the spiders are ahead 3 to 2. Seriously. I´ll have to check my 13 moon calender. ¨How are such festivals different to Girl Guide camps?¨ I seemed to keep asking myself. Well, firstly, no one was assured not to be scared of the lady who takes her hair off at night. And I realised the importance of a slip knot this time. At three in the morning. Wrapped in a ball of hammock. Being thankful for the gifts of mother earth is also taken much more seriously, which I whole heartedly agree with, hard not to when chilling on the cusp of a Panamanian jungle. However, there reaches a point where you decide to strongly avoid a person that wants to give everything to her as a sacrife. Flowers, down the river. Grasshoppers, into the fire. Whatever was lost in translation I guess I´ll never know.

So, back in Panama city, a day to spare. I´m going to catch one of their air brushed buses to a national park 15 minutes out of the city for a 5 or so hour walk tomorrow, then head to the Smithsonian Institute of Tropical Research for their Tuesday lecture and after match drinks. I caught a talk on their 5 year plan, which ended up being on the mangroves (as I imagine the topic often turns to) but felt rather foolish kicking around afterwards, and politely split. It´s no inagrial professorial lecture after all, though there was deep fried geometry (mini samosas). Another strange universal. Or is it a synchronicity? What is geometry, or fried things, trying to tell me?

And now, some photos.

Here´s one of those air brushed buses, with Bruce Willis on the back. Other popular designs include wrestling heroes and Jesus.

Here´s Alexx checking Melanie for tics. I had a few myself (totally overshadowed by the TARANTULA). I may still have some, there are places I didn´t feel comfortable getting others to check for me. And Alexx! Hilariously, any time anything vaguely out of sorts happened to the food (water was poured in too soon, someone decided to soak the pasta- that was me actually, we made chipatis out of it), he reasured us not to worry, as we were feeding hippies. Those are my bongos in the background.