Proud to Be an American

Monday, July 02, 2007
12:03 AM

Man, do people from other countries hate America. Especially if those people from another country happen to also be environmentalists. Especially if those people happen to live off Americans and American things, but are unable to achieve the goal of actually being an American. Okay, not all people that hate America secretly want to be Americans, but I get the feeling that some do.

Today we set sail on an amazing catamaran tour of the archipelego of Bocas Del Toro. It was a rare sunny day here (being the rainy season and all) and the water was calm as we weaved in and out of small mangrove islands surrounded by coral reef. When we finally did drop anchor, we got to explore the amazing sea life that abounds here.

Much of the time out on the catamaran was spent just sailing along, listening to good music (not island reggaeton) watching the beautiful ocean. It was great and I highly recommend taking a slow catamaran tour instead of a speedy motor boat that will get you wherever you are going in a fractions of the time. Sometimes, especially here in the Caribbean, it is as much about the journey as the destination.

Our guide was really good and entertaining, except for part of the tour where he said things that provoked the opening paragraph of this blog entry. It all started when I mentioned having come to Bocas 10 years earlier, two years before this German had ever even heard of Bocas Del Toro. Then we got to talking about how things have changed over the years. Then he got to talking about how the area and the waters are going to pot (which he later admitted isn't really going to pot at all but continues to flourish) and the "gringos" are ruining all the rainforest on the islands. Then he got to talking about how evil America is for ruining the environment, refusing to sign Kyoto, the mess in Iraq, … It is no wonder that Americans have such pride in America. We have to stick together to navigate through tough international waters. The sad part is that the man was overly passionate about environmental issues and when we started to have good conversation about the topic, he let his passion get in the way and I wasn't even able to talk to the man. He just sputtered out things about how all Americans get so much propoganda about how China supposedly puts out more emissions than us which he said isn't true. It is good to have a cause, but try to keep things in perspective. The man was talking about how we need to have biodiesel fuel stations everywhere, but trying to explain that it takes crude oil to produce biodeisel was lost on the man.

Anyway, the conversation was good until the tour guide who we were paying started going off on us gringos for being American. When you read in books and see in movies that all foreigners think that all Americans are cowboys, well, they really do think that. I guess I kind of like country music, but I don't really ride horses that well, and I don't know the first thing about herding bovine.

Anyway, I am proud to be an American. We do have a great country with a lot of good things going. We do need a lot of changes, starting with our government, but we also have it better than just about anyone else.

On a different note, our group this year is so different from the one last year. Two in our group (one in particular) is dedicating the night to going out, drinking until you can barely walk, hooking up with who knows who (no, really, he has no idea the next day) and then doing it again the next night.

I might as well end this entry with another "anyway." So, anyway, we are really liking it here in Bocas. We might go to "Red Frog" beach tomorrow and hang out in the sand. We might also have a go at surfing, but we are both kind of fried after lounging in the sun on the boat all day today.