Fred, the latest addition to our Curious Characters series, is a half-French, all German chef who for the last fifteen years has been sharing his talents all over the world.  After receiving his training at a hotel in Germany, he spent a few years working around the South of Germany and near the French border.  His passion for travel then led him to work in some of the most beautiful places in the world, including Panama, Australia, the Krabi region of Thailand, and the cities of Tulum, Mexico and Granada, Nicaragua. In addition to his chef training, his ability to speak to customers in German, French, English and Spanish make him an asset in restaurants worldwide.

We met Fred while volunteering over Christmas at Sol y Mar, a hotel & restaurant in the surf and dive town of Santa Catalina, Panama.  Part of our job there was to help in the restaurant, serving the customers and lending Fred the odd hand in the kitchen. Despite having a much smaller kitchen than he’d like, it was awesome to watch Fred work his magic, whipping up a variety of rich dishes of chicken, pork, or freshly caught corvina (sea bass) or red snapper, almost always with a side of potatoes (he is German, after all) and always presented delicately and artistically.  As his servers Fred would summon us to duty, as he put the final touches on each plate, by announcing “BRING BRING!”, a habit that no doubt was carried from his work at a professional kitchen where there was an actual bell to serve the purpose.

Working and hanging out with Fred was one of the better parts about our time in Santa Catalina, and we’re excited to see where his cooking takes him next!  Keep bein' chili, Fred!

~Mandrew

What's your favourite part about being a chef?
Always being surrounded by good food, being able to work & travel in beautiful places where others go for a holiday.

How would you describe your cooking style?
“Oma's Küche”, real cooking like our Grandmas did with influences from all over the world.

Recently, while in the mountain town of Boquete, Panama, I had the opportunity to take a tour of a small coffee farm, and thoroughly enjoyed being able to see firsthand how my favourite morning beverage makes it all the way from the seed to my cup.  It blew my mind how much work actually goes into producing a cup of coffee, so I thought I’d share with you the “story of coffee”.

Enjoy!
~Mandrew

With a coffee shop or four on every street corner these days, it’s easy to take it for granted that most days begin only after I’ve had my first cup of java.  After having witnessed the tremendous amount of work that goes into producing coffee, however, I’m forced to wonder – who the heck thought to go through all this trouble?  Well, it seems there are a few different stories about how coffee was discovered, and although this one seems the least credible, I find it the most entertaining:

Sometime in the ninth century A.D., an Ethiopian goat-herder named Kaldi noticed that, after eating a certain plant, his goats behaved quite strangely, running and jumping around all nimbly-bimbly.  Thinking that he’d be able to get the same kind of energy boost (or maybe just wanting to get high), Kaldi decided to try it for himself.  First, he tried munching on some of the berries, but found that they were too bitter.  He then tried chewing on some of the leaves, but quickly found them to be too tough and waxy to continue.  Next, he got the bright idea of brewing a tea from the leaves, but alas that, too, tasted like crap.  In a fit of hopeless rage, Kaldi tore up the plants and cast them into his fire.  A few minutes later, however, he noticed that the burnt plants smelled damn good, and after some investigating found that it was the roasted berries that were releasing the fantastic aroma.  He ground up some of these roasted berries and steeped them in hot water, and instantly became the happiest man in Ethiopia.

Prospero Año Nuevo! We hope you have celebrated as hard as we have (though I doubt it is possible!).  We are in Ecuador now but we have a chance to catch up on posting photos so we figured that we would just post all of our Panama stuff in one update.  

Panama was an interesting and nice place from what we saw.  We spent almost a month in the country including a stop in Boquete, a northern mountain town, Santa Catalina, a surfing town and hub to the Coiba Island National Park, and Panama City, the home of the infamous Pacific/Atlantic Panama canal.  All in all it was a good time, but I do have to admit that something has changed in our travelling mindset at this point and I believe I that my view of Panama may be slightly influenced by travellers' fatigue/ travellers' blues (if there is such a thing). More on this later, but for now, here's PANAMA!

- Chelsea

Ignoring the missed bus stop and the couple useless days in Santiago, our first real week in Panama was spent in Boquete, a neat town nestled in the mountains and surrounded by coffee plantations and rainforest.  Named “the best spot to retire” by some American geezer publication, about half of the people there seemed to be either retirees, backpackers, or huge families of Guaymí (one of the many tribes of indigenous Panamanians) who come to find work harvesting coffee.  Although it’s a great town to explore by foot or leave for various interesting day-trips (hot springs, mountain biking, etc.), we spent the majority of our time recovering from the past couple weeks, hunkering down in our hostel or visiting the nearby gelato shop.

As we’ve found with many other places in Central America, Boquete and the surrounding area attract a lot of attention from bird watchers.  We spent a day hiking part of the Quetzal Trail, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the resplendent quetzal, a pretty badass bird that nests in the area.  Unfortunately, we came up short and didn’t spot much more than a squirrel, although the hike was still quite nice.

Merry Christmas!  

We are really missing family and friends at home right now.  It is pretty awesome to be spending the holidays in a surfing town though!  We are volunteering at a small hotel in Santa Catalina, basically doing a lot of customer service stuff now, and also worked on some plumbing and water tank cleaning when we first got here.  The hotel is located on the top of a very steep and long hill so we are getting in some amazing accidental exercise going up and down all day.  

There is one other volunteer here with us, Karlien who has been in the area for several weeks before us.  She is very helpful in showing us around, is fun to hang out and work with, and lets us use her surf board.  The board is much smaller than we have been used to - it is called a "funboard" or a "mini-malibu", which is something like a step down from a long board but wider and a bit bigger than a classic board.  We tried a classic board a few days ago and it was very difficult, though we did both manage to stand up briefly once or twice.  Karlien's board is a bit easier, but still a challenge compared to the long board.  For me, I think I would like to work on paddling harder to catch the waves.  Andrew seems to be catching more than me (on account of his manly muscles) so I think I'll go out tomorrow all day and see what I can learn.  

The chef that works here is also very nice.  He has been here for almost two years and still loves it.  The four of us have a great time hanging out.  I am very happy to be spending the holidays with some cool people, even though I miss home, just a little tiny bit (but it is -38 in Whitehorse and icing over in Ontario so not THAT much, lol). 

We also spent a day diving in the Coiba Islands, a Island national park off coast from here.  Many people call them the Galapagos of Panama, and I can certainly see why!  The first dive was pretty good, we saw a ton of fish, but we didn't see anything new.  Diving in the Pacific is much different than the Caribean.  There aren't as many corals, but the fish are really incredible!  On the second dive we saw so much more!  Right when we got down to the bottom we saw a few white tip reef sharks, and then a 4-foot turtle swim by, it actually swam within probably 4-5 feet of me as I just float there, breathing and taking in the spectacle!  It felt very magical.  Next we saw hundreds and hundreds of jackfish, some barracuda, a devil ray, I saw a dolphin in the distance (not clearly, and heard it singing), the frog fish was insane!  You have to google this thing because it is just the weirdest looking fish!  And so colourful.  We also saw SEA HORSES!!!  They were incredible - about 6-in long, hooked onto small fan corals coloured almost the same as them.  That for me was so cool!  And of course we saw a bazillion other fish and moray eels etc.  Amazing.  

Our last dive beat all our previous and probably many future dives for most memorable of all!  We thought there MIGHT be a chance to see a whale shark before we arrived at our dive site, but were trying not to get our hopes up.  I jumped in when the boat stopped, before I had put on my gear, and the guys on the boat threw me my BCD so I could put it on in the water.  I had my goggles on and thought I would just peek into the water to see if there was a whale shark around - not actually expecting anything.  And then BAM!  Whale shark in the face!  Literally feet away and it came right up to surface so one of its fins was out of the water!  Everyone was in the water within seconds, I had my reg in my mouth but no gear on and I swam closer dragging my BCD.  It was pure magic!  The dive was unbelievable - we saw the whale shark (not sure if it was the same one or not) a few times deeper down where we actually watched right in front of us as it came upward with its mouth open, feeding on crill, and then turn over and wag its tail at us!!!  We watched three times and used up all but the reserve oxygen in all of our tanks just trying to see it again and again.  Incredible!  However I was very nervous for a few of the other divers, one of whom was quite out of shape and nervous as he had already ran out of air on the first dive and had to be calmed down, and two of whom asked me if I could stick around them to share air if they ran out.  I had the same amount as them, and we were 55ft deep!  eeks! 

I should also mention that the Coiba Islands that we stopped at (two of them) were absolutely beautiful! 

Well we hope that the holidays are going well at home and everyone is keeping warm through all of these ice and freezing storms!  Sending warmth!

Love,
Chelsea