The Story of Bambuda Lodge by Angie Whittemore Brutto

The Story of Bambuda Lodge

Introduction I decided to write this book because guests at Bambuda Lodge are always so curious about how this place came to be. When we first opened and only had a few guests, it was easy to tell the story. As we've grown in size, the story of Bambuda has grown too, so it's become impossible to sum it all up easily. This book answers the questions we're asked most often, like ‘How did Bambuda Lodge begin?’, ‘How did you build this place?' and 'How did you get the money to start this place?’ For the extra curious, it also explains a whole lot more. Originally I imagined a picture book with a few paragraphs of text. But as I started writing, I realized that to tell the story properly, I would have to go into detail. I have no grandiose dreams that this book will ever be interesting to anyone except guests of Bambuda, friends and family. However, for those of you who are curious, this is the story of where the idea for Bambuda came from, how it started and where it is today, at the time of writing. Although it is told from my perspective, my business partner and childhood best friend Tom Oman is equally responsible for Bambuda. Dan Adelman, August 20, 2016

A very big thank you to previous Bambuda guest Jodie Merritt for editing this book!

Contents The Idea 6 Finding The Property 10 Background On The Property 15 Securing The Property 18 Getting Started 20 Building The Lodge, Part One 28 Building The Lodge, Part Two 33 Opening Up 40 The First Few Months 42 The Christmas/New Year's Eve Fiasco 47 The Next Year 54 Epilogue 59 Worst Guest Stories 61 Special People 69 3

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One of our favorite stops on the Trans-Siberian trip was Mongolia. It always felt wild and raw.

The Idea Like any project, it started with an idea. For us, the idea began more with a way that we wanted to live our lives, than us suddenly deciding, ‘Let's build a lodge in the jungle’. Both Tom and I have done extensive traveling and both came to the conclusion that the status quo way of living – get an office job, get married, have kids, etc – was really not for us. We've always been dreamers and have often fired ideas back and forth between us about potential fun projects and different, interesting things to do with our lives. In August 2009, Tom and I rode the Trans-Siberian Railway. We started in Beijing and went through Mongolia and Siberia, across Eastern and Western Europe, all the way to Amsterdam. The trip was one of the most fun adventures of our lives. At the time, I was working as an investment advisor with my own little successful franchise in Canada, and Tom was at university. Like many people returning from a fun vacation, I felt pretty depressed and utterly bored when I got home. I remember my first day back in the office. It was raining and cloudy outside and I had a mountain of paperwork to get through. I was thinking how much more fun traveling is than paperwork (big surprise). And then I thought to myself, ‘So why don’t I go back and travel? What is really holding me back?'. After lengthy discussions with Tom and other close friends, I came to 6

the realization that I would never again have this opportunity in my life. Never again would I be young, healthy, single and childless. If I sold my business I would have more than enough money to travel for a long time. I decided to jump at the chance. Tom and I both came to the conclusion that in the spirit of ‘our last chance to see the world’, we might as well make it a big one. We planned on going for six months. During the Trans-Siberian trip we had the most fun in Mongolia and Siberia, mainly because they were so undeveloped, had the fewest rules and were furthest from the way of life that we knew. Looking out the windows of the train, you would see a Mongolian goat herder emerging from his yurt with a few small children in rag tag clothing running around. I would think to myself: if you were here four hundred years ago, you would likely see the exact same scene. It felt like time traveling. For our next trip we wanted to go somewhere where we could recapture the excitement we'd felt from being in such a wild and unfamiliar place. It was decided that Africa would be perfect. We'd start in Israel, go through the Middle East, then head over to North Africa and slowly work our way through the east and south, then on to South Africa in time for the 2010 World Cup. It's funny how things in life can change very randomly sometimes. One day I was at Tom's house drinking coffee (as usual), while we studied a world map, planning the route for this trip through Africa. I don’t remember who had the idea first but when we had our original route finished, we thought, ‘Well after South Africa, why don’t we go up the west coast of Africa? And when we get to Morocco, why don’t we jump over to Spain? Then we can travel through Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and from there sail to Chile and go north through the Americas, until we get home!' After a very rough calculation, we decided it would take three years. Just like that, our trip went from six months to three years. During the first year of our trip, Tom and I read a lot of books by Eckhart Tolle and philosophy in general, often drinking coffee and discussing what we'd read. It was during this exciting time in Africa when the idea really took hold that we needed to do something fun and challenging with our lives. Although at this point we didn’t know what that would be, we were determined it would happen. Unfortunately, Tom had to return to Canada after our first year to finish his studies. But we never stopped sharing ideas about what we might do with our lives. 7

I traveled on my own for the rest of the trip. Three years and three months later, I was headed to Costa Rica, bypassing Panama. For the first time, I didn’t do any planning or preparing for a country except booking the hostel for the first night. My plan was to arrive and ask other travelers what I should do and where I should go. The first piece of advice was that I should head to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast. After arriving there, I was told that there was this really cool place only three hours away in Panama called Bocas Del Toro. Although Panama hadn't been on my radar, after hearing all these glowing reviews I decided to go. It was here that the idea of what to do with our lives finally started to take shape.

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I remember arriving in Bocas town and looking at the outer islands, thinking that there must be some amazing places to stay out there. At that time, there really weren't. Out of curiosity I started inquiring about how much land cost in the area. It turned out to be reasonable, so I messaged Tom and told him that I thought I'd found a way to make money while having fun. ‘Let's move to Bocas,’ I said, ‘buy some land on an island in the Caribbean and do something fun with it!’ At this point we had no idea what the ‘something fun‘ would be; we just wanted to buy some land on a Caribbean island with our friends, and do....something. I was so excited about this idea that I decided to create a Facebook group and message people who I thought would be interested in doing it with Tom and me. I should warn you, what follows is very cheesy and corny, but it does reflect how we felt at the time. You can read the actual message I wrote on the next page. The first idea was to build holiday homes. We quickly realized, though, that we had no clue about building holiday homes, and neither did we have a clue about what potential buyers would be looking for. Eventually Tom had the idea to build a hostel. It made a lot of sense. We both love the hostel life, have traveled extensively and have been to hundreds of them all over the world. Now we had a working idea: buy land on Caribbean island in Bocas del Toro and build and run a hostel on it. The rest of the members in the Facebook group, although interested, had other things

Facing page, clockwise from top left: 1. Hiking through the Simien mountains in Ethiopia; 2. The map that Tom and I used to plan our three year around the world trip, added to by our friends during our going away party; 3. Tom enjoying the view in Cairo; 4. Me jumping at Dune 45 in Namibia 9

that stopped them from being part of the project. So it was up to Tom and me.

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The cheesy message I sent to everyone whom I thought would be interested in doing this project with me

Finding The Property

Now we had a better idea of what our project was, we outlined certain characteristics that we were looking for. The property had to: 1) be within a ten minute boat ride from Bocas town, 2) have lots of fruit growing on it, 3) be on the oceanfront, 4) have a coral reef within swimming distance and 5) be big enough to put a main lodge and cabins on it. Our idea was to buy wild, undeveloped land and build all the structures ourselves. Based on a similar design to a hostel we stayed at when backpacking in Malawi, we wanted a main building that would host the bar, restaurant and swimming pool at the front of the property. The guests would stay in individual scattered cabins behind the main house. With our criteria defined, we set out find the perfect piece of land. I visited a bunch of properties for sale and would update Tom with photos and my thoughts on each one. After a month of looking I had to leave Panama for a while, but Tom and I arranged to reconvene in Bocas in the near future. He was set to arrive before me, which was perfect as it meant he could go visit some of the properties that I'd already seen. I

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Left: The first views from the second floor. I could not believe how amazing they were. Right: When I first arrived I thought the house was beautiful and ready to go. Now when I look at these photos, all I can see is the amount of work that would be required to open this place! remember being so excited to see Tom upon my return and having these visions of a grand reunion to start our project. However, when I got back, I checked into the hostel where Tom was staying. When I saw him, he was a mess. He had been trudging through the jungle to check out some of the properties, and was destroyed by all manner of biting insects. His legs looked like something out of a medical textbook. This was a valuable lesson about living in the jungle, and something we hadn’t really considered before. That minor blip didn’t stop us from being excited and going full steam ahead with our plan, though. We talked to all the realtors in Bocas, and spent the next four months walking through jungles and taking boat rides out to obscure properties. However, we just couldn't find 11

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Approaching for the first time

the perfect place. Getting slightly depressed, we were about to resign ourselves to settling for something sub-par. As luck would have it, we were saved. On Tom's last day in Panama, a simple change in the search terms on Google showed us a previously unseen listing. Why no one had shown us this property before will be explained later. We emailed the realtor on the listing right away and tried to set up an appointment that afternoon. The realtor didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even live in Bocas and was away on vacation in Russia, but was able to contact his friend and arrange a viewing the next day. Unfortunately this didn't work for Tom as he had an early morning flight. I reassured him that I would take lots of photos. The next morning, a tall, goofy American guy named Doug picked me up and we headed off to see the property. Approaching by boat, I was blown away by the beauty of the place. I did not let the realtor's goofy friend know this, however. After getting off the boat, we walked up the steps to the 12

I knew this was the place we had been searching for the second I saw this view. main house and I turned around. I took one look at the view and knew instantly â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this was the place we'd been searching for. It's quite a strange feeling really when you finally see something that you've worked so hard to find. The place looked straight out over the ocean and had a large swimming pool lined with the most amazing tropical trees and all manner of colourful flowers. Out in the distance lay tropical islands and mountains towering over them. It was the textbook definition of paradise. The only thing that concerned me was how cheap the property was. I kept thinking, 'Something must be wrong with this place, for it to be listed at such a low price.' After spending four months searching, we knew how much properties in the area cost â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this one was going seriously cheap. I kept this suspicion to myself as I walked around. The more I saw, the more amazing the place got, and the more my suspicions were raised. 13

I thought the boardwalk was one of the coolest features of this property. It made me nostalgic for somewhere I had never visited.

This was my favourite tree on the property at first. I had never seen anything like it.

This property had everything that we'd been looking for. You can imagine mine and Tom's delight when we realized that this place 1) was five minutes from Bocas, 2) had forty varieties of fruit growing, 3) was oceanfront, 4) had a coral reef a thirty-second swim away off the dock, 5) was fourteen acres in size, 6) included two buildings and three cabins which, although run down, were far nicer then anything we could afford to build, 7) was oceanfront, 8) had a pool (albeit extremely run down and with many problems and frustrations), 9) had a generator (albeit barely working), and 10) was in one of the most beautiful untouched jungles I had ever seen. Now we had a potential working property. Tom and I did as much due diligence as we could. My lawyer went through the documents, we had an engineer come and check out the property, I contacted builders to get quotes for repairs and inspections, and talked to as many gringos and business owners in the area as I could find. The property checked out. Now it was time to try to buy it. 14

Background On The Property

Before we delve into the details of how we bought the property, I'm going to give you a bit of history on the place, as this explains the suspiciously low price tag. The property was originally owned by a Panamanian named Rolando Lawrence, who is still a neighbor today. Rolando inherited a large piece of farm land from his dad. One day an American named Lee Glazier showed up and asked to buy part of his land. At this time, I am told, the property was just farmland, except for the ancient mango trees that still line its edges.

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The sale went ahead and Lee immediately got started on building his dream estate. From the stories we've heard, he was a larger than life character who liked to enjoy rum and cocaine. Well known around Bocas, he was either loved or hated, known equally for his extreme generosity and his drunken tirades. In the early days, he was apparently still able to function despite his habits, and ran a small sandwich shop on the main island. He didn't do it for money, however; he was the heir of a large pool chemical supply company out of New York. Lee moved onto the new property and started building his dream. He personally selected all the large trees that you see growing on the property. He designed the boardwalk, the swimming pool and the house that now hosts the dorms and restaurant. As time went on, though, Leeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s addictions got worse. One day after heavy drinking, he got in his boat and started driving home. He forgot to pull up the anchor, so his boat refused to budge. Drunkenly, Lee put the boat in full speed and it took off, but so did the still-attached anchor. It was airborne and came crashing down onto him. Fortunately the boat had a metal top, so the anchor deflected off and fell harmlessly into the ocean. Another day he wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t quite so lucky. Again after hours of drinking, Lee was boating home and accidentally took an early and dangerous turn to his house. He ended up driving into a coral reef, the boat stopped and Lee was ejected into the ocean while the engine was running. The boat, now driverless, was doing circles around him. Somehow Lee was able to climb back in the boat and get himself to safety, but he had to travel to Panama city for surgery on his back. In what turned out to be a fatal error, the doctors gave Lee some painkillers after the operation. 15

As you may well know, prescribing painkillers to an alcoholic drug addict is not standard procedure, for obvious reasons. Unsurprisingly, they became the latest entry on his list of addictions. Most of Lee’s friends say this was the point when he became completely dysfunctional. From then on, he was a mess of alcohol, cocaine and painkillers. Soon after the operation, while high on all three substances, Lee fell down a flight of stairs and cracked his head. Brain surgery ensued back in Panama City, but shortly after, Lee succumbed to his injuries and sadly died. Lee’s wife and daughter inherited the property. Both unfamiliar with Bocas and the real estate market, they decided they would hire a caretaker to look after the place in the interim until they could figure out what to do with it. Their choice of caretaker proved to be an unfortunate one. At the recommendation of a friend in Bocas, they hired a Brazilian guy named Jeff to watch over the property. He was a surfer who liked having a good time. The first rave Jeff held at the property was, according to locals who went, the ‘best party of their life’. Ecstasy, acid, mushrooms and cocaine were abundant. One person fondly recalled: ‘I walked up the stairs and saw people having sex everywhere. There were a lot of people laughing and swimming in the pool. The next morning the pool was green and there were bits of food, condoms and needles floating in it’. As you can imagine, the property sustained lots of damage. 16

Our first view of the second house. The structure was basically a roof with four walls when we arrived. The previous owner had died mid-construction, and all work stopped.

Clockwise from top left: 1. The original kitchen, now a hang out spot for the dorm rooms; 2. One of the cabins that was eventually converted into rooms. The people in the photo were backpackers I'd met at my hostel. I told them I'd bought this place on an island and asked if they wanted to see it. Most of them returned as guests a year later; 3. The master bedroom, now a ten person dorm; 4. Another of the cabins. This one started life as a tool shed before eventually becoming a games room; 5. The state of the bathrooms when we arrived; 6. Me with my first drink on the property: boxed red wine. 7. Where I lived when I first arrived. Now it's the kitchen, Tom's room and the chef's room all at once.

In addition to hosting raves, Jeff was growing marijuana behind the main house. Unfortunately for him, following a crime on one of the outer islands, the police were going around Bocas asking people if they had seen anything. When they approached Jeff on the property, one of the policemen spotted a marijuana plant. Jeff was arrested. Facing jail time, he called Lee’s ex-wife and told her that the generator had just blown and he needed $4,000 immediately to fix it. When Lee’s ex-wife wired the money, Jeff used it to pay his bail and fled the country.

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Lee’s family grew tired of dealing with the property and resigned themselves to just leave it alone for a while. The property ended being uninhabited for the next four and a half years until they got serious about trying to sell the place. They hired an American couple named Beau and Corly to go live there and try to fix it up. They didn’t last long, though (that story will be told later). Luckily for Tom and me, when Beau and Corly left, they kept a local Panamanian named Florenzio on staff, to come a few times a week to check on the property and feed Lee’s old dog Sadie. The value of a property in the middle of a tropical rainforest depreciates extremely quickly without constant maintenance. By the time we got there, the jungle was on the verge of swallowing the place up. At this point, Lee’s family just wanted this property off their hands and put it up for a fire sale. Without knowing the area well, they hired a realtor who didn’t live in Bocas. The general state of disrepair combined with an out of town realtor made this a difficult property to sell. Hence the reason we were able to get the property at such a discount. Lots of people say we got lucky, which we did. But I also like to think we made our own luck to a large extent – spending so much time looking, visiting so many properties, and being so thorough with our due diligence.

Securing The Property

After a few Skype sessions with the realtor, we put in our first offer (to date we still have not met him). Following a few back and forths, we agreed on a price. The deal consisted of us forwarding a non-refundable $50,000 payment, and then we had two months to send the rest. I had a bit of cash left in my bank, my dad invested $20,000 and the rest of the deposit came from a high school friend. It was amazing that he gave us the money without knowing hardly anything about the 18

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I looked forward to these evenings so much. What could be more exciting than sitting down to design your dream?

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My Facebook post announcing the project was becoming a reality project. This was the first financial commitment we had to make. It was very nerve wracking and scary forwarding this amount of money for a non-refundable deposit, and then only having two months to find a lot more. After flying back to Canada, Tom and I would meet every Tuesday evening at my brother's house to drink coffee, discuss ideas and make a credible business plan.

The first step was trying to figure out how much money we needed to get the project off the ground. We did the best we could, given the limited amount of information that we had. Having previously been an investment advisor, I had experience in finding investors and knew how difficult it usually was to convince people to write a cheque. Much to our surprise, finding the investors was amazingly easy. We had so much interest that it only took a few weeks to have the project completely funded. What was more, there were potential investors who were angry that they werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t able to get in on it! It was like the sky was upside down. I was used to having to fight for people's investment dollars, but now it was the investors who were fighting to give us their money. To this day, I am still surprised that they were so eager to write a cheque to two guys with no experience at all in running a hostel, bar or restaurant and no electrical, plumbing or constructions skills to speak of. As a bonus, we didn't understand Spanish and had no contacts in the area. Never mind the fact that we were going to be completely off-grid and would have 19

to generate all of our own electricity, and survive off rain water. I hadn’t worked a day in the last four years and Tom just had basic jobs while he was finishing university aged thirty. I guess the investors could see that we were serious, had made a credible business plan proving that we could make a go of it, and had sold whatever assets we owned in order to get the project going. In poker terms, we'd gone all in. I'm sure the photos of the property went a long way in convincing them it could work, too. We were so confident that we could get things up and running quickly, that I booked a wedding at the lodge for May 1st, just five months after we were due to move in. With our financing completed, on October 28th 2013 we forwarded the rest of the money to buy the property. Now things were real. There was no turning back. On December 4th 2013 I moved in, and Tom would join me a month later.

Getting Started

Almost immediately after I got to Bocas, my mom and uncle joined me. They came to Panama solely to help me with the project. I didn’t know it then, but their timing couldn’t have been any better. My uncle has a lot of experience in construction and I relied a lot on his advice in those early days. My mom made sure that everything was taken care of so we could focus on the project. I was unbelievably excited to show them the property; they were the first people from home that would see this amazing place. I will always remember the first thing my uncle said when he arrived. I was expecting something along the lines of: ‘What an amazing place!’ or ‘This is so beautiful!’ or ‘Good job on the purchase!’ But no. In what turned out to be some rather accurate foreshadowing, he said: ‘Well, this project isn’t for the faint of heart.’ As someone who knew a lot about construction, he took one look at the place and could see straight away just how much work was needed. In contrast, I was thinking, 'What could be so difficult about this?' I thought all we would have to do was hire some construction guys, explain what we wanted them to do and in three months we would be ready to go. Simple. 20

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This naïve thinking stemmed from the total lack of understanding about construction that Tom and I had. Yes, the house and property had a good foundation, but everything else would have to be redone. The electricity didn’t work, there was almost no water, the generator was nonfunctioning, the pool needed to be completely regrouted, retiled and replumbed, the entire second house had to be finished, etc. And that was just to make the property inhabitable. Never mind converting the house into a hotel with a bar and restaurant. But at the time, we had not the slightest clue what we were in for. Blinded by excitement, all we could see was how it would look after it was done. Everything in the middle we would just figure out as we went along. After walking around the property with my mom and uncle, and taking some time to fully understand what was happening, I remember thinking to myself: ‘Now what?’ Seriously, now

My mom and uncle hard at work. They worked like slaves for the three weeks they were here. We couldn't have got the place started without them. 21

what? Where do you begin? I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know anyone in Bocas and had never done anything like this, so where was I supposed to begin? My mom and uncle suggested the first step: cleaning. The property had been uninhabited for years so the dust and dirt was thick. With the help of Florenzio and his girlfriend, we spent the next four days doing nothing but cleaning. When that was all done and the place was borderline livable, it was time to turn my attention to fixing the property up. Again, I had no clue about how to even begin this process. It was around this time that the initial elation wore off and a deep sense of fear and terror started to set in. Over the next few days, I found a few tradesmen who said they would show up and do some work, but in typical Bocas fashion, none of them ever did. Then I put an ad on the website Workaway.info and found some backpackers who were willing to do some work in exchange for food and accommodation. Although they worked hard, we realized that their contributions alone wouldn't get us anywhere close to finishing the project. At this time, my days consisted of waking up in the morning, going into Bocas and traipsing from hardware store to hardware store buying supplies so that these backpackers could complete some minor tasks. I was, however, able to get a mechanic over to look at the generator and try to get it functioning. I'll always remember this because after he left, I swore that I'd never let that asshole back on the property. This was because of the story about the place that he told me while he fixed the generator. Specifically, the tale of why the second caretakers, Beau and Corly, had left (remember them?).

Facing page, top row, L-R: 1. The roof of the balcony could have collapsed any day, so we had to jack the roof up and replace all the supports; 2. Anders being Anders; 3. Jesse, Chop and Florenzio discussing Bertrand Russell in the bodega Middle row, L-R: 1. Drew, his awful girlfriend Becky and Florenzio enjoying our new bench which unbeknownst to us, we'd bought from someone who broke into a house, pretended to own it and then sold all its contents; 2. Florenzio enjoying a swim in the swamp pool; 3. The crew Bottom row, L-R: 1. We walked into our jungle and cut down a balsa tree to hand-make our private room beds. This was a painful process as we had to haul out each piece ourselves. The wood was very heavy and took 4 people to carry each one . 2. Designing the beds; 3. The dock when we first 23 arrived. Repairing this was the first construction project we undertook.

Here’s what he said. Beau and Corly were Americans who had just sold their pub in the US and were looking for a change of scenery. Lee’s ex-wife hired them to move onto the property and start doing some repairs so it could eventually be listed for sale again. After a few months of living and working at the place, they needed a vacation from the island, so planned a weekend getaway. They had befriended a Bocateranian named John and offered for him to stay in the house while they were away. That also happened to be the weekend when some locals thought it would be a good time to rob the place. Apparently they knew that there were two Americans living out here by themselves, so they figured it would be an easy job. The robbers waited in the jungle and watched the place. Once they saw Florenzio leave, they entered the house. The robbers held Beau's friend John at knifepoint (thinking he was Beau), stripped him down naked and tied him up. Upon realizing their mistake, the robbers were very disappointed the Americans weren’t there. They resigned themselves to taking some minor things and left John tied up for the weekend. When Florenzio came back to work on Monday morning, he found John tied up in the kitchen and called the police. Although shaken and hungry, John was unscathed. Beau and Corly never moved back in. Bear in mind this is one of the first stories I was told after moving into the place. My mom was visiting and my girlfriend would be joining soon. The mechanic who was telling me the story could tell he was scaring the shit out of me, and he was clearly enjoying it. Following this, I slept every night with a machete beside my bed and even bought pepper spray. However, this asshole did get the generator working and so we had electricity. Well...by having electricity, I mean having to go to the top floor of the house every five hours, turn a breaker off, go downstairs, change a different breaker, run down to the generator at the front of the property, turn it on or off, run back to the house, and then change the breakers over again. For months, Tom and I would take turns waking up at night and repeating this process. One day I went into the hardware store 'Chow Kai', which was named after its owner. He was there and I started talking with him. When I told him that I bought Lee’s old place, his eyes lit up. 'I used to know Lee very well,' he told me, 'We were good friends. If you need any help at all, don’t be shy.' Then he did what everyone in Bocas did when I told them I'd bought Lee's place: tell me a bunch of crazy Lee stories. This short meeting with Chow Kai would prove to be a pivotal moment in the early days of my Bocas adventure. 24

Before I knew it, I was three weeks into the project and it felt like next to nothing had been accomplished. At this rate, it would take years and years for this project to be finished. I was not sleeping well at all. In between worrying that every little sound might be an intruder, thinking about the million things that needed to be done, having to wake up every five hours and change the electricity over, worrying about my girlfriend’s safety and losing all my investors' money in this stupid project, I had an even bigger concern: that I was going to ruin this wedding we had booked, given that there that there was no way we would have this place ready in time. Everyone in the wedding party had already booked their flights to Panama – there was no turning back. In my mind I imagined myself seventy years older and still being haunted by the fact that I'd ruined someone's wedding.

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Eventually, the pressure got to me, and one night I had a breakdown. It was probably around 3am,

My girlfriend-at-the-time Marianne, the neighbour's family, some volunteers and me enjoying the 25 view from the balcony

and I just started crying my eyes out. I couldn’t help it. I thought I had made the worst decision in my life. Luckily my mom and uncle were still around and they calmed me down. I had never been depressed in my life before, but now I was getting a glimpse of it. It seemed like everything was dark. I had no appetite, I didn’t want to see anyone and I didn’t want to move. After two days of this, I had to do something. I knew I needed help, but didn’t know where to begin.

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Then I remembered my meeting with Chow Kai from a few days before. Even though I had only just met him, he had told me that if I needed any help, he would lend a hand. So I grabbed a boat into town to talk to him, the only person I knew there. Luckily Chow Kai was in his shop when I arrived. I asked him if we could speak in private. I'm sure he was very confused. On the way to his office, I reminded him that I was the gringo who bought Lee's place (just in case he hadn't remembered). Once he shut the door I blurted out, ‘I need your help, I've made a very big mistake and I don’t know anyone, and I don’t know what to do.’ He probably expected me to say that I'd got involved with some drug dealers or gangsters or something. So Chow Kai asked me what I needed help with, and I told him the whole story. The wedding happening in a few months, not being able to get tradesmen who actually showed up, all the work that we needed to get done, the fears about my investors, etc. Eventually he stopped me and said, ‘What you need is a contractor.’ And he was right. Tom and I were not contractors. We didn’t know the first thing about construction in Panama. What we needed was someone whom we could tell what we wanted done, and they would make sure it happened. Chow Kai picked up his phone and made a call. Fifteen minutes later, a tall skinny Panamanian man walked in. He was briefed and then told to go to my property. Once there, we walked through the entire place and listed everything that we needed done. At first the contractor was just listening, but once he could see how much work was needed, he took out a notepad and Facing page, clockwise from top left: 1. Tom and Drew supervising the new staircase and deck being built; 2. Drew relaxing and the deck starting to take shape; 3. The walls in the second house going up; 4. There is little concern for health and safety in Panama – thankfully no one got hurt during our construction. The wooden towers that you see are from a tree in our jungle that we cut down. We had an indigenous Panamanian use his chainsaw to make the planks then use them to build the towers. At this point everything was new and amazing to us! 26

started making a lot of notes. He asked me to give him a week and we would meet again to discuss things further.

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A few days later my girlfriend arrived, my mom and uncle left and some friends from home came for a visit. Then a week after that, I met with the contractor. He confirmed everything that we discussed and gave me his price for the work. He pretty much could have said any number and I would have agreed to it, but his price was cheaper then expected. I pretended that I needed to think about it and to make it seem realistic, I stalled a little before eventually saying yes. He said the work that I needed would take six to eight weeks. Eight months later, they still weren’t done. The next week a boat pulled up to the property. Nine guys got off with hammers, drills and all sorts of tools and the work finally got started. Although we would eventually have to fire the contractor, I will always credit him with

showing Tom and I how construction works around here and for getting the project started. Although they didn't do a good job, they got a lot of work done. In the future their poor workmanship would cause Tom and me a lot of stress and problems, but that is a story for later. For now, things were slowly starting to happen. To give some much needed relief, Tom had arrived a few days before and it was beyond amazing to have him here. A year later, Tom would confess to me that after reading the emails I'd been sending him, he'd thought to himself, ‘What have I got myself into?’

Building The Lodge, Part One It is simply impossible to write this chapter and leave the reader with a true understanding of what life was really like during this time. There are so many small details that I remember, that it would take

Facing page, upper row L-R: 1. Burning all the rotten wood; 2. The nice thing about not having any guests was that we could enjoy having the pool and facilities all to ourselves! The pool was almost always green at this time, but we didn't mind; 3. Tom supervising the new boardwalk being installed around the side of the house Lower row, L-R: 1. Digging the hole for the new septic tank; 2. Drew giving Tom an awful jungle haircut; 3. A friend from Canada, volunteers Sam and Kristie (they stayed for months helping us get ready to open) and Tom and me, enjoying an afternoon on the balcony. 28

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L-R: 1. Drew, Tom, Anders and our boat driver Carlos returning from buying a lot of items from an amazing property sale. A year later we found out that someone had broken into the house, pretended to own it and sold all the items inside; 2. After cutting a balsa tree down, Chop and Florenzio used their amazing chainsaw skills to turn the tree into perfectly sized logs for our future beds. 3. Tom discussing our future plans with the contractor. After this visit, the contractor never answered our calls or came back to view the property, so Tom and I became the designated foremen. Not an ideal situation, to say the least.

forever to describe. But hopefully I can leave you with an overall impression of the situation. Shortly after the contractor's crew arrived, we realized that any dreams of us sitting by with cocktails, watching them do their work the way we wanted, were not going to become reality. Every step of the way we were going to have to babysit and hand hold. Even to our untrained eyes, with zero experience in construction, we were blown away by how awful their work was. If we didn’t watch every minute detail, it would be done wrong. Soon after the work started, the contractor just stopped showing up or answering our calls, but thankfully his tradespeople didn’t. So we became the de facto contractors. I could list you all the mistakes these guys were making and how downright terrible their decisions were, but I don’t think there is enough paper in the world. Tom and I were quickly getting worn out. We were spending our days watching the construction instead of focusing on the future of Bambuda and how we were going to get it open. Luckily, though, reinforcements 30

were arriving. At this point, three people came to work at Bambuda who made a significant difference: Anders, Drew and Jesse. Anders was Tomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Swedish friend from university in South Korea. I had met him in Africa, where we'd traveled together for six weeks. I remembered him saying at the time that it was his dream to open up a hostel. Tom and I had decided he was the perfect choice to hire as manager. Fortunately, Anders had accepted our offer and he took on the project as if it were his own. In addition to helping Tom and I watch the construction guys, he started putting the infrastructure in place to run the operations of the lodge. Drew was a friend that I'd met in Australia two years before. He was young, but had worked in his father's restaurant for years and was a great chef. Drew came with his extremely lazy and occasionally violent girlfriend. The idea was that Drew would get the restaurant ready and his girlfriend would organize the housekeeping. Drew kept his part of the bargain, but his girlfriend spent her days complaining and lying around. I remember one particular morning, Anders came to me and asked me if I had been watching hardcore porn really loudly the night before. I told him (quite shocked!) that in fact I hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. Apparently, he'd heard some screams coming from somewhere. It turned out that Drew and his girlfriend were having an argument when she suddenly started screaming and violently attacking him. Wonderful girl. Jesse was a local Panamanian and was the only tradesman we could find who seemed to do good work. He lived in Almirante, a town that was a long boat ride away. So he moved into Bambuda a week at a time to work. Jesse was an enigma. When sober, he was one of the most brilliant Panamanians we've met, with a kind heart. When not sober, he was unreliable, sneaky and a downright asshole. Our relationship with Jesse consisted of him working for us solidly for a week or two, getting paid and then not showing up for work again until he was broke. He would take all his wages to the local bar and drink them away until his money ran out or he was hospitalized, then call and ask for more. If we sent him any, he would again drink it away, and then threaten never to return, unless we sent him another $5. Unfortunately, Tom and I were handcuffed to him at the time. He was the only person we knew that could get all these projects done right. Whenever he did show up, most of his time was spent undoing other people's mistakes. 31

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The evolution of the pool: 1. When we first arrived, so many problems. Never mind that it was a mosquito breeding ground.

2. Re-grouting the pool. You can see the old white grout on the left and the new black grout on the right.

For months on end, this is how we existed. Work was being completed at a snail's pace, money was going out the door with no end in sight, a bunch of terrible tradesman were making multiple mistakes, and we had a never-ending list of problems. But somehow we also had a lot of fun. We all had the feeling that we were working on a special project. We would party together, eat together, and take Sundays off to go explore the area. And we had this beautiful property all to ourselves, knowing that one day (maybe) we would open, and then we'd never have the place all to ourselves again. By far the biggest source of stress at this time was the knowledge that in just a few months, we were supposed to be hosting a wedding. Early in January I realized there was no way this was going to happen. Most of the wedding party had already bought their tickets, so just canceling the booking was not an option. But having it here was not one either. So I searched around Bocas and found a really nice alternative venue. They were charging a lot more that we had, so we decided to give the bride and groom money from our pockets to make up the difference. Calling 32

3. Bambuda now fully open, and the pool fully green. For some reason, guests would still swim in

4. Eventually we figured out the pool and this photo shows that all the work was worth it.

to give them the news was one of the worst calls I have ever had to make. But once it was cancelled, I breathed a giant sigh of relief.

Building The Lodge, Part Two As I said before, it's impossible to explain to you all the difficulties we encountered in trying to get the lodge open. I will share with you one example (of many), though: the pool. Although it was built before we got here, by the time we arrived it needed a major overhaul. The grout needed to be completely redone and many tiles needed to be replaced. To put things in perspective, the pool is 18 feet wide, 36 feet long and 5.5 feet deep, with 1 inch square tiles. In order to regrout it, first you have to remove all the old grout from in between the 1 inch tiles. This involves taking a screw driver and a hammer and carefully going in between them, scraping all the grout out, before adding the new grout. The first time we did this, it took an entire three weeks. To the credit of the people who did it, they did regrout the pool as promised. 33

Because our pool is rainwater fed, it took us over five months to fill the pool the first time. Once full, we noticed that although the pool was clean, it was never really clear. One day I touched the wall and the brand new grout flaked off onto my fingers. We realized that the people who did the grout for us used bathroom grout instead of pool grout. Bathroom grout is not meant to be submerged for long periods of time because, as I had discovered, it just comes right off. This was the first time we had to completely drain the pool, and by then we were already open and had guests here. For the second grouting attempt, we decided to hire Germans....well, because Germans never make mistakes. They scraped off all the old grout (again) and started regrouting the pool. This time around we had our German tiler use a very durable black coloured grout that we ordered from the US. Halfway through the job, he realized that he'd only ordered half the amount of the grout that was needed. We then had to wait two more weeks for the new supply to arrive. Afterwards they finished the job and we started filling the pool. About a month later, it was only two feet full, and things started going wrong again. This time, we noticed a bunch of white spots where there was supposed to be black grout. The grouters had apparently missed some areas and these had to be repaired. We drained the pool yet again and fixed the missing spots. Finally, months later, there had been enough rain to fill the pool completely. I remember the day very clearly. It was December 3rd 2014 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; one day shy of a whole year since we'd started living there. We had a crazy storm blow in and it filled the pool right up, so all the guests and staff celebrated by jumping in and drinking lots of alcohol. The next day we had a one year celebratory pool party. We thought our pool problems were finally over. In fact, they were only just beginning. Only a week later, the pool went green with algae. As we soon discovered, it had happened because we werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t running the pool pump long enough. It was an old one from Lee's days that used a ton of electricity, so we'd avoided using it for long periods. Basically Lee designed the place like it had an unlimited power supply â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no thought whatsoever was put into sustainability. His approach was to run his generator 24 hours a day and then just hire locals to come every single week and fill up the diesel tank. 34

Clockwise from top left: 1. Drew putting his cheffing career on the line; 2. Carrying logs out of the jungle â&#x20AC;&#x201C; just another day; 3. As we got ready one day to enter the jungle and do some trail finding for our jungle hike, I remember thinking how much more fun my current job was than my last one. 4. The first guests to get married at Bambuda; 5. Tom with a big Tuna catch.; 6. Unfortunately this huge mango tree fell down one day. Fortuntely no one was walking on the boardwalk at the time; 7. The original sign-up sheet for dinner. Guests would write their names in chalk around whichever option they wanted. Vegeterian was only available when requested...how things have changed.

We ordered a special new DC pump from the US that used much less electricity, so running it 24 hours was supposed to be fine. Shortly after this new pump arrived, though, it died from overuse and the pool went green again. After that, luckily we (by we, I mean someone named Bobby Wood, but his story comes later) managed to find a new solar pool pump to use instead. This pump really can run 24 hours a day and so far hasn’t caused us any problems...fingers crossed.

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The following week, the pool went green yet again. This time the pump wasn't to blame. I would estimate that for the next five months, the pool was green 70% of the time. Every time it went green, we researched why it had happened and fixed it. We had to figure out all the maintenance steps required to keep our commercial, tropical, outdoor, solar powered pool clean – and trust me, there are a lot of them. Eventually we devised a formula that worked. It involved checking all the chemical levels at least once a day and adjusting them as needed; scrubbing, vacuuming and backwashing the pool twice a week; re-doing the plumbing as the bottom drains weren't even connected; buying a new filter; changing the chlorine dispenser; using chemical shock (high strength chlorine that kills algae) and using algicide weekly...and so the list went on. Since May 15th 36

Renzo working his magic in the kitchen 2015, we haven’t had a green pool once. So that's the pool story. When you come to Bambuda and swim in the pool, just know how much frustration, time, effort and money has been spent to get it the way it is…you'd better appreciate it!! For other areas like the generator, solar, water and septic systems, we endured (and continue to endure) many frustrations trying to get them working. We are still trying to figure them out. Maybe one day we will. Back to the story. Around this time we were very fortunate to have some good, albeit odd, luck. May 17th started like any other day. As usual, I went into town to buy construction materials. When I returned, I noticed Tom and

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At first, I thought Tom and Anders were pulling my leg. However, sure enough, a week later we had a contract in the mail. Telemetro was requesting a quote for what we would charge to rent out the entire place. Since it was just a construction site at that time, we had no clue how much to charge. With all the construction delays our money situation was getting dismal, so this could be a great bonus. But at the same time, we didn’t want to scare them off with a crazy Me with the very first guests high price. We settled on $1000/day. At Anders having a very animated conversation. that time we considered it great money. Curious, I asked them what they were discussing. Tom told me, ‘You are never going to believe what At first we were confused as to why they happened today.’ I asked him to continue. liked our property, given that it was a dirty construction site, but they didn’t Apparently he and Anders were on the deck seem to care. In fact, they thought it was discussing one of the construction mishaps, when a perfect for their TV show. We soon found boat pulled up. Strangely, five men wearing out why it was such a perfect location. expensive clothing and carrying expensive Telemetro was making a show named ‘Los cameras exited the boat and started taking photos. Condenados – El Caribe Rojo' (The They came over and explained that they were with Condemned – The Red Caribbean), based the Panamanian national television company – on a real life character called Wild Bill. Telemetro. They were in Bocas looking for locations Wild Bill was an American man who came to film the first ever Panamanian-made TV show. to Bocas with his girlfriend and started Following this they asked to explore the property serial killing gringos in order to steal and check it out. When they were done, they said it their property. Apparently our run down was exactly the kind of location they'd been looking house/construction site looked like an for and that we'd receive a contract by the end of the ideal place for a serial killer to live.

A month later, eight boats pulled up, loaded with trendy Panamanians and all manner of expensive movie equipment. For the six of us, who'd spent the last months by ourselves working at this remote, seemingly never-ending project, it was very surreal to watch this scene unfold. I vividly remember Tom looking over at me and saying, “Pinch me!” The next eight days provided some great opportunities for us to finally kick back and relax. On top of this, we got to cameo in the TV show. Our ‘main’ scene involved us being at a party, snorting cocaine (vitamin B powder) and drinking straight spirits (water). Our acting was unbelievably terrible. What made it even stranger was that none of us could speak Spanish at that time, so we spoke our lines in English when the entire rest of the show was in Spanish. Overall it was a very awkward experience, but a highly entertaining one at the same time.

Opening Up Anyway, back to the story. May 2015 was promising to be an interesting month. My girlfriend Marianne was coming for her second visit, and the wedding that was originally supposed to be at Bambuda (which had caused me so many sleepless nights) was about to take place. I was excited to show Marianne all the new things we'd completed, and more importantly to take some time off.

Facing page, top row L-R: 1. The TV crew turned one of our rooms into a production room; 2. We took this photo as a joke and then posted it on Facebook. Unbeknownst to us, some people in Bocas who didn't know us, saw the photos and were terrified because they thought the guns were real and a bunch of gringo gansters had moved in; 3. Action shot of military guy Middle row, L-R: 1. Me with the two stars of the production; 2. An actual scene of the movie. We were all on the pool deck during what was supposed to be a party scene. You can see us in the background; 3. Another action shot Bottom row, L-R: 1. Hilarious action shot; 2. These poor guys had to dig this hole for the movie. They hit a septic line and released the most foul smell you can imagine. Shooting continued with staff wearing masks. 3. Perhaps my favourite scene of the show. They wanted us to pretend we were having a wild party in one of the rooms. Tom looks hilarious with his sunglasses and cigar. They also gave us fake cocaine which we had to snort on camera. Well, at least Drew had to. 38

Since moving in, we'd all been working every single day. Now that I was going to be a host, I would have an excuse to relax. So I booked us a two night stay at Red Frog Resort. But once we arrived, this overwhelming feeling of exhaustion hit. Basically, I slept for the entire two days. I think my mind and body had been so overworked that as soon as they had the chance, they forced me to catch up on some much needed sleep. I still felt guilty though.

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Marianne left the day the wedding party arrived. Even though I'd managed to rearrange the wedding successfully, I was still extremely nervous. All I could hope for was a few days of good weather and that there would be no major hitches. Thankfully, that was just how it happened. It was surreal to be at the wedding, as this event had caused me an unbearable amount of stress for months on end. I remember sitting there, looking around and seeing everyone having a great time. It nearly brought me to tears. To make it even better, the bride and groom thanked me for everything I'd done for them. Needless to say, I was incredibly relieved when it was all done and I could move on with Bambuda and my life. Around the end of July we were starting to get extremely frustrated. Again. We'd been living and working on the property for almost eight months and it was really starting to seem like the closer we got to opening, the more problems we found. Around the middle of the month, Anders and I decided we should start preparing for opening (Tom was on vacation). We put our lodge on Booking.com and Hostelworld. Although we weren’t really ready to open, we figured it would take a while for people to actually book our place online. We were wrong. That very day we had a booking, and it was for the next day, July 24th 2014. The images of the first boat arriving and guests getting off are burned into my memory. As the boat came into sight, I remember thinking to myself what a momentous occasion it was. We had done it! We'd got the place open, and guests were coming. The only slight problem was that at this point, we were in no way ready to host guests. Luckily we had some friends visiting at this time, so Anders and I came up with a semi ridiculous plan. We would get them to pretend to be ‘real guests’. The boat pulled up and four people got off. There were three guys and one girl, all from Wales. After they walked up to reception I took their passports and remember smiling to myself – we 40

didn’t even know what we were supposed to do with the passports. I looked at the computer screen and pretended to punch some numbers in somewhere. I gave the passports back, did our introduction and took our actual real guests to the dorm room.

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Fortunately for us, they were really chilled out and cool people: perfect guests. On the second day they were there, we confessed that they were our first guests. They couldn’t believe it. They said the place looked and felt like it had been open a long time and said this was ‘the best place they had ever stayed’. Hearing this really got rid of a lot of anxieties for me. It had been proven that we could convince people to come here, and they could also have a good time. If we'd done it once, it meant we could do it again. They left us a 100% review on Hostelworld, and we were off to a great start. It would be three days until our next guest showed up. But the ball was rolling now, and bookings were starting to come in.

The First Few Months Bobby Wood – a.k.a. the saviour of Bambuda

From August 1st onwards, we always had guests here. One day we came pretty close to 41

being empty, as our only guest was a Japanese guy. We were still happy as the reviews coming in were still amazing. However, that all changed in September, when our lack of experience came back to haunt us.

drink the water and because the pool was full of algae, they couldn't swim in it – unless they were okay with getting ear infections. We weren't just being cautious; Tom and Anders had been swimming in the pool once while it was green, and Tom ended up with a nasty ear September is one of the driest months in Bocas. infection that actually gave him permanent By the middle of the month, without any hearing damage. significant rainfall over the previous two weeks, we were completely out of water. With The pool still needed other major repairs (eg no experience of living off-grid, we had no idea regrouting), as explained previously. Because how much water we would actually need and so it was also full of green algae and we couldn’t were dreadfully unprepared. As a comparison, filter it, we decided to use this time to drain it back then we had only 7,200 gallons of water completely and make all the necessary storage capacity, while today we have over improvements in one go. 45,000 gallons. It was a few days later that our first bad Our only option was to drain the pool into the review came in. Written by a Dutch guy, it water tanks, so at least the toilets would work. read ‘Swimming pool was empty. Staff had no As the drought carried on, the pool level got solution to the empty swimming pool. 4.6/10'. lower and lower. Soon enough, the pool water level dropped below the opening to the side Panic ensued. When you know that your skimmers (the holes on the sides of the pool that whole business relies on online reviews, and allow water to be sent to the filter and pump for you see your great reputation potentially cleaning). This meant that we could only filter being eroded away, you panic. Well, I the water through one drain at the panicked. The only solution we could think of bottom...which unbeknownst to us, wasn’t even was trying to befriend every guest and connected. explain to them how we ended up in this situation, hoping they would take pity on us. Within a day, the water was full of algae and Even though it was extremely tiring was dark green in colour. You can imagine how explaining the pool story over and over and happy guests were to show up to Bambuda, be trying your best to be everyone’s friend, we told that because of the drought they couldn't somehow managed to escape the next three

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pool-less months with only minimal bruising.

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Over the same time period, I had just received news that my dad and mom had both just been diagnosed with cancer (my dad's was stage four throat cancer). A few weeks later my girlfriend and I broke up as we had not seen each other in four months, and wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t for the foreseeable future.

As well as trying to sort out repairs to the pool and figuring out how to make sure our guests had water, Tom, Anders and I were dealing with running the lodge without any experience, searching for a replacement for our chef Drew who was quitting, managing the construction of the second house that was fully booked in a There were three bits of good news, however. month's time, and arranging the restoration Firstly, we were finally making money. After both of our boat and engine. eight months of constantly withdrawing money from the bank to pay our bills, we were

The evolution of the dorms: On the left you can see how this room looked when it was the original master bedrom. On the right you can see the change into a dorm. 43

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

now able to pay them through operations. At this time, though, we had no real accounting system. Money was placed in a drawer at reception and when we needed some, we took some. It almost became like a magic drawer; every time we needed money, there it was. Secondly, we managed to find an amazing chef, Renzo, who is still with us today. After a particularly trying day caused by some plumbing issues, I recall sitting at reception during dinner and observing our guests. Even though earlier, some of them had been complaining about water leaking into their room, Renzo had cooked such an amazing dinner that all complaints were forgotten. I said to Tom, ‘It sure is great to know that no matter what goes wrong with this place, as long as Renzo is in the kitchen, our guests will enjoy their dinners and have a great time.’ Those days, Renzo was working like a beast seven days a week, taking care of lunch and dinner mostly by himself. Our reputation for great food was built on the shoulders of that man.

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our solar installer was not answering his phone and we needed someone right away. A friend of ours recommended calling an American named Bobby Wood. From the moment he showed up, he has been saving us from one disaster after another. Bobby came over after the first call (probably a Bocas record), took one look at our system and fixed our issue in less than ten minutes. He proceeded to point out all the mistakes that were done in our initial set-up and planned a return trip to address them.

Since that first day Bobby came over, he has subsequently fixed and installed our new solar system, designed and installed our two new generators, fixed about a million electrical problems, redesigned our kitchen, installed our water tanks and off-grid filtration system, installed our off-grid pool and water pumps, redone all of our rain collection systems, built and designed our waterslide, redone our pool and reception deck and installed a commercial septic system. Currently he's building the new The last bit of good news was that we finally rooms for our planned expansion. found some real construction help. As normal, we were experiencing problems with our solar I’m sure there's a ton of things that I'm and electrical systems. In typical Bocas fashion, missing from the list of ways Bobby has Facing page: the evolution of the private rooms in the second building, top floor L-R columns: How everything looked when we arrived; during construction; and once completed.

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AFTER

The evolution of the private rooms on the lower level L-R columns: how everything looked when we first arrived; the rooms during constrution; how the rooms looked once finished.

stopped our place from imploding. Anders once joked that when people asked how Bambuda started, we should reply that we were playing around on the island and then called Bobby Wood to set up Bambuda. I can honestly say that this place would likely not be in operation now without him. Once again, we had found just the right person at just the right time.

The Christmas / New Year's Fiasco

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We continued along with this routine for the next few months. It seemed like we were constantly putting out fires, while at the same time trying to move forward. This time was full of extreme high and lows. In the midst of having to deal with endless electrical, water, septic, and pool problems, we made some pretty significant moves forward. We finally got the pool regrouted properly, our occupancy rate was great, and we were getting close to finishing the second house. The second house is where we have all of our private rooms, including our premier rooms. On December 15th 2014, the entire second house was booked out. We'd thought we would have no problem getting the rooms finished by then. Until around December 1st, that is, when we realized that the contractor had made a huge mistake. He had only put light fiberglass in the walls for soundproofing. In a wooden house, this was not going to cut it – if you whispered in one room, you would hear it in the next. We were now two weeks away from having the entire building occupied with guests, but the rooms were simply unrentable. Panic set in. Again. The entire project was about to be ruined, as we figured all future guests staying in the rooms would have such an awful time and leave bad reviews. However, luck was with us. One night I was having dinner with some of the guests, and I asked a guy named Mikael what he did for a living. He told me he was a construction engineer in the Czech Republic. I started telling him about our problems with the soundproofing. He stopped me and said, “You know, I studied soundproofing wooden houses in Norway for my masters. I'm an expert in it. Do you want some help?” I could not believe it. What were the chances? There we were, scrambling around trying all sorts of useless soundproofing ideas, and this guest had arrived who just so happened to be one of the best people in the world to help us. I almost kissed him. Of course I accepted his offer of 47

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The first Christmas with Chop and Florenzio

The poster for our disastrous New Year's event

help, and the next morning he came to look at our problem.

knew how to work with concrete, we grabbed all our Panamanian staff and everyone got to work.

His instructions were very clear. We needed to take down all the walls, and make double walls. On one side we needed to put 1.5 inches of concrete, as the mass would stop the low frequency sounds, and on the other side we needed to put thick fiberglass to stop the high frequency sounds. The walls could not touch as sound travels through vibrations. Fortunately Jesse was staying with us at the time (remember him?). He grabbed a few guys who 48

From first thing in the morning until late at night, we worked. We filled a few boats with as many bags of concrete and sand as we could fit, and hauled bag after bag up the stairs to the back of the second house. We gave all the workers pot after pot of coffee, food and anything else they needed. While Mikael was staying with us, he would come in the morning and check our progress, tell

us how we were doing, what needed to happen and then go enjoy his day. When he returned at night, he would check our work again. By the end of December 14th, we had finished the last wall. On the morning of the 15th we cleaned everything up, and our first guests checked in later that afternoon. To this day, we haven’t had any noise complaints about the back house. Well...that's not entirely true. We did have one very frisky couple staying back there and the next morning a few guests brought to our attention the ‘earthquake and screaming’ at 2am that woke them up. We were all dreading the week from Christmas to New Year's Eve. Because of a few booking errors made back in September, we'd accidentally overbooked the lodge. Looking back now, we should have just canceled some reservations, but we were still new and inexperienced. So we went ahead, knowing that for a few nights we'd have up to fifty one guests in a place with space for only forty. We were able to find room for everyone, but it involved putting guests in closets and storage rooms. We also asked some guests who'd been here for a while and had become friends with us, if they didn’t mind sleeping outside on hammocks. Fortunately they didn't. The evolution of the cabin: Top: The cabin was run down and empty, except for a rusty diesel tank. Middle: How the cabin looked when we first arrived Bottom: Jesse and his crew start a renovation

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The evolution of the cabin: Above: The cabin mid-construction; Facing page: the finished product. With the help of Itamar, these rooms turned out better than we could have ever hoped. The combination of too many guests and not enough staff put everyone on edge. I remember working at reception and simultaneously booking tours for people, taking breakfast orders, checking people in and out and answering questions, all the while trying not to scream. From the moment a shift started until it ended, it was utter chaos. At Christmas dinner, everyone was looking forward to sitting down, relaxing and enjoying a nice meal. The chefs were in the kitchen doing their magic, and everyone was getting a bit drunk. Unfortunately, we got sold an awful piece of meat by the butcher. No matter what the chefs did, it tasted like shoe leather. We were forced to give everyone a huge discount on dinner, and apologize. But life goes on. Christmas was still a joyous time and we had a blast. Our first New Year's was nearly a disaster. We had a younger Spanish volunteer here named Pablo. He'd been pushing us to throw a New Year's party, telling us his friend would take care of everything: he would get all the guests here, organize the DJ, make the flyers, etc etc. We finally caved and let Pablo take control. However, we were specific about what we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want; loud reggaton with a bunch of super drunk young people around. That was not the Bambuda vibe 50

and we thought it would alienate our guests. But that was exactly what happened. Around midday these Panamanian DJs showed up with speakers that were taller then me. Shortly afterwards a few boatloads of young, rich Panama city party animals showed up. By 3pm, they were completely drunk and some of them were puking on the boardwalk. The music was obnoxious and loud, and all of our paying guests were just meekly standing around and watching the nonsense – in short, exactly what we told Pablo we didn’t want.

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After a few hours of this, it was decided that we couldn’t handle it anymore. We turned the music off, paid the DJs and told them to go home. We got rid of all the pesky drunk people, and restored Bambuda back to its normal state. After all was said and done, our guests had a great time. This mess was a reminder to us that we should follow our instincts and not allow others to influence our decisions. At this time I had been working extremely long days, seven days a week, for months on end. I was short tempered and completely worn out. It was time for a trip back to Canada. Although going to Canada in January would never be my first choice, it was a much-appreciated break.

The Next Year

The first half of 2015 started with the usual problems: electrical issues, green swimming pool, running out of water, etc. But we were also faced with a new problem. Anders, our manager and longtime friend, was leaving. He came to Bambuda with a goal of starting a hostel and felt he had accomplished it. Worried about the political situation in Sweden, Anders had decided to return home to try to make a difference. To be honest, this scared the shit out of Tom and me. We depended on Anders to do so much and make sure the place was running smoothly. Much to our surprise, we found that after having an adjustment period and taking on some new responsibilities, we were able to continue just fine without him. Still, both Tom and I owe Anders Facing page: Itamar did such a good job on the cabin rooms that we asked him to go through all of our private rooms and re-do them. The left column shows the room pre-Itamar, on the right, post. 52

BEFORE

AFTER

a huge debt of gratitude. He designed and set up a lot of the policies and procedures that we still have in place. And when Tom and I would get out of control and party too much, Anders would be the responsible one and make us see our faults. We always thought he would be with us forever as he taken on this project like it was his own. But at the end of the day it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t his, and so understandably, he left. One upside was that for Tom and me, this really reinforced our business partnership. We knew that the only ones who would definitely be around to see this project to the end were him and me.

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Around May, we found a new and excellent manager, Jimmy. He took over the day-to-day operations, allowing Tom and me to focus on expanding. Jimmy left his mark around here by implementing a lot of ideas and procedures that helped us get organized enough to handle more guests. Even though it was our first year, the demand for our place exceeded our wildest expectations and we needed more capacity. This time Tom and I decided to be the contractors for the construction. Our alcoholic employee Jesse had gone a few months without going on a bender, and unfortunately we were still naĂŻve enough to think that we could do this project with Jesse at the helm. Jesse got four of his friends from his hometown and we started putting a plan together. This lasted a short while before Jesse went AWOL, just like before. Both Tom and I started receiving calls in the middle of the night from an inebriated Jesse. Sometimes he was nice, other times he was downright angry. So we were left with his crew, who were severely underqualified for the project. As luck would have it, though, we were saved by a guest again. A friend of mine whom I'd met in France five years before came for a visit. Itamar was a carpenter and furniture maker by trade, and offered to help for a few days during his vacation. Tom and I were so impressed, we offered him a job to stay on. Once Itamar took over, things were Facing page: the evolution of the reception area Top Row: Just days after arriving, my mom showing the neighbours around; the original deck; Middle Row :The deck renovations starting; the layout when we first opened; Bottom Row: Almost 2 years after we opened, we completely renovated the reception area; on the right is the finished product, with almost everything torn out and replaced. We also expanded it to allow room for more guests in the future. 54

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As an Argentinian, Renzo knows his way around the BBQ very different. We fired Jesseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s friends and Itamar took over the expansion project. We also hired a few Panamanian carpenters and let Itamar manage them. All of a sudden things were getting done, and rapidly. Itamar can best be described as an artist who happens to know how to work with wood. In addition to finishing the cabins, he made all the furniture by hand and custom to each room. The final product was so much nicer than something Tom and I could have ever done. In fact, Itamar did such a great job on the expansion that we let him go through all of our rooms and redo them in his style. Itamar took over all of our construction projects from that point on. We bought him all the tools he wanted and hired a few more helpers. Thanks to him, we were finishing projects better and Facing page: The evolution of the kitchen Top row, L: This was where I slept when I first moved in; R: My room starts to get split up into its final layout; Middle row: With the walls up, we started to install the kitchen equipment. We were on such a tight budget then that everything we used was leftover from Lee's days. Somehow this tiny kitchen turned out amazing food for up to forty people. With no windows, it was like working in a sauna; Bottom row, L: After being open for two years, we desperately needed to expand and redo the kitchen. ...probably the day our guests were the least happy with us; R: The revamped kitchen with 57 commercial equipment.

The evolution of the main deck and pool deck Left: The state of (dis) repair when we first moved in. Right: Works starts on the main deck expansion

Left: The main deck starts to go up. Right: The main deck is finished and Bambuda is open.

Left: The main and pool decks before we expanded again. Right: All finished with the deck expansions. It's hard to tell from the photos, but we added 25% more room to the pool and main deck areas.

faster then ever before. Having a professional deal with the construction really taught Tom and me the value of having the right people working in the right place. From then on, we set out to do that with every part of our business. Florenzio, who had been given a promotion to take care of all the maintenance, was doing an excellent job. This meant we no longer had to worry about the pool going green, changing filters, etc. We decided to see if he could also manage a crew of Panamanians, and promoted him again to manager of landscaping and landworks. We hired three of his brothers and Florenzio was their boss. This allowed us to start doing landscaping projects at lightning speed. We were left with only one area of the business to worry about: operations. Unfortunately Jimmy had been missing his life in Canada and so he decided to leave after a few months. At the end of November we got a random email from a guy named Rich. He was from the UK and had been managing a hostel in Panama City for three years, and also had his work permit and residency. Previously he'd been managing restaurants, hotels and bars in the UK. Rich was looking for a change of pace and wanted out of the city. After a quick Skype call, we decided to give him a chance. We had high hopes that he might be ‘the final piece’ to Bambuda by taking care of the day-to-day operations. Rich arrived two weeks after the Skype call and settled in nicely. It took a while for most the staff to adjust but eventually they started discussing any issues directly with him. Rich also took over most of the day-to-day operations. This allowed Tom and I to focus on the future. We now had a huge staff of twenty three but we also had an efficiently run lodge that was improving and expanding rapidly. You could see the difference that every single week made. If you left for a month, we joked you wouldn’t recognize the place when you got back.

Epilogue At the end of the day, Tom and I have endured more stress than you can possibly imagine. We have worked harder and longer than at any other point in our lives. But we've had an incredible time doing it. We have celebrated more successes and pushed through more rough times then we care to count. I can look back at that cheesy Facebook message I wrote way back when Tom and I first had the idea, and can safely say we have achieved our aims. 59

Clockwise from top left: 1-3: The waterslide being built. We had no clue how this was going to turn out, but as always, Bobby didn't disappoint; 4. The new walkway up to the second house; 5. The original crew that kept Bambuda alive â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Tom, Renzo, Anders and myself; 6. The expansion of the pool deck; 7. Rich enjoying the view from the cabin rooms; 8. The waterslide finished.

The last two years have been the biggest education of my life. Learning about construction, off-grid living, running hostels and restaurants, managing staff, a bit of Spanish and learning how to solve problems, etc. But the biggest lesson we’ve learnt is not giving up. More than anything else, not giving up has been the most important element the success of Bambuda. I think this would apply to any business, or in fact any part of life. You are always going to encounter a myriad of problems and at times they may seem insurmountable, but as long as you don’t give up and keep trying to push through them, you will succeed. Soapbox rant over. Even if this project had failed, really it would still have been a success, simply because we tried. Fast forwarding seventy years to when I'm an old man looking back on my life, I will never have to wonder, ‘What if?’ or ‘I sure wish I had…’ And that is all I need to know. If you have gotten this far in the book, then it is probably because you wanted to know how can someone end up where we are. If you are considering doing something similar or risky yourself, I hope this book gives you a bit of inspiration to just go out and do it. Before this book ends, I should mention that another story is now beginning: Tom and I have recently decided to open our second location. With the lodge running smoothly (well, smoothly enough) we have been getting, well, a little restless. Building on the success of our first location, we've bought a castle in Boquete, small mountain town in the center of Panama. The plan is to transform it into the coolest hostel in Central America....tying for first place with the lodge, obviously. We're trying to open it in half the time, with half the problems (or less). Hopefully we won’t have enough material to write another book describing all the challenges we faced getting it open.

Worst Guest Stories Tom and I are often asked, ‘Who was the worst guest you ever had?’ For us, there is no question, and it comes from an unlikely demographic: Swedish female. In this next section I will share the stories of the worst guests (and one staff member) ever to set foot in Bambuda. Evil Eva – In May 2015, we received an email from a Swedish girl who was asking for a discount on a private room, as she and her fiancé were on their engagement trip. We explained that we don’t offer discounts. After various emails back and forth, they decided to come anyway, but settled on staying in the dorm for five nights. From the tone of the email, we could tell they were going to be 61 trouble. But we had no clue just how much trouble they would turn out to be.

Eva and her fiancé (I can't remember his name) arrived in a rather sour mood, which they claimed was because of the overnight bus from Panama City. Although Swedish, Eva was of Ethiopian descent. She had a shaved head, pretty face and muscular physique. Her manicured eyebrows went up at a high angle and came down sharply, and she had large circular earrings that she kept in for her entire stay. For some reason I imagined her with a sword at her side, swashbuckling on pirate ships.

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After checking the two of them in, within five minutes Eva came down and said, ‘There is cat piss in the dorm and just because I am only paying for a dorm, it doesn’t mean I deserve to be treated this way.’ I apologized and went to inspect the room personally. I couldn’t smell anything. So I went down looking for Eva, but she was in the bathroom. Her fiancé was there and I asked him to show me where the smell was coming from. We went up together and smelled nothing. ’Strange...it did smell before...’ he said, ‘but it seems like it's gone now.’ Satisfied, we returned to find Eva. When I told her that we couldn’t find the smell, she turned to look at me directly in my face with her signature evil look, and said, ’So you're calling me a liar?’ If a guest behaved like this today, we would ask them to leave immediately; but at that time we were new. As the days went on, her behavior got worse, especially when she was drinking, which was every second day. She also extended her stay by two more nights to make it seven. It got to the point where staff were so frustrated with her, that everyone just went to bed after dinner so they wouldn’t have to be around her. On her last night, I couldn’t have been happier knowing that when I woke up, she would be out of our lives forever. I had booked her departing boat for 6am the following morning. Later that night, I was having a nightmare: it was 4am and Eva was knocking at my door. I shortly realized that it wasn’t a nightmare at all, it actually was 4am and Eva was at my door. Tiredly, I got out of bed and opened my door to an angry-looking Eva. ’I lost the key to my lock and I need you to break my lock open so I can get my things,’ she declared. There was no, ‘Sorry for waking you up.’ It was a demand. Sluggishly, I went to the dorm with her to inspect the lock. She turned on the light and started talking at the top of her voice, completely devoid of sympathy for the other nine sleeping guests. 62 The lock was not a small one. I knew I wouldn’t be able to break it off myself, I'd have to get help

from Jimmy, the manager at that time. Jimmy lived in a secluded cabin that was hidden by some trees in the middle of the property. I went and woke him up to tell him about the issue. No questions asked, he dragged himself out of bed and came with me back towards the dorms. Waiting for us was Eva. Again with that evil stare (that I think is burnt into my soul), she looked at me and said, ‘Hey, I didn’t lose my keys in the fucking jungle!’ I explained to her that I hadn’t been searching for her keys, but was getting help to break her lock. Again no apology. As the three of us started walking up to the dorm, Evil Eva stopped us again, and with that soul-piercing stare, said, ‘I believe in God and I believe in omens. This is a bad omen, and this is a bad place and I need to leave.’ I was on the verge of telling her that she was correct, she did need to leave, but for different reasons. Back in the dorm room, she turned the lights on again and started talking. Jimmy and I eventually cranked her lock off, ruining our lock box in the process, then left. Again, there were no thank yous, no apologies, nothing.

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I went to bed thinking the Evil Eva saga had finally been put to rest. In fact, the worst was yet to come. Apparently Eva realized that it was now 5am, her boat was leaving in an hour and she couldn’t find her cellphone. She tried to wake up her fiancé so he could help her look for the missing item. He was more interested in sleeping. After a few failed attempts at rousing him, Eva lost her temper. She swung her arm and punched him in the face as hard as she could, all while the lights were still on in the dorm and it was full of other guests. This woke up her fiancé in a hurry. He jumped out of bed, picked her up with both arms and threw her out of the dorm, locking it behind her. Whilst screaming, Eva grabbed all of our pillows off the couch outside the dorm and threw them all over the solar panels and the roof. As it got close to 6am, her fiancé grabbed his stuff, ran out of the dorm, got on the boat and left her behind. We called another boat to pick her up and get her out of here. About ten minutes after she left on the second boat, I got a call from the captain. In a very distinct Jamaican/island accent he said to me, ‘What was up wid dat crazy gurl?!’ Apparently when he took her into town, she saw her fiancé walking by. So she jumped out of the boat and ran and attacked him in the middle of the street. Once Eva was finally gone, a few guests said they were happy she'd left, because otherwise they'd have gone themselves. That day, staff and guests were so relieved about her departure that we had 63

party with a special drink named ‘She-gone’. 'Always Fear a Woman Scorned'. I don’t remember the name of this next guest, but I do remember that she was from Barcelona and was roughly around thirty five years old. For ease of writing, I'm going to call her Muriel. Muriel had a booking for two nights with us. On her first night, a younger American guy (twenty five or so) who we will call James, took an interest in her. They ended up having a romance on that first night. They were staying in the dorm room, but that didn’t stop them from ‘enjoying each other's company’. The next day, James was ignoring her for some reason. That night, he left Bambuda and went into Bocas to party with some friends, while not inviting Muriel. She did not take this implied slight well. However, she was on the early 6am flight the next morning and went to bed once James left. Returning to Bambuda later that night and quite inebriated, James walked into his room and went straight to bed. When he awoke the next morning, he noticed two things. One: much to his relief, Muriel was gone. Two: someone had gone through his bag and thrown his clothes all over the room. Later, in a hungover state, James investigated further and realized that not only were his clothes thrown everywhere, but ‘someone’ had taken his Oakley sunglasses out of his bag and scratched the lenses. Also, his camera and Go-Pro were missing. Muriel, feeling scorned, had rummaged through his bag, taken all his valuables out and thrown them out the window. Luckily, we found his Go-Pro and his camera in the jungle, within an arm's throw from the window. Both cameras worked. Somewhat subdued, James collected his items and left for Panama City to catch a flight back to the US the following day. It was around 2pm when we received a phone call. ‘Have you guys seen my passport lying around somewhere?’ said a slightly panicked James. Muriel had gone as far as stealing James's passport. Luckily he was able to go to the US embassy and get a last minute temporary passport, therefore managing to catch his flight home. I know it was a ‘dick-move’ (no pun intended) to hook up with Muriel and ignore her the next day, however I don’t believe that James deserved this. Anyway, let this be a lesson to all men/women about the dangers of ignoring someone the day after you've had a romance with them! 64

Morphine Bum – Shortly after we opened, a friend of mine from Germany named Yannick came

for a visit. I was working at reception when Yannick came and told me, ’You may be interested to know that there is a girl in the dorm room with her pants and underwear down, and she is sticking needles of morphine in her bum and asking if anyone wants to try it.’ When you hear stories like this, your immediate thought is, ‘I'm not paid enough to deal with this shit.’ I knew exactly which guest he was referring to. There was a girl who had been getting drunk at night, stripping naked and walking around the pool area, amongst other erratic behaviour. To make it worse, she was a girlfriend of a good friend of mine from Canada. Having been warned that she was a bit crazy, I still wasn’t expecting what took place. After entering the dorm, I approached her and told her that she couldn’t behave this way. Looking slightly hurt, she replied, ‘The morphine is prescribed, I was in a car crash and the doctor prescribed it for me!’ I told her this was fine, but that she did need to go to the bathroom and inject it alone, without offering it to other guests. She fired back, ‘You're making me feel like a drug addict!’ As she was the girlfriend of a friend of mine, I couldn’t kick her out. Fortunately for us, she did stop her open use of needles in the dorm.

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Bomb Making Terrorist Convict – Ol' Larry was not a guest, he was actually a volunteer. Tom and I needed help with maintenance around the property, so we put out an advertisement for someone with mechanical knowledge to come and work here on a voluntary basis. A sixty five year old American man named Larry responded, who seemed like a good fit. He claimed to have extensive mechanical knowledge and that he was just looking for a place to volunteer and help people. We accepted his offer and within a month, Larry was at Bambuda. Shortly after arriving, Larry became weird. He started coming up with doomsday conspiracy theories, cornering staff and telling them about the end of the world. One day, whilst walking in the jungle, Larry stopped me and said, ‘Dan, I have some terrible news to tell you. It's on the level of hearing both your parents were murdered.’ I thought how it must be really awful news; I couldn't imagine any worse news than hearing my parents had been murdered. Nervously, I asked Larry what the news was. He then handed me a news article he'd printed off the internet. The title was something along the lines of, ‘Russia Unhappy With NATO, Could War Be Brewing?’ It was pretty much just your everyday, average article. But to Larry, this was the sign he was waiting for. World War 3 was coming. I tried to explain to him how unthreatening this story 65

actually was, but he remained unconvinced.

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Shortly, for obvious reasons, it was decided that Larry couldn’t stay. We told him he had to leave, but gave him a full month to find a new place. On Larry’s last night, all the staff went to bed thinking they would say goodbye to him the next morning. To everyone’s surprise, Larry was gone when we woke up, along with all three of his large suitcases. The only thing remaining was a bright orange biohazard suit. For three reasons, we were all very confused. 1) Where had Larry disappeared to?, 2) Why did he have a biohazard suit? and 3) Why did he leave the biohazard suit behind? Was there something about to happen that we should know about? To make this even stranger, Larry had been sleeping in the staff dorm with five other people and yet no one had heard him leave. One of our staff was doing yoga at 6am and didn’t see him leave either. We figured that he had taken a really early boat. Over the next month, some strange things started happening around the property. One example was that a jar of peanut butter went missing, along with some pots and pans. When more things began disappearing, we started joking that Larry had taken them.

Fast forward one month later, and it turned out we were right all along. Larry was spotted coming out of the jungle! He was looking visibly thinner, dirty and covered in mud and leaves. Apparently, instead of leaving, Larry had gone to live in the jungle! I don’t know how to properly describe this but put it this way: I have camped, hiked and traveled all over the world, and I'm used to sleeping in all sorts of rough and uncomfortable

conditions, but there is no way I would spend even just one night in that jungle under those conditions. It's horribly hot, humid and full of mosquitoes, snakes, spiders...everything. We took a search party to look for his camp and found it easily. Larry had set up a tent with a small cooking area and somehow survived an entire month there. The ‘bathroom’ was beyond disgusting, as you would expect when a sixty five year old man takes a shit in the same place for a whole month. Looking around we found all the missing items: empty peanut butter jars, pots, pans and even a bottle of rum. We figured that late at night, Larry must have come near the restaurant and hid in the bushes watching us. When the last person had gone to sleep, he must have stealthily snuck into our restaurant kitchen and taken the necessary morsels of food that he required to survive. Also, Larry must have spent his month in the jungle, just sitting in his camp and waiting for time to go bye. Sounds pretty awful to me.

Facing page: Mugshots of Larry that we found after he left. Above: After Larry ended his one month stint in the jungle, Renzo saw him in town looking visibly thinner.

After this, we decided to Google Larry's name (probably should have done this before). We discovered that he'd recently been incarcerated for eight years in Alabama, before being released just three months prior to arriving at Bambuda. Larry had been arrested for ‘uttering terroristic threats and having bomb making materials and armor-piercing ammunition’. It was all making sense why Larry would always refer to Tom and me as ‘sir’ instead of using our real names, no matter how many times we told him to stop calling us this. Background checks are not mandatory here...but sometimes I wonder if they should be. 67

riquelda, jimmy,

At the end of the day, the number one reason Bambuda is so special is because of all the wonderful people that work there. Tom and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone who has come and made Bambuda the special place that it is. In addition to everyone mentioned in the book, there are others who deserve to be mentioned too..... Top Left – Laurence originally came to us as a guest. Luckily we needed additional help at that time so she decided to volunteer with us. After seeing how amazing she was, we promoted her to assistant manager. She is the person most responsible for making sure reception isn't a disaster and the dinners go smoothly. Top Middle – We are unbelievably lucky to have Zoe with us. She, along with Renzo, now run the Bambuda kitchen. She is the 'mother' of the lodge, taking care of everyone else, always with a smile and positive attitude. Her food is top-notch and we could not exist without her. Upper Right – Mitch made Bambuda his home for eight months. He was always up for partying and a laugh, so we were all very sad when he left...however I think the female guests were even more sad than we were. Middle Left – Chop was the second person we hired and is married to Florenzio's sister, Riquelda. Chop always has a smile on his face and is ready to take on any jobs we assign to him. Middle Middle – Carlos has been our trusted boat driver from day one. When we first arrived, we were continually ripped off by most of the boat drivers. Carlos never overcharged us and always came on time. He has been rewarded with an almost exclusive deal with Bambuda. I don't know how Bambuda could operate without him tirelessly working for us. The man works seven days a week. Middle Right – Renzo with his girlfriend at the time, Jasmina, and Mami. Mami cooked for us for two years. Jasmina spent a year here running the reception. Bottom Left – Riquelda is Florenzio's sister and is the head of house cleaning. Possibly the happiest and giggliest person we have ever met, but extremely shy. It took her months to open up. Everytime we look at each other, Tom, Riquelda and I smile and laugh, and we don't know why. Bottom Middle – Getting Rich here was instrumental in allowing Tom and I to step away from the day-to-day operations. We would not have been able to start the castle project without him. It's refreshing to know we can leave the lodge and trust that it will be taken care of. Bottom Right – Elliott is one of the most spectacular chefs we have ever had. He educated Tom and I about operating a more professional restaurant. Returning twice to work here, he became a great friend and we hope he returns for a third time. Missing – Jimmy. After repeated attempts to get Jimmy to send me a photo of himself at the lodge, I just gave up trying. Regardless, Jimmy set up a lot of the systems we have in place today. He was 69 crucial to our transition from a sleepy hostel to a more professional operation.