Jason Koontz / Panama

See more @ http://jasonkoontz.com/2011/03/panama/

I just returned from almost two weeks in Panama. I took the trip as an opportunity to add travel content to my portfolio. I am a big believer in taking time for personal work, which is something that I didn’t do enough of in the previous year. Most of my time away was spent in a little fishing village called Búcaro. The people here couldn’t have been more friendly. They would wave and smile when you passed people along the street as if you had been their neighbor for the past 10 years. It being my first visit to a third world country, it really opened my eyes to the way some people live. The simplicity of their lifestyle was underwhelming at first. It appears as if they’re are missing out on so much of the world around them. And then you spend time with the locals and start to get a true sense for what their life is like. At the end of the day, most of the people I met were very happy people. I saw this the most in the younger ones. If you compared their happiness level to someone of the same age back here on the east coast, USA, I bet you’d find they’re equally as happy, if not more so. They just don’t realize the amenities they don’t have that most of us here are have become accustom to. The trip for me was a nice refresher and a great perspective on the world and the life that I choose to live. Below are a few of the photos I took along the way. In the next couple days I will also be putting together a short film which I also shot during my time there. Photos in collaboration with Tighe Kellner.