Panama (-ah-ah-ah-ahhh-ah)

I think the Van Halen song was about a car, not the country. There’s also a song by the New Riders of the Purple Sage about Panama, but it escapes me. We're in the country now though - Panama. After a rainy, cloudy, cold and otherwise uneventful stay in Puerto Viejo, CR, we decided to leave for Panama in hopes of warmer and more welcoming climes. Puerto Viejo is essentially a surfer town with no paved roads and a lax relationship with respect to drug laws. The surfing is apparently world-class, which tends to draw out certain types of people and culture.

The place we stayed was pretty gross (which is saying something considering some of our other lodgings), and the crappy weather meant spending a lot of time confined therein. There was a tangible anti-American vibe, centered around the owner and a few of his hanger-on friends ranging in age, owner included, from what I would guess was 55-65. They were all former (I assume, as its safe to say that the IRS hasn’t seen a dime from them in a while) US citizens, now living in Puerto Viejo spending what was the vast majority of their time getting high, cracking jokes about how the U.S. controls your mind, convincing themselves that they were high-caliber chess players, and speaking in vague generalities about “particled [sic] physics,” how they “read a book about it once” and how it “really made sense.” Can you use a [sic] to denote errors in speech? I just did, I guess, so there it is. Point being, he said “particled.”

The most outspoken of them, sitting next to the passive-aggressive one sporting the “9-11 was an inside job” t-shirt, had “read a lot of s#%$ on the internet about the s$%& that went down, man” and was convinced that “if you really think about it, man, there’s no other explanation” and wouldn’t stop talking about the “videos on the youtubes that explain everything [w/r/t the World Trade Center bombings in 2001].” I’m neither pointedly political nor overtly patriotic, nor do I have a vested interest in defending the choices of the US Government, but to quote our new first-lady (whom Elizabeth was happy to see had redeemed herself after the ugly inaugural get-up by sporting a beautiful inauguration ball gown) I can say that for the first time in my adult life, I was proud to be from the U.S. - if only to be on the opposite side from those paranoid, delusional, half-witted burnouts. They also talked a lot about energy fields, centering said energy fields through meditation, and pottery.

We got on another chicken bus for our hour-long trek to the border in Sixaola. The main border crossing into Panama is closer to the Pacific coast (where the Pan-American Highway runs), but as our next destination was the Caribbean islands of Bocas del Toro, we opted for the back-door entrance. After receiving our exit stamps, we were directed to cross the bridge into Panama - literally an old railroad bridge with boards laid across the tracks to allow trucks through. For about a third of it, there was a pedestrian walkway - the rest was a free-for-all. If a tractor-trailer was coming through (the direction of traffic changed every 5-10 minutes) you had to stand aside and let it pass, hoping it wouldn't crash through the loose boards between it and a muddy river, taking you with it.

We arrived at the Panamanian customs office to gain entrance - unfortunately, due to the time change (Panama is on US Eastern Standard Time), we arrived at the office at 12:05 - the beginning of lunch hour. Border crossing or no, lunch is important, so the office was closed for one hour while we and the other 50-75 travelers waited in line and the rain. Just in case that wasn't clear, they literally closed the border office while we all waited in the rain. They didn't take shifts for lunch, they closed. Closed the border. When everyone was good and full, we paid our $5 for entrance, boarded a van to take us to the port to catch a boat across the bay to get to the famed Bocas del Toro islands.

We're staying at a placed called Hostel Heike, run by a couple of guys from San Francisco (though the guy who greeted us, Chris, is from Austin) which is clean, has warm showers and free breakfast (all the Krusteaz pancakes you can eat - boo-yah). Our first half-day here was spent getting some food (comidas con pollo, local Panamanian-style), walking around, and being asked if we wanted a boat tour about twenty times. Our sources tell us that while relatively unknown to the North American tourist crowds, Bocas del Toro (which is the name for the province, the islands as a group, and the main town on the main island, Isla Colon) is a hot Caribbean vacation spot for Europeans. Without question, it is beautiful, it is warm, it has beaches, coral reefs, surfing, dolphins, the works.

So far, we have visited the local beach (about a 15-mintute walk from Heike), and just today ventured to Bocas del Drago, one of the more scenic beaches in all of Panama. Despite a bad commute there and back (more overcrowded and mechanically unsound buses traveling on unkempt dirt roads), we got to see a multitude of giant starfish, a stingray, a giant spider, a dead (and a few live) crabs, all along a coastline directly out of a movie, if a movie wanted to have the quintessential tropic scene with bent coconut palms overhanging gently lapping shores. There are a few pictures you can check out if you’re so inclined.

We’ll be here for a few more days, doing some more sightseeing, beaching and lazing, before heading off to David and Panama City. Our albums of pictures update automatically, so there should be a few new photos from our last couple stops, as well as some new albums for new locations and the ever-important pictures-of-food album for your enjoyment.