Panama hats are the new black

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  Bocas del Toro, Panama
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Waiting at the airport was a laugh a minute. Nancy's flight delayed by at least 3 hours and there was stupid me showing up to the airport early to make sure I was there to collect her crazy American ass. When she finally touched down in Panama city I was half asleep and still recovering from the all night partying from the night before. We taxied back to Roberts house and crashed out.

Crack of dawn Nancy drags me out of bed and gives me shit for being so slow. Thanks Nance. We fell out the door and embarked to Bus town (also know as the bus station) and jumped onto a bus to Boquette a sleepy little town in the mountains about 7 hours bus ride away... in theory. The bus journey was fun. The aircon had broken which would have been fine if we could have opened the windows. So sweating our asses off the bus driver managed to stop a total of a billion times to drop off deliveries, chat with his mates and scratch his ass. By far my favourite part of the bus journey was when the entire bus filled with smoke and everyone panicked and trampled one and other trying to get out the door. Nancy and I just kinda of sat there a little puzzled and contemplated a fiery death in the windowless bus. Well for everyone at least. They were running towards the smoke? I contemplated opening the emergency window right next to our seat but instead waited to see if we actually had flames to run from. Disappointingly we didn't. There would be no burns unit for us. No one bothered to ask why the bus filled with smoke but once it had all cleared out they all jumped back on to continue the sweaty journey up into the mountains. So we made it.

Boquette was cool. But as seems to be the theme of my travels it pissed down with rain. We spent half a day hanging out with the travel agent trying to work out what we were going to do for the rest of our time in Panama. We also headed up into the mountains a zip-lined through the canopies. It rained there too. Zip-lining is basically where they string up a bunch of cables which criss-cross between platforms attached to trees etc. They give you a massive wedgy, attach you to the cable and send you on your way making random hand signals which are supposed to indicate whether you should slow down (by pulling down on the cable) or speed up. Apparently Nancy doesn't particularly like listening to instructions and flew head first into a tree. Comic genius. To compensate she braked too hard on the second last (and the longest) one and stopped about 50 meters from the platform hanging, wedgy and all about 40 meters from the ground. I took great pleasure in laughing at her. I'm a good friend.

From Boquette we headed out to Bocas del Toro - a bunch of Caribbean style islands off the north east coast. It rained there too. It was pretty awesome though. Freakin hot. It was here that the most amazing purchase thus far was made - My Panama Hat - Made in Ecuador. Perfect. We stayed on three different islands over our three nights. Just for fun. Bastimentos was the first. We sucked it up and jumped on a boat for a tour around some of the surrounding islands. My aversion toward organised tours wasn't really necessary on this occasion. Though the people we were with were kind of weirdos. We first headed out to this "dolphin bay" and sat, along with about 10 other boats trying to sent out dolphin vibes. I did my best dolphin impression. It was pretty good. It must have worked because 1 dolphin appeared and all ten boats started circling, all with hordes of tourists touting cameras and comedic fascination, all apparently oblivious to the absurdity of all the boats chasing down this one poor dolphin. We took photos of the tourists instead. Far more entertaining. Later we headed out to this beautiful little island which stuck me as very, very Cocos like. Apart from the naked old ladies and loud and obnoxious Italian tourists. Of course. On this island I experienced one of the highlights of my travels to date. A ranger was in the process (rightly or wrongly) in assisting a couple of hundred baby turtles escape from their especially warm nest. They'd decided that rather than hatch at night, they be like, "screw you man, I'm hatching in the day time". So we watched as they all scuttled down the beach, got smashed by the waves and headed ocean ward. At one point one of the stupid Italian tourists was so busy taking photos that he failed to realise he was standing on one of the little turtles legs. Nice work dickhead. If I could have sworn in Italian I would have. All Italians aside it was an amazing thing to witness.

The next night we spent on the random Island were we paid for an overpriced room. That was about all we did on that island. Oh except we hung out at this crazy ass hostel called Aqua where it was ladies night and Nancy drank for free. Why is there no mens night damn it. I wonder if I wore a dress they'd give me free drinks. The final night we hung out on Isla Colon, the main island. I managed to sweet talk this little old lady into knocking US $25 off the price of this apartment like room with a private balcony over the water, right in the middle of town. That night we made our best attempt at a pub crawl. We kind of sucked. The highlight was the local bar full of, believe it or not, the locals. All the tourists were paying $2 for a beer next door in their fancy shmancy bars and we sat in a building which was slowly descending into the water and drank our 70 cent beers. Yes I know, we're awesome. We fizzled out early though and retreated to our private balcony and watch a kick ass lightning storm roll through. I did already mention that it rains everywhere I go right? It was pretty incredible. There were lightning strikes on all sides of us and the thunder was so powerful that the building was shaking. Sweet.

The next day we walked the four blocks down the street, beers in hand, past the police station to the international airport. While the plane was landing a bunch of kids were playing soccer at the end of the runway and no one batted an eyelid. From Bocas we flew, via Panama city, out to the San Blas Archipelago home to the indigenous Kuna's. It's a semi-autonomous region where you can't live or buy land unless your indigenous, and it's huge. When we arrived we realised that reservations would have been a good idea as the island we landed on was literally just a runway with a couple of coconut trees. Luckily some Spanish tourists had made a reservation with the cheapest place on the atoll and the guy (Senor Robinson) showed up which I fumbled with my phone trying to call someone who spoke english or spanish. He showed up in the nick of time because on the phone, my spanglish and their Kuna was getting so mixed up I think I told them that their island was about to be invaded by rabid kangaroos carrying machetes. Or something to that effect.

The boat ride was painfully slow but eventually we showed up to Senor Robinson's island only to find out that he really didn't have any space. Oops. The island was really just a couple of cabins and beach. No one lived there, it was just for tourists. So we headed out to Senor Robinson's friends island to see if he had space. About halfway there I told Senor Robinson that we really wanted a cultural experience and that Nancy was an anthropologist. He promptly turned his boat in another direction and took us to his house to stay with him and his family.

The Kuna's still live very traditionally, thatching roof's and building woods out of bamboo. Their toilets consist of a short platform just off the edge of the island and some gaps in the wood where you just squatted and did your business straight into the water. Hence the reason why when your enjoying the vista and you look down into the water you frequently see pieces of fecal mater haphazardly floating by. Mmmmm tasty. Not that we had to worry about that because Senor Robinson didn't have a toilet, or running water. So we had to head to his friends house to pee or poo or whatever. They also like to throw their rubbish into the ocean. Just for fun. On this tiny little island lived over a thousand people, and this island was tiny. You couldn't go anywhere and not see people walking around. There is no real privacy at all and people just walk in and out of each others houses. Snr Robinson gave up his sort of room (there was a curtain) and Nance and I slept in their hammocks. There were kids everywhere... and I mean everywhere. We contemplated how exactly this occurred considering the lack of privacy and the logistical difficulties likely involved in sex on a hammock. Maybe it's a spectator sport.

Most of the women adorn this beautiful and ornate traditional dress. The women decided to dress Nancy up on the last night which they thought was hilarious. Her half Japanese look could almost have passed for Kuna except that on the island her short ass is actually tall. We went and visited an incredibly beautiful island with a bunch of weirdo Spanish tourists one day but by far the best experience was hanging with the locals. We spent hours just hanging out with Nancy firing of a billion questions about Kuna culture which I translated and Snr Robinson would explain. It really tested my Spanish, especially when I had to translate it back into English for Nancy who sat pen in hand scribbling down page after page of notes like the good anthro nerd that she is. We spent one day as the entourage of one of the Kuna women as she went
to another island and campaigned as a candidate for the upcoming
election. She went door to door showing the mostly illiterate women how
to vote for her if they wanted to. I can't even believe how much we learnt about their culture in such a short period of time. Everything from traditional songs, politics, family structures, spirituality and everything in between. It was pretty amazing. We were basically adopted by the community for the few days we were there.

From San Blas we flew back to Panama city for our last night in the country. It was pretty cool, we just hung out with Robert and Keyra (his girlfriend) made pizzas and drank to much (again). I stupidly went with Nancy to the airport to see her off in the morning. Stupidly because my flight was at 5pm and hers was at 10am. So again I hung out at the most boring airport in the world, all day. I did however meet an American guy who had been robbed in the city. All of his money, his passport, his military ID... everything. I felt so bad for him. He'd left Iraq 3 days earlier and was supposed to wait 4 days to meet his wife and kids on a cruise ship. I gave him my mobile telephone, $20 so he could eat and sleep somewhere that night and instructions to the US embassy so he could go there early the next morning.

Robberies, stupid Italians, cute turtles and too much beer aside, I had a great experience in Panama and I made some lifelong Panamanian friends. I'll definitely head back one day. So from Panama city I jumped on the plane and flew of to the next destination in my global walk about... Guatemala.

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