Keys Disease In Boquete

I wanted a hamburger for dinner. It was cook’s night off as Layne has been cooking up a storm taking advantage of our van being plugged in to shore power and also having access to ample running water for easy washing up. So we planned dinner at the campground eatery with our friends Mike and Silvia. 

I did my outside chores which include the washing up, emptying our portable toilet tank and greasing our heavy duty universal joints inside the front wheels. I have no mechanical skills but I do try to take care of our Promaster and every three thousand miles or so I have to get my hands black. But I also get to walk Rusty by way of compensation. Layne cooked and I walked. 

Right next door to the campground and restaurant where we have been staying there is an American style park and we haven’t seen one like it since the US. 

It is large and criss crossed by handicap accessible paved trails and rushing mountain streams.

There is a duck pond and picnic tables with benches scattered all around and even a couple of dog bag stations imported from the US.  

After four days here cautious Rusty has embraced the park as there are no stray dogs and he has no fear of being ambushed.  

The trails are still under construction  so in the back forty where pavement gives way to dirt I let him off the leash and he wanders at will while I get to enjoy the views and the trash free environment. 

The park is another of the outward signs of Boquete’s status as an expatriate town, a Panamanian hub in a mild alpine climate suitable for retirement by monied foreigners from Up North. And just as in Key West imported wealth is displacing the locals. 

By the way if you’ve never had a spiralized hot dog on a stick I recommend it with hot sauce and fried plantains covered with ketchup. I am dedicated to exploring local delicacies…

I met some workers in the park next to our campground building a fresh trail and I asked if they went to the Christmas parade in town. Not us they said, we live in the hills outside of town. Just like Key West, I thought to myself. 

Our friend Mike who has lived here for weeks in his RV with his family told us how his kids play with American kids in town who are being raised here and cannot speak a word of Spanish. Mike’s daughters have traveled all over South America and are fluent in Spanish and Portuguese but have to speak English with their American friends in Boquete. 

I enjoy traveling as a means of exploration, as a way to open windows into my mind, and I find the open ended slow pace of road (or sail) travel gives opportunities to see behind the facades created by tour companies and packaged vacations. 

However I do get homesick from time to time. Hence my desire for a hamburger which in this town came as perfect example of what we might order “back home.”  For us, staying in an $18 a night full service campground (with hot showers!?) a ten dollar burger is an affordable treat. Not so for locals who are excluded not only by process but by language and culture. Check out the menu at the Tap Out pub in Boquete:

I saw this on Google maps and realized I want to go eat there! Boquete has this effect on a long haul traveler. We are leaving town today so it’s not on the cards to have some Kansas City Barbecue…I sigh with regret. Our campground burger hit the spot so I have nothing to complain about I tell myself. 

A young Panamanian wanted to pet Rusty on the streets of Boquete and we fell into conversation with her mother.  We spoke in English and she told us the stories of Panamanians like herself displaced by wealthy foreigners. We commiserated comparing our home town to Boquete but I don’t think she heard us very well. We stopped speaking Spanish to her and let her vent. It turns out she only rarely comes to town anymore and nowadays brings her daughter to the library, an imposing cement and glass structure that would not be out of place in Anytown USA. 

If you have read “The Charm School” by Nelson B DeMille you can anticipate my next point. It’s an elderly novel about a Soviet spy program that involved building a replica American town in Russia to train spies how to live in the US. It is one of the author’s early novels and it is a good fast paced read. 

The underlying premise puts me in mind of Boquete, a town where you could learn to live like an American without setting foot in the USA. And what gives it even more verisimilitude is that’s it’s not just full of retirees with money. 

The town is full of religious families who have fled the oppressive US to raise their children in a cultural bubble of their own design. I find it fascinating that there isn’t room enough to live as you choose somewhere in the US but you feel the need to escape to Panama.  I suppose you could argue it’s cheaper or the weather is milder here but it seems an odd choice to me. 

I feel bad for the displaced Panamanians just as I do for people marginalized by the wealth flooding Key West but more than that I am surprised by the mere fact families want to  emigrate from a country as vast and varied as the US.  They just talk though, they have done it and created their own charm school in the mountains of Panama. 

It used to be the religious minorities of Europe in particular fled to the US to breathe free. Now they are fleeing in reverse.  

For me it’s just another cultural phenomenon in passing. I got my nostalgia burger, today we go look for tires for GANNET2 and tomorrow we may tour a chocolate farm. Boquete for us travelers will be in the rear view mirrors.