Strange Days In Panama

We had to go down the mountain on Monday and pay our respects to the Customs office in the city of Davíd. Panana inexplicably gives visiting people 90 days to enjoy the country but visiting vehicles get only 30 days which is absurd. Fortunately you can get two thirty extensions to prevent your vehicle being shifted before you have to leave. However you are required to dress up to get your vehicle permit extension, long pants and long sleeves are mandatory I was told. My wooden bow tie purchased in Czechia years ago I added to give the proceedings a touch of the absurd they so richly deserved. Panana loves its bureaucracy and I don’t. 

I had to go through a ridiculous rigmarole to pay 25 cents to a cashier because they needed to keep a photocopy of my vehicle insurance  but the process cost months money and took an otherwise painless 15 minutes. Then we went to Copa Airlines at the airport nearby to cancel Fridays reservation but airline employees at the airport are not allowed to do that. So we drive to the Copa office in town where the security guard told us to come back after lunch even as he allowed some other supplicants, Panamanians into the office. Layne about lost her shit but I steered her away so she could fulminate in private. 

Lunch was horrible, testing a Chinese place where it turned out the food tasted like defrosted cardboard heated up in rancid oil in a burnt wok. I have never previously seen ketchup on a table in a Chinese restaurant and hope never to again. Our first hint of trouble was that there were no Chinese diners and then I saw the ketchup. We should have left but it was air conditioned while outside it was 102 degrees. Rusty was sleeping in the air conditioned van, lucky dog. 

The clerk at Copa airlines was very helpful but she was alone and the line was enormous. Knowing there was no parking we left Rusty in charge of GANNET2 in a public parking lot with the rooftop air conditioning to keep him cool and we took a three dollar cab to the airline office. Our tickets are on hold and now we wait for our last replacement part to arrive from Florida. 

The final two boxes of parts available in Panama City arrived by delivery service Monday at a charge of $13, very reasonable. By Wednesday evening I hope all wheel bearings brake rotors and pads will be new, GANNET2 will have front wheels aligned with new bushings ahd tie rods and all we will have to do is wait for the anti lock braking box to arrive from Tampa.

On our way home we stopped at a supermarket where Layne went shopping for some stuff and I walked Rusty in the 90 degree air as we were half way up the mountain road to Boquete.

An employee came out and advised me the manager had sent him because she didn’t want dog walking in the parking lot. “We are t in the parking lot!” I protested because indeed we were in the grass by the sidewalk next to the highway, well outside the parking lot fence. She doesn’t want dog waste on the property he said so I showed him my plastic bag attached to my leash. I laughed and walked back to the van. Never been told not to walk a dog in a parking lot I thought to myself. Nice store but never again.

Front wheel brake rotors and rear wheel hubs and bearings arrived by Ferguson delivery and cost me $13 which was surprisingly inexpensive considering they were so heavy I could barely walk them across the street. That thirteen bucks saved me a trip to Panama City so that was an excellent outcome. The parts store shipped them Saturday morning so it was fast service too.

We are both falling for Boquete, the little alpine town with the perfect climate, interesting restaurants and very little stress for us. We are camped for $12 a day with a pool, hot shower, electricity to charge our van batteries and quiet nights cool enough to require a blanket. 

It’s a little weird I grant you speaking English everywhere we go but when Panamanians reply in English to my Spanish I don’t fight it anymore. I guess it’s just force of habit for them: foreigners don’t speak Spanish and that’s an end to it. 

However the prospect of one hundred degree days at sea level is a bit daunting not least because we can’t leave Panama until our anti lock brake module arrives so the feeling right now in camp GANNET2 is why leave such a comfortable berth? We can do some exploring later before we ship to Colombia but for now we are comfortable. I need to make myself another cup of tea, the sun’s going down and the cool night air is wafting in.

Camping In The Wind

I could fill up a whole blog post with photos like this one…

…Rusty likes Topas Hostel more even than do we. Our previous campground in Boquete was very pleasant:

But at night we were kept awake by a serenade of barking from a neighboring house that permitted no sleep. So we decided we had to move and find something else. 

As far as I can gather Topas means “to bump into” and I suppose the idea is that this rather charming hostel is a place where you can bump into friends and strangers. The place was built by the head of a family that has since died and left behind a group of heirs at war over ownership of the hostel. Not that we the guests would know, but Boquete is a small town and everyone’s business is apparently of interest … to everyone! 

The eight rooms are fully booked but we are the only overlanders in the place so we could snag a rather nice shady spot near the road which gives us some privacy. However it also puts us a bit on display to passersby! And they stop to chat and require about our traveling home. Layne is in the business of giving tours ! 

A Colombian dude walking by asked to have a look. He left his home to emigrate to Panama years ago to escape Colombia’s civil war. 

I think YouTube is responsible for increasing interest in travel by camper but none of the curious have had a chance to see a van in real life so…I feel a bit weird acting as ambassador for overlanding but I suppose they have to start somewhere, so they might as well check out our van. 

Jorge thinks he might like to take off with his wife and see Latin America and he paid us back for showing him the van by bringing some rather decent cheese and ham and wine, a charming surprise and we talked at length into the night. 

The campground is close to the heart of Boquete and makes for an easy walk to the shops and restaurants. 

We have invested in two fifty foot electrical cords and around here that’s just as well. The outlet is around the corner in the far distance.

The hostels rooms are in back overlooking the pool which doesn’t get much use in the cool winds that are honking through town.

One other curiosity about this place is the decor. I have no idea who the Tintin fan is but I recognize the characters and the stories they depict. 

If you aren’t a fan of the Hergé comic strip about the adventurous Belgian reporter and his dog Snowy you won’t get it. 

Thompson and Thomson the detectives, Captain Haddock in Tibet…

…and Professor Calculus and Nestor the butler. I wondered why whoever did this left out Castafiore the opera singer but maybe I just haven’t found her yet. What a strange place to find my childhood stories. 

Oh and let’s not forget the BSA motorcycles rotting gently.

I’m sure this place hides a great many more stories than I could uncover but I enjoy sitting in the sun watching the clouds fly overhead, listening to the trees yield to the wind.

And then there’s Karsten who manages the campground for the mysterious lady owner who claims the inheritance if the stranger who told me the story got it right about the family feud. Karsten is in some ways my soul mate (!) as he got tired of Germany and misunderstood by his family finally decided to explore Latin America. He’s spent three years in Boquete but he’s a musician and he has finally had to accept there is no worthwhile music scene in Panama. He’s leaving next month to explore the possibilities in South America. I hope he finds what he’s looking for. 

So what are our plans? I suppose we shall leave Boquete later this week and drive around Panama for some exploration and to pass the time until our van part arrives. Once GANNET2 is checked out and working properly we shall make a new appointment to travel to Colombia. 

Until then, here we are. 

Sunday In Boquete

We awoke this morning to fresh breezes, blue skies and bright crisp wintry sunshine. With no sweating, insects, or humidity, this is Panama’s dry season at last, enjoyed in an alpine town perched in a valley swept by downdrafts of air shaking tree limbs and sending leaves flying. 

It’s the sort of morning your dog sits on the floor of the van whining piteously wondering why you aren’t ready to throw off your blanket and come out to play.

That is a question to which there is only one answer so out one goes onto the empty Sunday morning streets to see what we can see together. 

Suburban America at its finest, mowing the lawn with the added weekend cliché of elderly Americans nearby gearing up in spandex for an energetic bicycle ride! Boquete is more like suburban America than anywhere we have been thus far, so if you want to emigrate and remain culturally at home this is the place for you.

I quite like this town which quite aside from the mild climate has all the trappings of home, bakeries, restaurants, brew pubs and barbecue. Signs are in English and gentrification is as usual pushing locals to the margins. And yet there is a certain energy here that I am learning to enjoy.

And you know how people in Miami using Spanish as their primary language drives Anglo Americans mad with irritation? Around here English is the language and Spanish is an after thought! I find the irony delicious. Mind you I also find Spanish language predominance in Miami irritating but both here and there not even trying to learn the other language is very limiting. 

There is something very appealing about the way Boquete drifts between cultures, and this week Tuesday is a national holiday, Panana loves national holidays, and the town is filled with the usual gringo residents plus a bunch of youthful backpackers but also Panamanian couples and families who are filling up hotel rooms determined to enjoy town as well. 

Panama isn’t a country of architecture and colorful poverty. There aren’t dogs on the streets, beggars or massive Spanish colonial churches. Boquete is a small prosperous town busy recovering from the effects of the recent shut down across the country. Shop keepers have much lost time to make up after the road closures and protests that took six weeks to shut down the country’s largest and most ecologically destructive open face mine. 

I am not much in the mood to recount our not quite settled mechanical delays. All the parts installed are working, bushings bearings brakes and rotors are all properly installed (I think) but now we have a a brake pump controller that has shown up on the computer indicating incipient signs of failure. Sigh. 

There are six of these available in the US and after much phone calling and struggle we found Jerry Ulm the Ram dealer in Tampa willing to help out. They say they will have one on Tuesday and ship it to our shipping agent’s Miami office to be forwarded to us. We may have it in ten days. I hope. Jerry Ulm has helped us out previously when we had an alternator problem in Florida so I think we may be getting ready to accept the dealership as our mechanical  support in future. It says something when the dealer outperforms the independent shop. 

We still have some housekeeping to do this week including going to the customs office in the city to extend our vehicle permit for another thirty days, get the ever present laundry done and our mechanic wants to spend Tuesday going over everything to make sure the brakes are correct and the wheels aligned and so forth. It is frankly pretty boring stuff but the idea is to be set up for South America of course.  

Our Canadian Land Rover friends Hugh and Sue broke their suspension on a rough track but they kicked it back into place as you do on older less delicate machinery and they are shipping to Colombia next week. 

Not us, but strangely I’m pretty zen about these delays. South America will be there when we get there and Layne is being extraordinarily zen about the outflow of money to make these repairs. So it could be worse. A lot worse really as we could have had these issues in some remote place in the road. Instead I think Layne is organizing a cinnamon roll hunt later and I might have to stalk some Kansas barbecue in town.

Tough life waiting for parts. Happy Sunday! 

Picture Post

As I post these pictures we’re going to the mechanic to figure out our next move. I’m of a mind to ship out next week as planned and send out wheel bearings from the US to our shipping agent in Colombia. She gave us her mailing address so I need to find a victim in the US to receive the parts and ship them on. 

Meanwhile here are a few pictures of our various drives around Davíd, Panama’s second largest city. It’s named for King David in the Bible and was founded by the Spanish in 1602. 

Its population is around 83,000 and it’s a busy place.  The dystopians say it’s wealthy and by my own observation there are lots of cars, few motorcycles, fewer bicycles and almost no horses used for transportation. That’s kind of my yard stick to judge the standard of living. 

The tourist people will play up the history and architecture but this is really a dull hard working town with no interest in tourists. We had no plans to hang around as long as we have but this town has a lot of what you might need. The stores are packed with consumer goods comparable to the US. 

Anyway here are a few street scenes of a town that’s pretty clean, pretty tidy and pretty dull! 

I’m glad we had our mechanical problems in Davíd, the perfect place to make repairs but I’ll be glad to move on. 

Shopping for shrimp. You can eat out here pretty well too, barbecue and Chinese advertise everywhere. You can buy marrow peas riadside (“Guandu”) to make peas and rice Panama style. It’s a long complex operation to clean and boil them so eating them when cooked by someone else is recommended! 

American brands are everywhere. 

If you want local food you look for “comida criolla” or creole food. I had a local lunch specialty that immediately put me in mind of Indian fry bread. It’s called “Hojaldre” (hoe-all-dray more or less) and it’s fried dough. The eggs and vegetables gave it some flavor. I’d describe it as a bit Grenadian if you recall a recent post about odd foods. 

Christmas presents going home?

Boquete is hot at the moment as often as it’s cold and gray and windy so the locals say it must be summer. 

If today goes well we are planning to drop GANNET2 off at the container terminal in a week. They say the food in Colombia is exquisite and the people are lovely. I hope we shall see.