Standing And Waiting

We made some friends at the campground with residents of the rooms for rent. Scott and Yee from Cleveland walked by astonished to see a van in all respects like their own parked on the grass. “How did you get here?” And I wished I could answer something less prosaic than simply saying we drove. 

They cracked us up as She is the driving force to go south in their van while He puts the brakes on expecting Mexico to rise up and swallow them whole. Hands up anyone in the room who is still convinced the PanAmerican is VN lined with banditos and federales ready to skin us alive? Well as you might imagine we fix our best to assure them they will be fine if they didn’t winter in their Promaster in Mexico. I hope we didn’t overdo it. 

I failed hopelessly to record Andrea and Carmen’ portraits, they who lived in a roof top tent next door which picture is all I have to remember both of them by. They discovered the joys of cool breezy Boquete, so different from their home in Panana City which is a heat sink on the Pacific Coast. Andrea the Italian harbors a desire to cruise by motorcycle while Carmen the Panamanian is aiming squarely at a traveling van. Guess whose side I would take if asked?  

It is a source of wonder to me that I function as normally as I do five years on from the catastrophe and as much as I enjoy looking at bikes I doubt I will ride again.  You can only tempt fate so far and I would feel stupid, not unfortunate, were I to find myself on my back once again feeling life slipping away from me. 

As it is I am testing my patience waiting for the ABS module to make it’s meandering way to us. Last word on Thursday is that it is somewhere between Miami and Panama City with a possible ETA of next Wednesday. Webb Chiles sent me a useful reminder that standing and waiting is part of the process. 

The nightly music fest cranked up yesterday with noise until four in the morning. I gave up trying to sleep and read and emptied our toilet discretely when no one was around and then Rusty sat and stared at me so I ventured outside of GANNET2’s comfortably insulated cabin and took the hound for a stroll. 

A car cane barreling down the street hooting its horn as I flashed my light to announce our presence. He gave me the bird as he passed and I asked myself how drunk he was. He stopped down the street though to intimidate me with the prospect of him coming out to fight me. I was mildly surprised but he thought better of it and I suppose Rusty on his leash standing and staring didn’t hurt. Shortly thereafter  police car came by so I suppose I would have been saved in any case. 

I like Boquete for the climate and the eateries and the parks and the greenery and our resident black squirrel: 

The walks and the restaurants are greatly enjoyable but I don’t much like the touron economy, the displacement of locals by outsiders that seems to produce an anger or resentment, understandable perhaps but misplaced. As much as we try to tread lightly I find it hard not to feel like an interloper in someone else’s drama. The fence that separates us from the street…

…is starting to feel like it’s separating us from life. I stand, I wait, I gird my loins  with patience but I don’t know who or what I serve in Panama.  

Dinner Out

With a title like that you might get the idea nothing much is happening with the GANNET2 expedition to South America but there is some good news with the likelihood of forward progress increasing. 

The brakes are okay. That news was a relief when Marco checked and said everything is okay, and I gave him every opportunity to stick me with another bill but he inspected the pads and rotors and sent us on our way in an hour at no charge. On another note I hate phone cameras. The lens on my iPhone mini is constantly smearing like this shot of Rusty walking lover’s lane in Boquete with the Christmas tree that won’t come down. I should have had my little Panasonic GX85 for a clean shot…

So now we wait for the electronic module to arrive from Miami. Fingers crossed we’ll have it installed in a week though I won’t be surprised if there is more drama in the delivery chain. We’re still thanking Wayne for redirecting it to us after an unexpected detour to Key West. Anyway that’s our status but Sunday night we anticipated Layne’s Monday birthday with dinner out.

Layne picked Ngädri from among online reviews and they did a solid job of delivering a pleasant night out. 

I had a Guachito (“whaa-heat-oh”) which is a rice dish resembling risotto with seafood. It’s the second time I’ve had it, a national dish designed to deliver fish flavors inexpensively and of course in this upscale version it was very good.  

Layne had whole smoked fish of what type I forgot to ask which was done perfectly  of course but I really liked sneaking bites of her coconut rice as a palate cleanser. 

We walked there and back leaving Rusty at home on his bed and very glad to see us when we got back at dusk. 

The flower festival continues unabated but we are learning to sleep through the early evening music. It usually dies down before midnight with no more nights of thumping bass till four am.

After Layne had an exciting birthday morning waiting at the mechanic’s shop to get the good news on the brakes she decided to pop into the supermarket to pick up a few things. I’m generally banned from these trips as I want to add useless things to the cart (Chocolate? Useless?) and she finds them more relaxing on her own so when she came back out in a fury to join Rusty and I we were perplexed. 

“I hate Panamanians” was the opening salvo.  What happened was the new Rey Supermarket in Boquete had but one cashier and while in line Layne stepped out to add something that caught her eye. As she did that the couple behind her shoved her cart aside and took her place. It’s the sort of snub we are getting used to  in this place.

The good news is we pay $12 a day at the campsite and we have a nice shady spot with hot showers and the ability to plug in and charge our batteries while we wait to be released back on the road. Perhaps it’s the wisdom of old age but I am actually coping quite well with the forced delay. I keep reminding myself that we have time and monthly pension checks on our side after a lifetime of our travels being limited by a shortage of both. 

I girded my loins and went back to the flower festival to get Layne some of the best falafel we have tasted (apologies to Falafel King on Fitzpatrick Street in Key West) even though the cook is a grumpy sod who reminds me of Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi. I was too scared to ask him for a portrait. Here’s a second picture of the source of the trouble, the stage whence emanates all the nightly noise: look at it and weep for us:

A funny thing happened as I left the festival and it went like this. I saw a very long line of people waiting for tickets at the first booth. This being my second visit I knew they also sold tickets further up the road so I walked up and there was no line so I quickly paid my buck and a quarter for a senior ticket and in I went. After I got my food I asked the ticket takers if there was something special about the tickets at the booth with the immense line. No she said, they just don’t know. Of course when I got to the line still waiting I mentioned to the people at the back that they could get tickets without waiting. They turned their backs to me.  So here’s a picture from my discard pile to celebrate my abject failure to communicate. Panamanians really are ill mannered humorless turds. 

Then there was the guy who wanted to check out our van as we were doing our chores. Layne had an empty box of baking soda in her hand (we use it as a non toxic toilet chemical) and he offered to throw it away which seemed an odd offer but hard to refuse. Later we found the box thrown on the ground with his crushed cigarette butt inside. Not a criminal offense or anything but weird. 

I find Panama a challenge to love. The country faces hard times as they have forced mining operations to shut down, the Panana Canal is failing and and they want to pin their economic hopes on eco-tourism. Personally I don’t see how they can peel tourists away from Costa Rica which has a solid reputation for safety and service, wildlife second to none and a long history of knowing how to treat tourists. This lot have a long way to go to get close and they need to start figuring that out. 

And on another cheerful note Ecuador has a state of emergency going on as the government has decided to take on the drug cartels. We plan to spend some time in Colombia first so hopefully everything will have died down by the time we go south but we are thinking about getting visas for Venezuela which is now slowly opening to tourism and talking to the US again, as an alternative route south. 2024 may be as complicated as ever it seems here there and everywhere. Today though it’s back to the community market for bagels and yoghurt. 

Flower Festival

“I don’t see many gringos here,” my wife said as we strolled through the flower garden. It was true, almost everybody at the premier event of the summer in the mountain town of Boquete appeared to be Panamanian. With some exceptions…

They call dry season “summer” in these parts as this is the warmest time of the year, though in Boquete at 3500 feet it’s never that hot and after dark can get downright cool. 

The flower show is also hitched to coffee production so there are places to buy it hot (for me) and cold (for Layne) which was a good idea on her part as we could sit upstairs and admire the action below. 

We planned to have lunch and that turned out to be a mistake continuing our streak of not so great (read: awful) meals in Panama. 

We shared a plate of pork and sausage with dry and stale fries and though we managed to extract two forks from the cooks we were wishing I’d brought my Swiss Army knife to eat with a degree of civility. 

Pity the poor animals that died to be squandered here, reduced to the flavor of wet cardboard and gristle smeared with the inevitable and unavoidable ketchup. 

The flower and coffee show is a big deal for this town especially now after the recent general strike reduced every tourist business to penury. Boquete is packed for ten days with cars filling streets all afternoon and night, every inch of accommodation is taken and we even have a Panamanian neighbor on “our” lawn, the first such local camper we have seen since Costa Rica where everyone goes away with a tent for the weekend. 

Dogs are welcome at the flower show but after stumping halfway there Rusty called it a day and demanded to go home. He just stops and glares at me holding me up by the leash and his tail only goes up when I give in and turn around. I left him in the van with a fan on and the air conditioning set to go off if it warmed up. When we came back a couple of hours later he was fast asleep. 

I saw this chain to prevent people parking because spaces to the public are selling for five bucks a day and everybody offers their yards for money, (“Like Fantasy Fest in Key West,” Layne says, “but less expensive”), but then I had to wonder why leave the chain up if you own the space and park your own car there? Inexplicable Panama! 

Dust catchers anyone? 

Maybe we should have paid attention to the locals. Later we saw a guy selling falafels and they were delicious when we sampled one. We may go back just to buy dinner to go from him and make up for our mistake. For whatever reason he refused to sell us a bag of them to go! 

Shetland ponies available if you seek less altitude. 

Tin Pan Alley: 

I approached the cashier like a confessional but the ticket seller struggled with my Catholic humor. She did ask if we were seniors. 

Old yes, I said but foreigners. That doesn’t matter said the disembodied voice and we got in for a buck twenty five each. That’s a Balboa and a quarter to you. (“Jubilados” means retired). A festival for all the senses. 

This parrot is dead! No it’s not. Lovely plumage those Norwegian blues, pining for the fjords. If you like Monty Python you know. 

And so we walked home, not far enough really  as the festival fires up some pretty dire and very loud music heavy on the shouting and thumping bass after dark which we can hear easily aboard GANNET2. The Friday night edition persisted till four am so I got  a lot of reading done under my blanket snug in bed. Layne complained a lot about it but she was breathing heavily during the worst of it.  We keep hoping for very heavy rain right after sunset but so far no luck driving the crowds home. 

Boquete is in a lovely setting so you can see why it is so popular with foreigners who choose to live in Panama. 

A gentle amble back to the van and the sleeping dog and dinner and eventually sleep. An easy life. 

Monday is the day we check to see how badly the brakes were damaged by our test drive and Tuesday is the day our electronic ABS module which prevents such problems arrives in Miami. I am hoping in ten days we can start going about shipping to Colombia because are long since ready to explore South America. 

Oh and Ecuador is blowing up now, a small country that sits astride the PanAmerican Highway between Colombia and Peru. You probably have heard nothing but there is a state of emergency as the government tries to take down the drug smugglers. Not our problem ( yet!)  as it will be months before we face that border. 

If you want to learn more about Panana and the Canal the late David McCullough wrote an excellent and readable history of that excruciating labor. 

A decade later they built the Oversea Railroad learning the lessons from  the canal construction  and how to deal with yellow fever. A great read.