This is a continuation of a series recapping the past two years of travels through Latin America by car, each Dispatch is a single country summary from Mexico, through Central America's Guatemala-Honduras-Nicaragua-Costa Rica-Panama and through South America's Columbia-Ecuador and Peru. The loose plan is to continue driving to the bottom of the world, Ushuaia, Argentina. These are stories of characters, experiences and hardships.
Panama
November 2009
Marjolein handed me the map.
Was this the right road to the border crossing? I asked.
She navigates fine, it's just that holding the map calms me down.
It felt like a border crossing, but the usual visual ques were missing and before I knew it, drove into Panama bypassing all controls. You had to pay attention at smaller crossings like this, they have no gates or neutral zone and no armed guards.
The crossing ran through Costa Rica's mountainous coffee region, steep, green and misty. It was the seasonal harvest, Panamanian Indians, the regions migrant workers, were flooding into Costa Rica.
The crossing ran through Costa Rica's mountainous coffee region, steep, green and misty. It was the seasonal harvest, Panamanian Indians, the regions migrant workers, were flooding into Costa Rica.
I sat in a featureless concrete office on a black plastic and chrome chair. The Panama border agent is a racist and die-hard Yankees baseball fan who likes his snappy uniform. He's a young mestizo (a mix of Spanish and indigenous blood, the same blood he prejudices), speaks impeccable English, and tells us with glee how he despises these migrant workers. He's not subtle and doesn't try to conceal it with coded language, in fact, the more he rails against them the more excited he gets. (I know I mix past and present tense, and don't care) He goes on about how stupid they are and don't speak Spanish well. Marjolein and I are trapped. We have to endure this imbecile and nod, like obedient children, since we don't have our passports stamped, yet.
The Stop
On the coastal resort island Bocas del Toro, we made friends with a Colombian couple, Sandra and Fernando, an attractive light-hearted pair. We frolicked on remote gold sand beaches, sipped Cuban rum and skinny dipped in the middle of the day. They joined us when we left Bocas, traveling south through central Panama.
On our second day, driving down the Pan American Highway, we were stopped at a roadside check point. When they reviewed our passports and noted our friends were Colombian, told me they wanted to search the truck. It was going to be a real search inside an inspection center, not the usual kind of cursory search with easy questions and me waxing and waning about how much I like the country.
OK, search the truck. I said, feeling confident.
No. Not here. Over there in the inspection building, said the all-business officer.
I pulled in and set the emergency brake. I was displeased to see a drug dog and another unsmiling officer. The search bay was sterile, not a workshop full of tools, the emptiness was disconcerting and gave me flashes from the film, The French Connection, when they tear a car apart looking for heroin.
Half the gear is emptied on the floor, including each person's backpack. The dog checks everything. You watch this as if waiting for a bomb to go off, expecting the dog to stop and tail go rigid. After the bags, the trainer sets the dog loose inside the truck, it sniffs everything. Anxiety was building, even though I had no drugs and felt comfortable my friends were clean.
Would they plant something? Push for a bribe? I knew I was vulnerable to a bribe situation or worse a plant job, followed by a fake bust.
To my shock, Fernando directly confronts the lead officer, Are you are searching my friend's truck because we are Colombians?
The cop looked stunned at the directness of the question, paused a few seconds and said, No, that's not why, go stand over there.
I couldn't believe Fernando's brazenness. Watching this, I learned you can get away with a lot, while providing distraction and making the experience personal, instead of freezing up. Police in Latin America are not as strict as those in Europe or North America, where you'd be sitting in a secure room while they searched.
Fernando wasn't done.
When he found out the dog was trained in the Netherlands, where Marjolein is from, he brings her into it, She's from Holland, loves dogs and is a photographer. Can she take a picture of the dog and it's handler? He was brilliant.
Yeah, sure, as the officer posed with the stupid-looking blonde dog.
Then we were off. Silence in the car. Relieved.
Santa Fe
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| Marjolein Groot Nibbelink |
Santa Fe
Gamaliel is a campesino, a subsistence farmer. We met him while looking out over the valley and the coffee town below, Santa Fe. Our conversation covered a broad range of subjects: national politics, healthcare, Hugo Chavez, local farming and recent property development in Santa Fe. It was becoming a destination for Europeans and North Americans buying land and homes.
He explained how the community changed with the influx of money. Locals bartered less and helped each other less when money became the dominant social currency.
Gamaliel was kind and considerate and after a couple of hours, asked, Do you want to talk with your girlfriend? I can go.
It was delicate and indirect. We parted ways, touched by the interaction. He returned with his four year old son and said how much he enjoyed meeting us and presented a handful of local Mandarin oranges; then vanished into the forest with his boy. This kind of human connection is more satisfying than anything you can buy, and reminded me of why I travel.
A Bridge Too Far
Dateline: November 23, 2009, 12:50pm on Monday.
Crossed the Panama Canal today, driving across Puente las Americas, Bridge of the Americas.
A landmark on the journey to the bottom of the world. The Pacific entrance was full of ships at anchor, waiting to transit the Canal.
People in the Hood
I poured a drink and watched the sticky-hot street from the balcony. A neighborhood drunk stoops at the corner, his corner, next to a trash box and fire hydrant. He's there every day and is barely holding it together. He had a brutal and ravaged face, that said, This is what life does to us.
Homeless-dark skin, body thin and depleted. Hands soiled at the edges.
After earning small change dumping hotel trash, he skips off around the corner to buy morning drink, returning to his corner with a pint of aguardiente, rot-gut. He argues with the local police that stand on his corner and fill the neighborhood. He pats his back pocket and tells me the bottle suits him fine, since he no longer has a wife or anything else worthwhile. He has nothing left to give and life, nothing left to take.
Casco Viejo was the original City, now it's a district within greater Panama City, surrounded by skyscrapers. Casco Viejo has old colonial charm that is slowly being gentrified into a high-end residential district of rescued colonial buildings. The influx of new well-to-do residents mix with poor residents that have lived there for decades in decayed bombed out buildings.
It's a poverty stricken neighborhood where many hustle a few coins at a time. They help park cars and guard them, sell cigarettes by the each, and wash cars with threadbare rags, using water from public fountains.
One of the homeless is a former Panama Canal worker, who lost his job after repeatedly failing drug tests. He lives on the street in rags and sleeps in a decrepit building where the doors and windows are bricked up. I gave him some of my t-shirts and a new toothbrush. I want nothing from him, not even a thank you. The next day, he gives me everything I need. From my balcony perch, I watch him come out of the crumbling building wearing a t-shirt I gave him.
The Swiss kid is an over-enthusiastic backpacker who talks too much. I try to hasten the conversation to an end. I've stayed in the neighborhood a while and developed a morning routine, a walk along the waterfront, before the sun turns vicious. I tell him about it.
The next day I ask, How was it? I detect some pride.
He pauses, smirks and looks pleased with himself, Yeah, I got robbed by a 15 year old, I chased him into the neighborhood after he swiped my knapsack.
I felt guilty for having made the recommendation. He chased the kid down in flip-flops and got his bag back. Now he has a travel story: adventure without humiliation.
It was late afternoon on shoeshine row. Men sit on low stools in front of shine chairs. I chose an old man over the younger ones. This one polishes for his next bottle of beer and can barely do the job. His hands shake badly and has trouble making the swirl-patterns to apply the cream. The old man works steadily for his next beer while his body struggles to keep up.
Container Ships and Sailboats
For big decisions, serious ones, I am fond of saying, “it's time for a come-to-jesus meeting”, a deep, non-religious consultation of sorts, like the one I had in Panama to decide whether to turn back or continue driving south. It was a question of money and curiosity, I still had some of both and put the truck on a ship bound for South America.
The Central America leg came to a close when I said goodbye to Marjolein, she was returning to the land of windmills and wood shoes. James and I shipped our cars independently, without freight forward services, exposing us to the process of shipping international cargo. It was arduous, took a lot of time, and taught me about Latin American bureaucracies and culture. James and I left Panama on an 11 meter (36') sailboat captained by David, an experienced Frenchman. A four-day sail over one of the roughest parts of the Caribbean Sea.
After sailing out of San Blas' calm coastal waters, the swell turned big in the open sea and I became seasick. I never returned to my bunk and stayed above deck; I hardly resembled a sailor, and spent the rest of the journey coiled up in the fetal position. The crew nicknamed me the sloth, since I rarely moved.
Although seasick, I was not excused from night-watch, when we'd scan the horizon for ships that could sink us; sadly, I fell asleep draped over the safety cables that keep you from falling off the boat, leaving James, my watch-mate alone. When the boat surged hard to port, I awoke from a deep sleep in total panic, grasping the cables fearing for my life, I thought I was being pitched overboard into the black midnight sea.
For Select Past Dispatches on Panama hit these select links and look for the Colombia summary in next Dispatch Number 91-
Francis the Psychiatrist, who told Fortunes and Believed in UFOs-
The Panama Canal is So Quiet-
Chapter One: Central America Comes to a Close-
Errant Thoughts Panama and Region-
David
Huaraz, Peru
