This is the first in a series of a one month journey in the northeastern region of Colombia on the Atlantic coast near Venezuela that I just competed. I am in Cartagena for a couple weeks to study Spanish and have time to write. Travel was a mixture of group and solo.
No matter how poorly planned the journey into the desert was it began to take on good omens the night before our departure. Over dinner Andreas and I decided to leave in the morning; by midnight the truck was full with a newly formed travel family: two very attractive women, a drunk Swiss man, and a Colombian from Cali who was mute most the time. Warm with friendship and red wine I went to bed happy reflecting on this mix of characters.
The night before our journey into the Guijira Desert we met an old man who spoke with a mystical air of the place and things we would find there. He proclaimed we had the right truck for such a difficult overland journey where there are no paved roads, only a maze of dirt tracks that lead in all directions. A compass would be mandatory; I own one and do not know how to use it. In places like this, I have learned the gas gauge is the one to watch.
When he spoke of my truck is such good light and told my friends who were assembled that I was a good leader, I thought to myself, flattery will get you most everywhere.
Sitting on the seawall in the sleepy fishing village of Taganga we were growing more excited about this adventure into the desert. He was tall and thin, carried a small satchel and wore faded white pants. With gray hair and leathery skin the old man exuded an air of special knowledge or at least possessed talented theatrics with the spoken word. He had little and was hungry, we shared our food. In a gravely voice, verging on dramatic he spoke of the pleasures of the desert, its beauty and simplicity. A Smugglers Paradise where cheap Venezuelan gas and beer enter and cocaine leaves via illegal dirt airstrips, boats, and now submarines.
He went on to explain the intricacies of Colombian culture in this remote desolate region. A place known to be dangerous in parts with friendly people if you minded local customs. Dangerous and friendly, was one of those dichotomies Colombians use to describe their country; this only heightened my interest in the area. Guides are recommended and I hired none, choosing instead
to rely on intuition and people for directions and places to sleep.
The old man had an air about him; the next day we tried to characterize him to each other and all arrived at the same word, Sage.
The Sage made me feel good and gave me confidence to travel this remote and harsh region. As the driver and group lead I felt a sense of responsibility for my friends no matter how poorly I planned for it.
David
Cartagena, Colombia
Monday, March 8, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Dispatch Number 58 -The Psychiatrist
I met Francis a retired psychiatrist from Kansas when I was in Panama City, he told fortunes with a deck of playing cards that he spread out over a big piece of purple felt. It had an astrology wheel and other crudely painted symbology on it. People at our cheap hotel loved to circle around him in the evenings and have their fortunes told. The reception guy and I were compatriots in our non belief and poked fun at it all. We were ignorant for we made fun of what we did not understand. Inventions of the mind , I say.
Francis was harsh and judgemental about most things, including a man neither of us knew performing construction work below the balcony of our dumpy hotel.
"Stupid idiot! He's not wearing ear protection. He'll be deaf in a year.", as the high pitched power tool roared through floor tiles.
Francis loved the words fuck and shit and used them in typically uncreative ways making it difficult to believe he was the science fiction writer he claimed to be. I never saw him read. I was careful not to ask for one of the manuscripts I saw him passing around to unsuspecting backpackers. When I saw one returned it was done without much comment and I didn't want to be in that position, I may not have been as delicate.
He believed in UFOs and life on other planets. They are an odd lot the silver disc believers, like missionaries who want to recruit or confirm you into their subculture. They can be zealots, too. Area 51 people. In Costa Rica, I met a local artisan, Freddy who had me watch a video fraught with technical problems in the camera work. He defiantly claimed this was proof of UFOs. Freddy used a portable DVD player instead of a bible.
Francis asked, just like Freddy did, "Do you believe in UFOs and extraterrestrial life?"
I am not delicate anymore, probably since I'm not trying to sell people things, and replied without hesitance, "No. Not a believer. Shall we talk about God next?"
Francis would not be deterred and pressed on in an accusatory manner that linear thinking was the cause for not believing in UFOs. He used the label and made it sound dirty or contaminated, and it warmed me to debate.
He was not a crafty debater and his attacks were obvious and clumsy. From the start it felt like a set up. His line of reasoning was rehearsed and when I began to out debate him he resorted to talking over me. After some time it was clear he had another agenda and went on with his unpolished monologue. I began to wonder how his science fiction manuscripts read.
Constructions of the mind help us cope with our world, some make them and never break them. Others adopt religions and philosophies. As for this traveller, it may take years before I reluctantly challenge the constructions I create, and revise them or completely break them down. I believed in UFOs until I was eleven.
Over lunch with a group who liked to spend time with him, fortune lackeys I called them, Francis choked on a piece of meat. A Finnish man helped him cough it up using the Heimlich Maneuver; I'm told Francis sat back down as if little had happened, while the others stared at the huge piece of meat that came out of his throat.
"Francis, you have to chew!", exclaimed one of the Spaniards who took lunch with him.
David
Cartagena, Colombia
Francis was harsh and judgemental about most things, including a man neither of us knew performing construction work below the balcony of our dumpy hotel.
"Stupid idiot! He's not wearing ear protection. He'll be deaf in a year.", as the high pitched power tool roared through floor tiles.
Francis loved the words fuck and shit and used them in typically uncreative ways making it difficult to believe he was the science fiction writer he claimed to be. I never saw him read. I was careful not to ask for one of the manuscripts I saw him passing around to unsuspecting backpackers. When I saw one returned it was done without much comment and I didn't want to be in that position, I may not have been as delicate.
He believed in UFOs and life on other planets. They are an odd lot the silver disc believers, like missionaries who want to recruit or confirm you into their subculture. They can be zealots, too. Area 51 people. In Costa Rica, I met a local artisan, Freddy who had me watch a video fraught with technical problems in the camera work. He defiantly claimed this was proof of UFOs. Freddy used a portable DVD player instead of a bible.
Francis asked, just like Freddy did, "Do you believe in UFOs and extraterrestrial life?"
I am not delicate anymore, probably since I'm not trying to sell people things, and replied without hesitance, "No. Not a believer. Shall we talk about God next?"
Francis would not be deterred and pressed on in an accusatory manner that linear thinking was the cause for not believing in UFOs. He used the label and made it sound dirty or contaminated, and it warmed me to debate.
He was not a crafty debater and his attacks were obvious and clumsy. From the start it felt like a set up. His line of reasoning was rehearsed and when I began to out debate him he resorted to talking over me. After some time it was clear he had another agenda and went on with his unpolished monologue. I began to wonder how his science fiction manuscripts read.
Constructions of the mind help us cope with our world, some make them and never break them. Others adopt religions and philosophies. As for this traveller, it may take years before I reluctantly challenge the constructions I create, and revise them or completely break them down. I believed in UFOs until I was eleven.
Over lunch with a group who liked to spend time with him, fortune lackeys I called them, Francis choked on a piece of meat. A Finnish man helped him cough it up using the Heimlich Maneuver; I'm told Francis sat back down as if little had happened, while the others stared at the huge piece of meat that came out of his throat.
"Francis, you have to chew!", exclaimed one of the Spaniards who took lunch with him.
David
Cartagena, Colombia
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Dispatch Number 57 -Cemetery
Guatemalan cemeteries are pell-mell and without much order when compared with the solemn neatness of North American cemeteries. Here they are filled with colorful tombstones and crypts and a surprising amount of trash. Many crypts are painted in ornate patterns of bright greens, whites and blues. Death is colorful. Murals adorn many. Some are political or artful, while others are wholly incomprehensible such as several crypts painted boldly with American flags with "U.S.A" placed where the stars usually go.
Guatemalan cities with populations over 10,000 are noisy, dirty places with an unappealing new generation of concrete buildings. Economical concrete is ugly and ramshackle with high walls laced in razor wire that make walking about town a penitentiary architectural experience. Will the architecture of this uninspired period charm 300 hundred years from now the way old colonial cities charm the intrepid visitor today?
When the excitement of the busy, noisy and exhaust thick city wears off I seek tranquility in cemeteries and churches. A traveller develops weird habits he would never have back home. Rural public parks are hard to find, the kind with trees and grass, so it is at the cemetery one can hear the birds sing, appreciate the trees and the smell of damp grass amidst a sea of colorful tombstones. Cemeteries are parks of historical significance full of dates and names where local history is told. Here in Nebaj it also represents a dark chapter in Guatemalan history where fifteen crypts set in a row all have the same date.
Guatemala´s Civil War raged on in the late 1970s and 1980s with mass killings committed by both the military and pro-government para military forces. In Nebaj I met a team of young Guatemalans taking lunch. Their pickup was jammed full of gear and covered with a tarp. They were excavators preparing to dig up mass graves in the area; they exhume bodies for possible identification and return to the families. Sometimes their work results in fifteen graves in a row like those in the local cemetery. Their commitment and choice of work was touching. They ate lunch with gusto.
In the cemetery two boys do their homework atop one of the single level crypts, acting as the perfect desk with papers spread over its broad top. I will have to admit that as one who appreciates a good writing surface that the boys had made a great choice. Higher up the hilly array of tombstones two women talk in gentle tones while sitting side by side on a pair of low slung concrete cross.
Atop the hill a group of young girls play on the tombs like they were part of a swing set. They holler ¡Hola!, ¡Hola! over and over, I answer every time, for in Guatemala it is in bad manners to not reply. They keep it up for a while until I pretended to be out of earshot. It is their playground. Their lightheartedness stands in contrast to the backdrop of the cemetery. They were curious girls who were happy, playful and shy like children everywhere.
Even though I am not a believer in caskets, worms and rot I do respect these grounds and found myself shaking my head in mild disapproval when a man rode his motorcycle through the cemetery with a woman on back; they laughed with new lover joy as the bike sputtered to and fro and finally exited under a wisp of giggles.
David
Valledupar, Colombia
Guatemalan cities with populations over 10,000 are noisy, dirty places with an unappealing new generation of concrete buildings. Economical concrete is ugly and ramshackle with high walls laced in razor wire that make walking about town a penitentiary architectural experience. Will the architecture of this uninspired period charm 300 hundred years from now the way old colonial cities charm the intrepid visitor today?
When the excitement of the busy, noisy and exhaust thick city wears off I seek tranquility in cemeteries and churches. A traveller develops weird habits he would never have back home. Rural public parks are hard to find, the kind with trees and grass, so it is at the cemetery one can hear the birds sing, appreciate the trees and the smell of damp grass amidst a sea of colorful tombstones. Cemeteries are parks of historical significance full of dates and names where local history is told. Here in Nebaj it also represents a dark chapter in Guatemalan history where fifteen crypts set in a row all have the same date.
Guatemala´s Civil War raged on in the late 1970s and 1980s with mass killings committed by both the military and pro-government para military forces. In Nebaj I met a team of young Guatemalans taking lunch. Their pickup was jammed full of gear and covered with a tarp. They were excavators preparing to dig up mass graves in the area; they exhume bodies for possible identification and return to the families. Sometimes their work results in fifteen graves in a row like those in the local cemetery. Their commitment and choice of work was touching. They ate lunch with gusto.
In the cemetery two boys do their homework atop one of the single level crypts, acting as the perfect desk with papers spread over its broad top. I will have to admit that as one who appreciates a good writing surface that the boys had made a great choice. Higher up the hilly array of tombstones two women talk in gentle tones while sitting side by side on a pair of low slung concrete cross.
Atop the hill a group of young girls play on the tombs like they were part of a swing set. They holler ¡Hola!, ¡Hola! over and over, I answer every time, for in Guatemala it is in bad manners to not reply. They keep it up for a while until I pretended to be out of earshot. It is their playground. Their lightheartedness stands in contrast to the backdrop of the cemetery. They were curious girls who were happy, playful and shy like children everywhere.
Even though I am not a believer in caskets, worms and rot I do respect these grounds and found myself shaking my head in mild disapproval when a man rode his motorcycle through the cemetery with a woman on back; they laughed with new lover joy as the bike sputtered to and fro and finally exited under a wisp of giggles.
David
Valledupar, Colombia
Monday, February 8, 2010
Dispatch Number 56 -Food for Thought
a.) The future has imploded into the present. There was no Nuclear Armageddon. There is too much real estate to lose. The new battlefield is people's minds.
b.) The megacorps ARE the new governments.
c.) The U.S. is a big bully with lackluster economic power.
d.) The world is splintering into a trillion subcultures and designer cults with their own languages, codes and lifestyles.
e.) Computer generated info-domains are the next frontiers.
f.) There is better living through chemistry.
-Quote from a source I failed to make note of.David
Taganga, Columbia
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Dispatch Number 55 -Beer Thoughts
No matter how common I think I am or try to be, when I travel Latin America I am a petite bourgeois.
Disowning my own culture I seek it in the countries I visit. How can you seek such a thing when you are an outsider? A drifter takes the best of the places he visits. He belongs to the travel culture. He is lost and wants it that way.
Constantly uprooted he finds his companionship in other vagabonds, his books, journals and long walks. Who will he be after it all?
Sitting by a lake shore that feels like a sea shore.
My days revolve around meals not livelihood. I am a member of the leisure class. An undeniable member.
David
Taganga, Columbia
Travel is either finding yourself or accepting who you are.
Disowning my own culture I seek it in the countries I visit. How can you seek such a thing when you are an outsider? A drifter takes the best of the places he visits. He belongs to the travel culture. He is lost and wants it that way.
Constantly uprooted he finds his companionship in other vagabonds, his books, journals and long walks. Who will he be after it all?
Sitting by a lake shore that feels like a sea shore.
My days revolve around meals not livelihood. I am a member of the leisure class. An undeniable member.
David
Taganga, Columbia
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Dispatch Number 54 -Errant Thoughts VII
Coconuts
In the jungles of Costa Rica coconuts fall at night with heavy thuds, like rocks falling off a cliff landing in damp soil. Getting hit by one could kill you. The snakes and frogs can kill you. The jaguars can kill you. Things in the ocean can kill you.
It is a natural paradise and there are no signs saying "No..." or restrictive handrails prohibiting entry. The absence of controls and laws in Central America is liberating to the American who comes from the most legislated place on earth; America also has more people in prison than all other counties in the world, naturally this includes Central America. I don't think the handrails and abundance of laws are working in America.
Cigars
How come men who smoke cigars act as if they own or command everything around them?
-Note on a man smoking a cigar loading his car on a ferry in Nicaragua
Neal
Neal Diamond is gay, I didn't know that. I thought he was singing about women in all those songs.
Second Times
Most of the time people aren't that happy to see you again, it is like the moment has passed.
Unused
Policeman's pistol looks like an unused museum piece.
Notes from a Notebook
I am a country boy. I am much more at ease in the country. A rural tourist if you demand a label. Cities are a drag and require a lot of energy to be in, they are snake pits. When in them I feel like a bad swimmer in big city waters. It requires energy. The energy of survival.
Solar Flare
Sunsets. You can watch a mind blower with all the orange layers upon more layers until the sky turns cobalt blue and finally sparkling black. We tend to recall them like special events as if they were rare things that hardly happen.
Sunsets happen every single day. We live a mechanical life in cars, houses and places like cities where the horizon is blocked out by something man has made. Mechanical places we choose to be, while missing most every sunset. Sunsets are not only for retired people.
Milk
Throughout Central America milk is raised and collected the old way. Local farmers have a small herd of say ten dairy cows he collects milk from each morning, as the sun is coming up he sets one or two tin canisters out on the edge of the dirt road that a pick-up truck collects. Later that warm milk is transferred to a larger truck with tanks. When I camp with a farmer I am often treated to fresh milk, often still warm -it tastes incredible. There are no industrial cow farms in Central America with millions of cows cramped up, instead they are free to roam the pasture.
Dateline
Crossed the Panama Canal by going over the Bridge of the Americas on Monday, November 23, 2009 at 12:50pm. The canal represents a major wayward point for this traveller on his way to the bottom of the world. Family probably thinks it is a bridge too far. This traveller now breaks a land tether by going to South America by sea, for no road connects Panama to Columbia.
The Dirty Look
In a hostel one has little privacy, so it becomes a chance to learn how others live. Those hippie Rastafarian types spend a remarkable amount of time maintaining and creating the soiled unkempt look. It came as a surprise since they often look so disheveled and barely keeping themselves up.
Is anything real anymore or is it just a bunch of fashion cliques and designer cults?
The Marina
While there are a lot of beautiful boats here in the well-to-do Panama City marina, there are a sizable share of "project" boats and others abandoned to dreams gone by. The common ending for boats is decay. The passion fades fast making a boat like a tattoo, a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling.
Books
Books I have read in last couple months:
The Path Between the Seas (Panama Canal History), Blade Runner, Guns, Germs and Steel (a pull it all together history of the evolution of civilizations), The River of Doubt (an explorer story that almost killed President Theodore Roosevelt on an unexplored river in Brazil in 1913), Saint Jack (a Paul Theroux novel), The Godfather, The Last Don, Songlines (travels in Australia by Bruce Chatwin).
David
Cartagena, Columbia
In the jungles of Costa Rica coconuts fall at night with heavy thuds, like rocks falling off a cliff landing in damp soil. Getting hit by one could kill you. The snakes and frogs can kill you. The jaguars can kill you. Things in the ocean can kill you.
It is a natural paradise and there are no signs saying "No..." or restrictive handrails prohibiting entry. The absence of controls and laws in Central America is liberating to the American who comes from the most legislated place on earth; America also has more people in prison than all other counties in the world, naturally this includes Central America. I don't think the handrails and abundance of laws are working in America.
Cigars
How come men who smoke cigars act as if they own or command everything around them?
-Note on a man smoking a cigar loading his car on a ferry in Nicaragua
Neal
Neal Diamond is gay, I didn't know that. I thought he was singing about women in all those songs.
Second Times
Most of the time people aren't that happy to see you again, it is like the moment has passed.
Unused
Policeman's pistol looks like an unused museum piece.
Notes from a Notebook
I am a country boy. I am much more at ease in the country. A rural tourist if you demand a label. Cities are a drag and require a lot of energy to be in, they are snake pits. When in them I feel like a bad swimmer in big city waters. It requires energy. The energy of survival.
Solar Flare
Sunsets. You can watch a mind blower with all the orange layers upon more layers until the sky turns cobalt blue and finally sparkling black. We tend to recall them like special events as if they were rare things that hardly happen.
Sunsets happen every single day. We live a mechanical life in cars, houses and places like cities where the horizon is blocked out by something man has made. Mechanical places we choose to be, while missing most every sunset. Sunsets are not only for retired people.
Milk
Throughout Central America milk is raised and collected the old way. Local farmers have a small herd of say ten dairy cows he collects milk from each morning, as the sun is coming up he sets one or two tin canisters out on the edge of the dirt road that a pick-up truck collects. Later that warm milk is transferred to a larger truck with tanks. When I camp with a farmer I am often treated to fresh milk, often still warm -it tastes incredible. There are no industrial cow farms in Central America with millions of cows cramped up, instead they are free to roam the pasture.
Dateline
Crossed the Panama Canal by going over the Bridge of the Americas on Monday, November 23, 2009 at 12:50pm. The canal represents a major wayward point for this traveller on his way to the bottom of the world. Family probably thinks it is a bridge too far. This traveller now breaks a land tether by going to South America by sea, for no road connects Panama to Columbia.
The Dirty Look
In a hostel one has little privacy, so it becomes a chance to learn how others live. Those hippie Rastafarian types spend a remarkable amount of time maintaining and creating the soiled unkempt look. It came as a surprise since they often look so disheveled and barely keeping themselves up.
Is anything real anymore or is it just a bunch of fashion cliques and designer cults?
The Marina
While there are a lot of beautiful boats here in the well-to-do Panama City marina, there are a sizable share of "project" boats and others abandoned to dreams gone by. The common ending for boats is decay. The passion fades fast making a boat like a tattoo, a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling.
Books
Books I have read in last couple months:
The Path Between the Seas (Panama Canal History), Blade Runner, Guns, Germs and Steel (a pull it all together history of the evolution of civilizations), The River of Doubt (an explorer story that almost killed President Theodore Roosevelt on an unexplored river in Brazil in 1913), Saint Jack (a Paul Theroux novel), The Godfather, The Last Don, Songlines (travels in Australia by Bruce Chatwin).
David
Cartagena, Columbia
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Dispatch Number 53 -Chapter One
To continue traveling always came down to two things, the means and desire or more bluntly if I had money and curiosity. By the time you read this the Land Cruiser, Azulita will be loaded on a container ship for Cartagena, Columbia and I will begin exploring South America. The idea is to drive to The Bottom of the World, Ushuaia, Argentina at Cape Horn, from there Antarctica is 750 miles away. The first chapter of road travels through Central America comes to a close.
There is no road between Columbia and Panama so I will sail down the coast of San Blas, a special untouched place along the Caribbean coast where the Kuna live, one of Panama's few remaining indigenous people. Traveling by sea allows me to adhere to one of my few travel rules -No Planes.
I have seen so much in fifteen months of travel in Mexico and Central America.
Central America is backpacker country where most of those I met were hopelessly trapped in their guidebooks, staying on what is known as the Gringo Trail with its creature comforts. Each stop tends to be a series of canned adventures that start by scratching their name on a clip board for volcano sledding, scuba diving or flying over verdant jungle canopy on a wire like Tinkerbell. This type of traveller seeks adventure, not culture, and stay exclusively in "hip" hostels surrounded by other strangers who mock what they can´t comprehend. Their adventure travel is a form of McDonaldization for the independent shoestring traveler who romantically see themselves on non-corporate expeditions, when in fact, it comes with a high degree of predictability and ease.
It is easy to imagine after eavesdropping on this backpacker set of them on cruise ships with pale skin and white socks enjoying the same isolated type of travel later in life. And sadly, the closest many of them get to the local culture is their guide. For me and many others it is out on the street or on dusty roads deep in the country that things come alive.
I like finding my own meals, places to sleep, and fumbling with maps. Latin American hospitality is extraordinary, especially the ease they make conversation. The stranger is welcome. The self-conscious North American who is reluctant or keeps to himself is shown another way.
In Honduras I visited a fortnight after the coup d'état. It was a rare visit to a country that had just ousted its president by military force, dropping him off on a runway in Costa Rica in his pajamas, something Latin America had not experienced in 19 years. In the five weeks I traveled the countryside I quizzed people about these dramatic events, attended several protests and was happily inconvenienced at opposition road blocks. 80% of those I interviewed were in support of the new illegal government. I came away believing propaganda works the same in every country, much the way it worked to great effect in the United States leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002 -everybody was behind it. In Honduras they made it about ousting communism, not about chasing terrorists through the Mesopotamian desert.
In Nicaragua I set out with a friend to explore the Rio San Juan, once known as the Nicaragua Route, as it was favored by the Americans over the current Panama Canal. The Nicaragua Route was never developed. We spent almost two weeks on the Rio San Juan in a combination of ferries, fast river boats and dug out canoes. This rustic river covers 120 miles with only three large villages; places that seem hardly changed since gold miners took the route in the 1850's. I never thought I would get so much out of walking in the steps of history. It was one of the highlights of my journey so far.
Costa Rica had stunning natural beauty. The Osa Peninsula on the Pacific Ocean had the highest concentration of rare animals, the same ones I had so much trouble spotting in other parts of Central America. In Osa you would literally trip over the wildlife on a sleepy morning walk. It was almost too easy. As friendly, helpful and polite as the people of Costa Rica were their culture seemed to lack something when compared with others in the region.
In Costa Rica bolts and rivets were used to construct, not nails and wire. Weed whackers to trim grass not long machetes. In the main parks there was a curious absence of small children selling candy by-the-piece; there were no shoe shine boys and no street food vendors. There were no flies to complain of and something very rare -construction projects were completed. Because of these things I am less than enamoured with Costa Rica.
In Central America the countryside can be stunning especially the mountain communities where coffee is grown. These places won my heart over and over. If I was a city-boy, then to live in Panama City, Panama would be at the top of the list, it has a wonderful mix of old and new and a culture that pulls it all together.
One thing I do not miss in North America is rampant materialism. In Latin America I have escaped the viciousness of materialism, shallow culture and ruthless careerism. In North America listen to the people around you: they talk about stuff. The subject of money encapsulates the the American conversation. It does not in Central America -people are first. Travel has renewed my belief in humanity and it has humbled me.
On occasion I reflect that if I ever lost the truck for any host of reasons I would promptly turn to a motorcycle and continue the journey; a consideration that does not feel bad because it would force me to travel even lighter. Charles Bukowski said it best, Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free.
David
Casco Viejo, Panama
There is no road between Columbia and Panama so I will sail down the coast of San Blas, a special untouched place along the Caribbean coast where the Kuna live, one of Panama's few remaining indigenous people. Traveling by sea allows me to adhere to one of my few travel rules -No Planes.
I have seen so much in fifteen months of travel in Mexico and Central America.
Central America is backpacker country where most of those I met were hopelessly trapped in their guidebooks, staying on what is known as the Gringo Trail with its creature comforts. Each stop tends to be a series of canned adventures that start by scratching their name on a clip board for volcano sledding, scuba diving or flying over verdant jungle canopy on a wire like Tinkerbell. This type of traveller seeks adventure, not culture, and stay exclusively in "hip" hostels surrounded by other strangers who mock what they can´t comprehend. Their adventure travel is a form of McDonaldization for the independent shoestring traveler who romantically see themselves on non-corporate expeditions, when in fact, it comes with a high degree of predictability and ease.
It is easy to imagine after eavesdropping on this backpacker set of them on cruise ships with pale skin and white socks enjoying the same isolated type of travel later in life. And sadly, the closest many of them get to the local culture is their guide. For me and many others it is out on the street or on dusty roads deep in the country that things come alive.
I like finding my own meals, places to sleep, and fumbling with maps. Latin American hospitality is extraordinary, especially the ease they make conversation. The stranger is welcome. The self-conscious North American who is reluctant or keeps to himself is shown another way.
In Honduras I visited a fortnight after the coup d'état. It was a rare visit to a country that had just ousted its president by military force, dropping him off on a runway in Costa Rica in his pajamas, something Latin America had not experienced in 19 years. In the five weeks I traveled the countryside I quizzed people about these dramatic events, attended several protests and was happily inconvenienced at opposition road blocks. 80% of those I interviewed were in support of the new illegal government. I came away believing propaganda works the same in every country, much the way it worked to great effect in the United States leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002 -everybody was behind it. In Honduras they made it about ousting communism, not about chasing terrorists through the Mesopotamian desert.
In Nicaragua I set out with a friend to explore the Rio San Juan, once known as the Nicaragua Route, as it was favored by the Americans over the current Panama Canal. The Nicaragua Route was never developed. We spent almost two weeks on the Rio San Juan in a combination of ferries, fast river boats and dug out canoes. This rustic river covers 120 miles with only three large villages; places that seem hardly changed since gold miners took the route in the 1850's. I never thought I would get so much out of walking in the steps of history. It was one of the highlights of my journey so far.
Costa Rica had stunning natural beauty. The Osa Peninsula on the Pacific Ocean had the highest concentration of rare animals, the same ones I had so much trouble spotting in other parts of Central America. In Osa you would literally trip over the wildlife on a sleepy morning walk. It was almost too easy. As friendly, helpful and polite as the people of Costa Rica were their culture seemed to lack something when compared with others in the region.
In Costa Rica bolts and rivets were used to construct, not nails and wire. Weed whackers to trim grass not long machetes. In the main parks there was a curious absence of small children selling candy by-the-piece; there were no shoe shine boys and no street food vendors. There were no flies to complain of and something very rare -construction projects were completed. Because of these things I am less than enamoured with Costa Rica.
In Central America the countryside can be stunning especially the mountain communities where coffee is grown. These places won my heart over and over. If I was a city-boy, then to live in Panama City, Panama would be at the top of the list, it has a wonderful mix of old and new and a culture that pulls it all together.
One thing I do not miss in North America is rampant materialism. In Latin America I have escaped the viciousness of materialism, shallow culture and ruthless careerism. In North America listen to the people around you: they talk about stuff. The subject of money encapsulates the the American conversation. It does not in Central America -people are first. Travel has renewed my belief in humanity and it has humbled me.
On occasion I reflect that if I ever lost the truck for any host of reasons I would promptly turn to a motorcycle and continue the journey; a consideration that does not feel bad because it would force me to travel even lighter. Charles Bukowski said it best, Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free.
David
Casco Viejo, Panama
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