Backpack Panama

New Panama Travel Writing Taken to a New Level

2011-08-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

Backpackers in Panama are catching on to a new kind of travel writing that is much more than a series of travel stories in Panama. The Lost and Found appears to be a series of stories about sex, betrayal and mysteries on the backpacker circuit in Panama but each story has been written by authors that know each other and their relationships -- their story -- spiraled into nightmare. The editor weaved their stories, blogs and diary entries into something that flows like a novel. Be warned -- this is no chicken soup for the traveler's soul. It is a wicked broth that will take you to the dark corners of the human soul. (No travel writing has been this graphic and edgy.)

The editor uses the following logline to describe the book:

In the land of cheap rum and tempting lolitas the maps of right and wrong are redrawn. Acting out their lucid dreams with a group of stunning Latinas in Panama seemed like a good idea but as the dreams grow more twisted Matt and his friends spiral into sex magic, betrayal and violence.

But what is truly remarkable is the ending. It is not just the page turning fury leading to the end -- it is that the end involves you in a kind of live action treasure hunt in Panama City, Boquete and the eponymous eco hostel in the could forest on the way to Bocas del Toro. In each location you walk in the characters footsteps. I was running down the backstreets of Casco Viejo in Panama City past surprised backpackers following every detail of their Lonely Planet book wondering what the hell I was doing. In Boquete I found new esoteric meaning in gardens I had visited multiple (boring) times. There is no way to describe the experience other than to say it is like taking a book you loved and multiplying it tenfold by living it. Or taking a backpacking trek in Panama and turning into an adventure that will leave your head spinning. For those not in Panama there are virtual tours of the location made by the author's themselves but I have done both… there is nothing like chasing down leads and playing detective in exotic locals like Panama.

The author has given permission to post the first part of the book. It follows here. But remember; if you are squeamish do not read the next post. The book jolts the reader between edgy humor, graphic sex and dark violence in the turn of a page. The book is available for the Kindle, Kobo, iPad, PC (PDF) and Nook at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/83608

2011-08-23T15:40:00.001-07:00

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Special thanks to the families of the authors who let me use some creative license while using the blogs, letters and diary entries to weave their stories into one. To you, the reader, know that although these were once written as complete short stories, because the authors knew each other, the stories refer to events and people that require you to read the stories in order.

Get Out If You Can!

By Dr. Michael Anderson

My hotel concierge warned me not to look for her. She was in what he described as a somewhat sordid area of Panama City. I did my best to take his advice. But I couldn’t get my needs satisfied through traditional means. I was desperate. I was told I could find her in Chinatown.

The actual street is called Salsipuedes. Seventeenth Century maps of Old Panama show that this street bore the same name then as it does now. But it is not so much a name as a warning: Salsipuedes literally means Get Out If You Can. And ‘street’ is a bit of a misnomer… Salsipuedes is more of a labyrinth of contradiction. There are wooden kiosks selling almost everything - from hand woven textiles and cheap leather to electronics and decades old romance novels. National Geographic magazines from the 50’s sit beside porn from the 80’s. It was on Salsipuedes, I was certain, that I would find her – the Voodoo priestess of former dictator/CIA informant turned drug kingpin, General Manuel Noriega.

It is easy to miss the dark and narrow opening of the street. You are likely to continue along Avenida Central to Parque Santa Ana, one of Panama’s more colorful areas and overlooked attractions. Here you can see Kuna Indians in their colorful traditional dress feeding squadrons of hungry pigeons as diablos rojos roar by. If you have a seat near the gazebo facing the landmark Café Coca-Cola you will see old rail tracks that lead down to the colonial white-washed neighborhood of Casco Viejo. But if you hang a right by mistake, you enter the real area of danger -- the poverty stricken, violent neighborhood of Chorillo. But past the dangerous barrio, only a few hundred meters further and over a barbed wired fence, there is a pleasant green neighborhood that looks like small town America. In fact, until very recently, it was American territory - the Panama Canal Zone.

The U.S. invasion of Panama was less of an invasion than an expensive manhunt with heavy firepower. Bullet holes scar the dark, ominous high-rises of Chorillo -- vestiges from when the US came to look for Noriega at the Comandancia, his fortified headquarters. But he was already on the run.

Uncle Sam’s boys continued their search at his officer’s club, beach home and luxury houses. Each place they destroyed when they discovered he was not there. Panama has left them in ruins as a kind of way to flip him the bird. The officers’ club in Casco Viejo, however, was temporarily used as a location for a party hosted by a Bond villain in the movie Quantum of Solace.

At one of his luxury homes they found some peculiar items. According to U.S. military reports, Noriega left behind porn, a portrait of Hitler, an assortment of books, beads, stones, cocaine, a Rosicrucian portrait of Jesus, plaster statues, dried food "offerings" and an altar made by his Brazilian Voodoo priestess. They also found a freezer full of voodoo candles. Each bundle of candles was wrapped in a piece of paper with one of his enemy’s names on it. His enemies included Dick Cheney, then the US Secretary of Defense, and the President, George Bush Sr., with whom Noriega was connected through the C.I.A (Noriega was a paid informant when Bush was the Director of the C.I.A.) If the candles were meant to somehow bring these adversaries down, they failed, as most of these politicians or their sons made great comebacks. Many of Noriega’s items can still be purchased today, a short distance from his headquarters -- in that esoteric maze of ‘Salsipuedes’.

Noriega left behind his voodoo and his voodoo priestess in his time of trouble and literally turned to the Church. He had been hiding at the Vatican Embassy when American G.I.s set up across the street where Multi Centro, a huge Colombian owned shopping mall, now sits. The Americans didn’t fire guns at the Embassy of the Holy See but rather blasted Guns and Roses´. Noriega eventually had enough of Welcome to the Jungle, and surrendered.

With Noriega behind bars in Florida, the Americans had no interest in his Brazilian "mama," or priestess. But I had to find her.

My desperation came three days after island hopping in Bocas Del Toro. An excruciating rash had turned up on my calves and ankles. I went to three pharmacies. Usually, even if they don’t know what you have, the pharmacists sell you some kind of mysterious drug. One pharmacist swore that my rash was actually the result of insect bites, but still, none of the pharmacists offered any kind of remedy. After a week, I was starting to lose my mind. A friend suggested that I go to ‘Salsipuedes,’ so I left my watch at home, took only a copy of my passport, mustered up some courage, and ventured into the crowded alleyway.

Before I arrived at La Tienda Esoterica, I could smell the incense drifting down the street. Inside my eyes took time to adjust to the darkness, but they finally wrapped around angelic statues of The Virgin Mary sitting next to dark clay skulls. Penthouse magazines next to Good Housekeeping.

I understood that Salsipuedes is not a large scale voodoo shop. There isn’t any one dogma unifying things – there is as much Catholic as there is Santería. And the list doesn’t end there: experts say that many of Noriega’s possessions were not Voodoo or Santería, but a product of Mexican black folk art called Brujería – Witchcraft.

And then I saw her. Her black face remained hidden among the hundreds of smoke-stained, angry-faced idols. Only its size announced that it was human. The lines around her eyes and deep jowls told me she was old enough to be Noriega’s priestess. I imagined on my way over that I might ask about the former general but now I dared not. Like many of the Afro-Antilleans in Panama, the woman spoke English. I told her I had a rash, and without telling her more she asked me to lift up my pant legs. Her eyes widened at the sight and she gasped. “Do you have money?” she asked. I showed her.

“I have just what you need,” she said with a thick Caribbean accent. Without expression she forcefully took my arm and pulled me into a dusty, damp side room filled with oils and dried herbs. She transformed from ominous sentinel of occult idols to eager servant. She stepped onto a ladder and started pulling things frantically from high off the shelf. Soon, she was crushing seeds and plants in a ceramic bowl, using a crucible. I sat in silence as she boiled tea, added the leaves to the tincture, and mixed in various other oils.

When her elixir was finished, she had me place my feet in a large metal bowl. Then she lit a bundle of wild grass and blew the sweet smelling smoke at my ankles, feet and legs. She got down on her hands and knees, prostrated herself in front of me and began chanting in a language I couldn’t recognize. I closed my eyes. I respected the seriousness by which the shaman did her work. She massaged the natural medicine everywhere below my knees- even through my toes. It brought instant relief.

I lost track of time… I started to doze but she woke me with the sharp chime of a small cymbal. I put my shoes and socks on. She gave me a bottle of what she had created and told me to rub it on my legs four times a day and leave it on. “Must not wash!”

Despite the street name’s warning, I escaped Salsipuedes without incident and returned home cautiously optimistic. Three days later my legs were silky smooth. The medicine woman succeeded where the pharmacists failed. A few weeks later, when I ran into my friend that recommended that I go to Salsipuedes, I thanked her.

“I’m glad the oil helped with the bites,” she said.

“Bites? No, not bites. That’s what the pharmacist thought too, but this was some kind of mysterious rash.”

“What? No, no, no. You were bitten by chitras, sand flies. They hang out on tropical islands and get you when your legs are under the shade of the table. They are so small you never see them… they’re sometimes called no-see-ums. You don’t feel them for a few days, but if they get you badly, they burrow under the skin, pop out later and bite again. There is no way to get rid of them except coconut oil… it drowns them when they pop out.”

“But the shaman cast out the evil… she put a lot more in than just coconut oil - I saw her…”

“Oh. Hmm. How much did you pay for the shamanic healing?”

“Oh. Ahhhhh. Twenty dollars or something like. Something like that…. Sixty-two ninety-five!”

O.K. I must confess- I am not so naïve. I am what many consider a kind of voodoo priest, one of the few remaining Jungian psychoanalysts. My real fault is one I make often in Panama – I forget to negotiate the price first. But, in the end, I paid to experience a dying art that maybe should live on: the combination of faith and medicine. Shamans play a significant role in societies because of their ability to elicit hope using both religion and medicine.

And so, for me ‘Get out if you can,’ has taken a new meaning. Every time I return to Salsipuedes, I see something new. I can’t seem to ever really get out, I guess. Maybe that is the real meaning behind the street’s name.

Perhaps Noriega’s flight from the American military manhunt was telling… when on the run he left the paraphernalia from the black arts behind, ran into the Embassy of the Holy-See and surrendered. The flight to Christ continued. In the Metropolitan Correctional Center of Dade County, Florida, Manuel Noriega has surrendered again – this time he surrendered his soul to Jesus Christ. He has been baptized as a born again Christian. He is still awaiting a hearing in France to decide what will happen to his living mortal coil. Perhaps his conversion is in earnest. But if not, Get Out If You Can, Manuel. And if you do, I will see you on Salsipuedes. Please introduce me to your Voodoo priestess.

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

By Steve Banks

I can’t tell you about banana republics like Panama… about the joy of little freedoms… about cigars, Cuban – go ahead light them in public. About discos, on Calle Uruguay – open ‘til the sun starts shining. About beer tunnels, my favorite – models ask you how many they can open for you before you drive off. About hookers, Colombian – 18 years old (más o menos) that you willingly ignore are pros until your buddy tells you the taxi money home was enough keep them in blow for a month. About Christmas, just another excuse for a party – where pasty white skin like mine is actually checked out by women hotter than the girls that threw beer in my face at college. Fucking enjoy them, because these freedoms come from a lack of due process… enjoy them, because whether you do or not one day this lack of due process will come sneaking up behind you and bite you in the ass. Remembering these freedoms can keep you from losing your shit in a Panamanian jail. I know.

Maybe I should begin at the beginning. If you want to know the truth, it has a lot to do with Paul. Paul Newman.

Anna Nicole Smith, Oh My God! Is the surge working? Mortgage meltdown, arctic meltdown, how is your iPhone? Did you hear Angelina has new babies? This was the dorky banter I participated in, which made me a big fat dork. I paid my mortgage, I was going to vote for Obama, and I never cheated on my wife. Then Paul Newman died.

When I first heard, “What we have here is a failure to communicate,” in the Guns and Roses song, I ran down to the Blockbuster and got all Paul’s movies. Cool Hand Luke from the aforementioned song was my favorite. He got the shit kicked out of him in jail and when no human could take more, and all he had to do was lay down, he got up to get the shit kicked out of him again. I never understood the movie or why he did that but for some reason I loved to see him get the shit kicked out of him. Like, fuck you, hit me again.

Two things sucked that day. For one, Paul died. It wasn’t so much that he died as it was that he got old and then died. Eighty three … when did that happen? The second thing that sucked always sucked - my boss, the man who perpetually looks like he took a dump in his pants. Tom (my boss), if for some reason you are reading my blog – YOU SHIT YOUR PANTS DIDN’T YOU – EVERYDAY!

“So,” he said. “Paul Newman.”

Hmmm, maybe Mr. Poopy Pants is not such a douchebag after all, I thought.

“No, Steve. I don’t care one way or another that a Hollywood actor died. I mean Paul Newman is too bad. ‘Don’t tease me bro’’ is too bad, and all the Rihanna videos are too bad. And Facebook is really too bad. Too bad for you.”

He slowly pushed a piece of paper in front of me that I had signed a few months earlier. I thought it was companywide policy that everyone had signed about internet use. I never really read the thing.

“That was your second warning,” he said.

I know now why Biff stole the pen in Death of a Salesman. I left my boss’s office imagining the pen from his desk sticking out of his bleeding eye. I didn’t want to work there anymore. I didn’t want to work, to pay my mortgage or be a husband. Fuck it. I didn’t need to do the right thing anymore. Fuck it… I would leave and not vote for Obama.

They tried to get me to stay and finish a project I was already six months behind on. I had been working on my own project instead – a Facebook project called ‘Latina ‘Ginas’-- a competition to see which country could be best represented on three different Facebook profiles of me. In the end Panama won. Not because I had more hot girls added from Panama, but because of Estrella. A super-hot girl from the country’s third largest city, David, with whom I decided I had to study horizontal salsa. Also, my buddy Matt was teaching English in Panama City. Two weeks after I quit my job I left a note on the bed for the wife to not wait up for me. I was in Panama. More than she deserved.

They say that Panama City is like Miami, except that they speak English in Panama. This is not true. One night at the casino I tried to ask for a michelada, which is beer, lime and salt. I didn’t get the ‘lada’ part, so what I had actually asked for was micha, a very bad word for vagina. Like ‘cunt’. I asked for a cunt while I was playing Texas Hold’em. The best I got all night were rude looks and pair of deuces. The next day I was supposed to head to the San Blas islands with my buddy Matt but I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to see if the winner of the Facebook ‘Latina ‘Gina’ challenge was as hot as her profile picture.

I checked into Hostel Bambú, a cool little place with a pool and a one eyed dog aptly named Stinky. I was supposed to meet Estrella a few hours after checking in, so I proceeded to drink coffee and a distilled sugar cane alcohol called seco. One moment I was sitting around the pool while the owner of the hostel played Leonard Cohen on the guitar, and the next I was waking up in my underwear in a strange apartment. There was a note on the table in Spanish from some guy named Sergio. I had no idea what it said. I imagined he was some gay guy that found me face down in a puddle in front of a gay bar.

In my pocket was a piece of paper with a drawing of two stick people sitting on a bed with tape over their mouths. And a phone number. I called and to my delight it was Estrella, not Sergio, at the other end of the line. She said something about going to the bush.

Again I must emphasize that there really is more English in Miami. Language is an issue. A gringo I met here said he never took his girls to his apartment-- only to the bush. I thought this was okay for him, but I could be a bit classier.

So eventually, Estrella and I get into a taxi, and I am looking around to see which bush we are going to when we arrive at a push. ‘Push’ is actually an English word that American G.I.’s popularized when they ventured out of the Canal Zone with their girls to go to love motels. You drive into a little garage and push a button that closes the garage door. Then you push another button that opens the bedroom door. Lots of pushing, hence the name.

Panamanian men do not have their own house until they are fifty because they spend all their money on spoilers, fins, duel exhaust, etc. for their 1985 Lada, and when they finally do have their own pad they have already had numerous girlfriends on the side and illegitimate children. So when the Americans left, the push stayed. People often party in the push, and sometimes they die in some crazy car explosion. Often Colombian drug runners die in a push after stealing coke bound for Mexico. Live hard, have sex, die – the push is like the Disney circle of life, Panama Style.

Estrella and I took a taxi to a push called Beverly Hills. In our room I discovered even more buttons to push -- a vending machine of sex toys. After 25 minutes at Beverly Hills I fell in love with both Estrella and La Serpiente Mágica.

There were pros and cons for both Estrella and La Serpiente Mágica, but the sex snake did not have replaceable batteries, so I decided to focus on Estrella. She, however, had Sergio. Does ‘novio’ mean gay buddy or boyfriend? Again my Spanish was an obstacle so I just chose it to mean the former. But one day after I called her and she spoke nothing but high speed Spanish and hung up, I decided to release my stress on a couple of Swedish backpackers back at the Bambú. I was helping them with their bags behind a locked door when Estrella decided to show up out of the blue and knock. Funny, my holy-shit-what-are-you-doing-here look was not enough to get her to leave. The girls in my room were topless from the pool, so I pushed Estrella out and locked the door. Estrella banged on the door shouting something about mothers, vaginas, sharp objects and juice in Spanish. I am not 100% about the juice part-- I am still learning. Just don’t order a ‘chucha’ if you want juice.

So Estrella took a break from tearfully pounding on the door to grab a knife from the kitchen. She tried to jimmy the door open, but fortunately the hostel owner heard all the talk of juice and whatnot, and because he thought she was trying to kill me, he called the cops. They threw her kicking and screaming into the back of the cop car and asked us to come along. Stupidly, we followed in a taxi. Well, during the drive I guess she convinced the cops that I was trying to rape her and she drew her knife in self-defense.

No due process. I was handcuffed and sat down next to ugly hookers in paint to my right and hairy hookers with dicks to my left -- both eyeing me like the last M&M at a party for fat kids. Their boozy sweat and cheap perfume could not overpower the stank that flew out of the holding cell and introduced itself to the back of my mouth.

The cop called my name. Finally he’s gonna let me take a piss, I thought. But when he took my belt and shoe laces I knew I was going into that holding cell.

“No soy criminal,” I protested.

He muttered something in Spanish and pushed me into the holding cell.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw faces around me on the floor. They were all shirtless and sweaty and lying in about a quarter inch of what smelled like piss.

“He said I know you are not a criminal,” a dark figure in the cell said in English.

“What?”

“The guard. What he said was that he knows you are not a criminal. If he thought you were guilty he would have beaten you already.”

I was hit with a sudden rush of fear. Her Facebook said she was nineteen. She looked nineteen. But it was hard to tell with these Latinas.

In jail I committed my first voluntary crime. Full time inmates in the cell above us used string to lower weed rolled with pages of the Bible. The weed was just to get you in the mood for the Oreos that came next. I made friends with the half inch of piss and sweat and the juvenile delinquents that were there for the night. In the morning I was handcuffed and taken down to the fiscalía, sort of the Panamanian version of the D.A’s office. I sat there until a man told me I could go home. Charges dropped, I guess. That’s due process.

I didn’t go back to the hostel. I didn’t call her. One day I stopped into an internet café and checked my Facebook. “I want seeing you,” was all she wrote. But she had written it twice each day for the ten days I hadn’t checked my Facebook.

A couple of days later I checked my Facebook again. There were two notifications.

One was a ‘friend request’ from my wife.

I clicked ‘IGNORE’.

The other was another message from Estrella. “I want seeing you at new,” it said.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

What would he do if he could do it all over again? What would Cool Hand Luke do? Would he keep taking a beating? Maybe he took all those beatings and kept asking for more because he knew one day he would be eighty three…

Cool Hand Luke… if you are up there… give me a sign… What would you do?

The Trail of the Black Christ

By Mathew Hope

There’s this Panamanian windshield wiper finger wag I picked up that is actually pretty effective. It came in handy the night I had to venture into Cinco de Mayo and turn away transvestite prostitutes and street children that growled when I refused to buy their stickers. This is not my Panama. My Panama is the other way… it is in the money laundering banking district where I teach ESL in a tower by day and party in the discos below by night. Cinco de Mayo is the hot, greasy transportation throat of Panama City. The tourist police are the gag reflex that spits anyone with a camera and shorts out and onto the white-washed cobblestones of Casco Viejo. In Spanish I told the cops that I knew where I was going – to El Cristo Negro, The Pilgrimage of the Black Christ.

Only this was not true. My buddy Steve and I were booked on a sailing trip that departed just past the pilgrimage site to the San Blas islands. Only he decided that it would be way cooler to ditch me at the last minute to chase a girl half his age that he friended on Facebook. Even worse, I was supposed to meet the boat captain in Portobello, and the line at the main bus terminal was out of control with swarming Christian pilgrims off to see this black wooden Jesus idol. It didn’t matter – in Cinco de Mayo I decided to catch a diablo rojo to take me to the coast solo.

A diablo rojo was once a shiny new school bus cast out of the Promised Land by the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicles Standards Commission and then retrofitted with duel chrome exhaust and wild graffiti. They roar and spit like demons – hence the name, Red Devil. I boarded my hell on wheels and came face to face to face with wide eyed Evangelicals expecting to join the pilgrimage. Aha, the bowels of Satan are filled with conservative Christians.

Her face appeared when I needed it most. In this sea of penitent alien eyes she locked onto me. The first thing anyone would say about her is how cute she looks- in her photos she wears a smiling mask of innocence that makes you feel guilty for admiring her beauty. But by the way she held my eyes without smiling I had a hunch she was not penitent. Without intimidating obviousness, she slid over just enough to invite me to sit. Her head was not buried in her cell phone, so I knew she wasn’t Panamanian, but I knew she wasn’t a gringa either. She was dark, olive skinned and beautiful. Plus, she had a backpack with baby blue flippers sticking out the back. When I sat next to her, she didn’t drop her gaze. She just silently chewed on the side of her thumbnail. Finally, as if she found what she was looking for in my petrified silence, she smiled slightly and held out her palm. There were two red pills.

“Tómala,” she offered after she popped one of them into her mouth.

I smiled and of course refused. She buried the pill in her jeans pocket. The bus did not move for more than an hour, and during the time we were sitting there in virtual silence, an obedient looking schoolboy sandwiched me closer to her. Now we were ass to ass in silence. She broke a long period of window staring by spitting out in perfect English, ‘Holy fuck, when is this bus going to move!’

The pill was a valium you can buy at most pharmacies in Panama, and this one, I guess, was particularly strong. She told me you could bounce on a bus with no shocks and wake up feeling like you had a great eight hours of sleep.

If the Devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, You Only Live Once.

I popped the pill in my mouth. She offered me a swig of her water and I accepted. But the pill sat at the back right hand side of my mouth between my teeth and cheek. As far as I could tell she wasn’t watching to see if I swallowed. I could feel it dissolving in my mouth and was starting to taste the chemicals. But I managed to spit most of it out and onto the floor. Finally the bus started to move. Packed, sweaty pilgrims started to sing gospel songs.

To get to the San Blas islands, you have to take the boat from Portobello, not far from Panama City. But traffic was a nightmare of stale, stinking moments of gridlock followed by sudden, seizure-like fits of jerking and weaving. At times I wished I had trusted her and swallowed the pill. She was out cold before the bus hit the main highway -- her head resting, sometimes bouncing, on the lip of the open window. When we finally made it to the highway, even more people crammed onto the bus and every last bit of space was filled with one fluid mass of human flesh. The last of the oxygen was consumed. The singing stopped. The honking and roaring of engines in the traffic jam took over, and everyone was silent and devoid of expression again. They looked as though they were hoping elevator doors would open soon so they could become reanimated. But we held like this for hours. So long, in fact, that the old man in the seat in front of us who had to urinate took the matter into his own hands -- he had a plastic Pepsi bottle that he pissed into. Aside from me, this drew no attention.

Then the spindly old man held the bottle out the window and began dumping it out. It would have been fine if the bus hadn’t suddenly jerked forward causing the piss to spill down the man’s arm and through the window back at us.

The bus suddenly roared forward again, and although there was only a ten meter stretch in the road, the bus driver mashed the pedal down, and the piss splashed back right into the face of the Latina Lolita next to me. She was too stoned on valium to even feel it. I tapped on the pisser’s shoulder, and he made one feeble attempt to turn back, but the lack of space and his old joints wouldn’t permit turning and facing his mess.

I took her pack and did my best to use her flippers to shield her face. I have never been so attracted to a piss soaked girl.

Then the bus driver shouted a jaw dropping string of offensive words in Spanish at the traffic. He stopped the bus and pulled up the emergency brake in defeat. The bus reluctantly unloaded. When the kid to my right got up, I moved over slightly and the girl’s head flopped onto my lap, still completely unconscious. Her long black hair fell into my hands and I shivered at the sudden thought of running my hands through it. Her thin frame was light, but it was hard to juggle her and our bags off the bus.

That I had an unconscious girl draped over my shoulder fireman style should have attracted attention, had I not entered a carnival of the absurd. Every other pilgrim had a purple robe and they walked like tired automatons three steps forward, two steps back. The way was lit by candles and glow-in-the dark rosaries sold alongside the road. The closer we got to the church, the more people in the procession dropped to their hands and knees and crawled on the asphalt.

With a girl over my left shoulder, a pack on my right and another in my right hand, I couldn’t get far. Where was I going anyway? I was walking toward the church and never thought to think about the way to the boat taxi.

Then I saw it. The Black Christ, carried by men with shaved heads and purple robes, was slowly coming up behind us. They walked the same as the pilgrims, three steps forward and two steps back -- except they had rhythm. They were grooving. They were dancing. And beside them people praying. And beside them people singing. And beside them people crying.

I gave up my pixie cross to bear and sat down about thirty meters from the church, on a little patch of grass next to a table selling figurines of the Black Christ. What the hell were these people thinking? Why did they need redemption so bad? Were these the corrupt cops, drug lords and prostitutes crawling in front of me in a bizarre parade of atonement?

Legend says the Black Christ came to Portobello on a stopover in the 15th Century, on its way to Cartagena. By that time Portobello had already become a fortified port for the Spanish to load their plundered Incan gold onto ships protected by cannons from the likes of Henry Morgan and Sir Francis Drake. Henry Morgan sacked Panama City and Sir Francis Drake died while laying siege on the other coast. The ship carrying the Black Christ attempted to leave Panama five times, but each time the winds refused to carry the boat. Fearing the life sized black idol was a bad omen, the sailors pitched it overboard. It washed up onto shore and has been venerated ever since. The idol, they say, did not want to leave Panama.

It was like the Black Christ charged the air as it drew near. Singing and chanting gave way to wailing as the idol passed. People dripped burning candle wax onto their arms. The Black Christ was within feet of us when the sleeping beauty at my side suddenly sat up. She stood and slowly followed the crowd toward the church.

I decided to watch from where I sat. I had to. I couldn’t leave the bags. My seated vantage point prohibited me from spotting her in the crowd. I had no idea what to do except wait.

Then I saw her again. People parted to let her walk up the steps to the Church and toward the Black Christ, now at the entrance. One of the bald men that had carried the Christ put his hand out to stop her from entering the church. When she turned I could see her face, blood running from her forehead and hands. She stretched out her arms and fainted. I saw her collapse at the top of the stairs when suddenly I felt a sharp pain, like someone kneed me in the groin. Something happened to me. I can’t explain, except I imagine it had to be a panic attack. Everything grew black around the edges and the next thing I knew I was on the ground with people gathered around me.

I got to my feet and looked frantically for her. For some reason I drastically wanted to find her. But she was gone. I never learned her name. I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Paint it Black

By María Concepción

I can make you scared if you want me to

I’m not prepared but if I have to

I can make you scared, and you pay me to

If that’s the deal then here’s what I can do for you

You’re in the church

And more than a million works of art

Are whisked into the woods

When the pirates find the whole place dark

They think that God’s left the city for good

At the Church of San José in Casco Viejo, there is a gold altar that the faithful painted black when the English pirates came to Panamá El Viejo. They saw it and passed over it, thinking it useless. In Portobello there is Christ made Black carrying the sins of criminals. Tomorrow I will see.

So You Want to be an Expat in Panama?

By Steven Banks

My buddy Matt needs to pull out the stick he shoved up his own ass while teaching ESL to sheep in cubicles. He needs to rediscover what it really means to be an expat in Panama. On my trip to David I found an awesome hostel we could lease in the cloud forest called The Lost and Found. I am ready to be an expat.

So you want to be an expat like me? If your reasons are any of these two, then STAY HOME!

1. I hate what’s happening in: America, Canada, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Barbados.

Granted there is probably nothing terrible happening in Barbados, but the point is that if you disagree with the current political or economic situation in your home country, you probably don’t have a good reason to leave. You cannot escape the effects of American politics nor its shit-storm up and down economy. Internet access is available from Rio Douche, Panama, to Werthefucktenango, Guatemala. Unfortunately, so are CNN and even Fox News.

2. I hate my job, my girlfriend/boyfriend, my drinking problem, black presidents, and / or the fact that I’m a giant douchebag.

The problem is that a douchebag in Panama smells much the same as a douchebag back home (unless you are French). If you don’t fit in where you live now, you won’t fit in here either. You’ll be the raving lunatic that everyone calls “Gringo Loco.” Trust me. I am still trying to shrug this off. Your drinking problem? Booze is considerably cheaper here.

Ok, so maybe neither of those applies to you, or you’re willing to overlook them, or that last line made up your mind to come to the land of cheap booze, or you have delusions of being a pirate, or you just want to see some funky Latina ‘gina. Read on.

I wanna be an expat and I’m willing to overlook the following in order to get to the funky Latina ‘ginas.

• Crazy ass drivers. Anyone outside of USA/Canada is a crazy ass driver who uses the car horn like my 5 year old nephew honks his wee wee, and some of these drivers are honking their wee wees and their horns at the same time. The car horn is used to communicate any of the following, not in any particular order and sometimes all at the same time: you’re a hot chick, you’re in my way, I’m coming through the middle of your car, do you need a ride, my taxi is empty, my taxi is full, you’re not moving, you are moving, how are you, fuck you, you’re a fat chick, you’re a fat chick but if you get in my car I’ll sympathy hump you.

• Crazy ass Latina ‘ginas. If you have blue eyes, they’re easier to pick up here than taking money from the cup of a one eyed legless beggar. I know-- I bought colored contacts. But I also got me a jealous lunatic that is harder to shake than a pubic hair stuck to a bar of Ivory soap.

• The combined smell of piss and campfire. This has apparently been bottled and is one hell of a hot seller, especially for public transport.

• Lazy bastards. There is a reason bribery is popular in developing countries. If you ever try to wade through ridiculous bureaucracy, then you will wish that bribery was popular in the good ol’ USA. But corruption is not only part and parcel of bureaucracy, it happens on all levels. Corruption is a general air of undeserved entitlement, and in Panama you sorta feel like you’re living in a country full of Kevin Federlines. As one Panamanian told me while we were looking out at the canal, his ancestors worked so hard on the canal that he was born tired. You will run into this manaña attitude everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

• Personal space. It no longer exists. I cannot explain this thoroughly enough. Whether it’s the stank-ass armpit shoved in your face on the bus, or the stank-ass ass shoved in your face on the bus, something stank-ass will be shoved in your face… every day.

• Cops and the disappearance of your “rights.” Whereas in Britain cops will say “Stop, stop, dammit, or I will have to say stop again,” here they point an AK-47 at your head while you cash a check. If you call a cop and they can’t find someone to arrest, they will arrest you. And while, “Hey, I got rights, and I’ll upchuck on your shoes if I wanna,” might gain you a pity smile and a hardy chuckle, and possibly even a phone call in the USA, here it will probably gain you a pistol whippin’ and laughter from the other 10 dudes loosening their belts in your 4ft by 4ft cell. I speak from experience: Although I wasn’t pistol whipped, I spent a night in a holding cell with a half an inch of piss on the floor because I was around when someone thought cops actually did their jobs here.

Still ready to come? Sell all of your worldly possessions, which probably won’t net you as much as it would in a bright shiny economy, but remember that you won’t need much because you won’t be spending much. After all, loss of personal hygiene, cup ‘o noodles, and sleeping on the beach doesn’t cost that much and you will be rich with experiences and confident because you are a pioneer who will return home one day and write a best seller filled with spiritual insights about your fellow man and with stories about a girl with hairy armpits that dumped you when you no longer had cash for 50 cent beers and had to sell your hemp necklaces and hardened Playdoh “water-pipes” to unsuspecting tourists. Wait! What are all of these other trust fund hippies doing selling their “jewelry” (crap) on your street in paradise?

Still want to come? Good… I haven’t regretted a single day.

Real Gold in Panama

2010-05-20T19:23:00.000-07:00

Searching for treasure but finding gold.

The treasure map lists three places for this bend in the river:

Last Name Lookout, Monkey Falls and Penis Point.

The scroll in the map tube has the next riddle: Arnold Schwarzenegger has a big one, Michael J. Fox has a short one, Cher doesn’t have one and the pope has one but he doesn’t use it anymore.
Which spot in this bend of the river do you look for the next riddle? Most people head to Penis Point – obvious right? You find the next map tube and to your disappointment are the words Wrong !!! That’s right… the best answer is Last Name… you should have headed to Last Name Lookout for the next map tube and riddle.

This is the premise for the Lost and Found Treasure Hunt… a three to six hour journey through the Fortuna Forest Reserve, across rivers and waterfalls, through giant strangler figs and a garden labyrinth that requires both the brains of Sherlock Holmes and the balls of Indiana Jones.

Our team of four, two guys and two girls started off ok, finishing the labyrinth in good time. But around hour three, when, we were told, the record holders had already finished the whole hunt we were deep in the Forest of the Elders unsure of where to go next. Our team of four split into two, saving time by going in two different directions to find the next map tube with the next riddle. My buddy Max and I were pretty damned sure we had the right answer and our fellow hunters Samantha and Adriana were equally certain… we would become rivals with only one pair partaking in the spoils of victory -- Boys against the girls.

Max and I hit our stride solving each riddle the first time and making good time. We were back an hour later at the main lodge and presented the treasure to the owners of The Lost and Found and were already half finished the bottle of Abuelo rum when the girls came back.

The girls came back an hour later just as the sun was beginning to set behind Volcan Baru. ‘We won,’ we told them. But they didn’t seem to care.

"We found gold at the river," Sam said. "Your treasure isn’t even real." Max told them that if they really found gold we would buy them the bottle of rum they would have won for the treasure hunt. Fine with me.

Sam opened her hands and showed us the gold… not real gold but actually a rare gold beetle. She dropped it in my hands and legs digging into my skin made it actually feel like gold. "Nice I told her," but not real gold… it was a trick. Real gold is worth money.

Not so said Spider Ray, a spider expert and sometimes volunteer at The Lost and Found. If you have the right permits these sell for more than $200 a piece. Alas, we had no permits, so I argued, without worth it is not gold and therefore we were not required to buy the girls a bottle of rum.

"Life is not a pursuit for gold all the time," Adriana got philosophical on me. "Real gold is there for those who open their eyes."

That is the way things go at The Lost and Found sometimes… I met birders at my time there that thought the Barenecked Umbrella Bird was gold. Ray thought the rare tarantula he found was gold. Me, I, can’t sit in the forest and wait for gold… I like the adventure. For me gold is the hunt, it’s the river I wouldn’t have crossed or the tree I wouldn’t have climbed if I weren’t on the hunt… even if in the end it is only rum I win… hell isn’t that what pirates spent their booty on anyway?

Trek Photos

2010-05-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

2010-05-11T19:47:00.000-07:00

PANAMA’S KRICAMOLA JUNGLE TREK

If any town could be considered the capital of the Ngäbe Indians of Panama, it would be Kankintú, located up the Kricamola river in one of Panama’s most remote regions, where the mountains of the cordillera meet the vast swampy plane that stretches to the Caribbean. Despite its remote location and difficult access, Kankintu is almost a city, with generator supplied electricity, a huge high school, a hospital, and thriving businesses, including a hostel and restaurants. Everything is boated in from Chiriquí Grande, two hours away by sea. Kankintú, which I had never before seen, was the planned end point for our hike- instead of visiting by boat, we planned on hiking three days down from the highest point of the cordillera on Panama’s Pacific side until we reached this beacon of civilization, which to me had taken on almost mythical proportions because I had heard so much about this Indian metropolis but never seen it.

The trek passes through a forgotten, ancient Panama, tracing the Kricamola River from its headwaters, where it leaves the mountains in tiny streams, to where it grows into a mighty river. It would be inaccurate to say that no one lives there- people do, and they have for hundreds of years. The trail passes through many small Indian villages, and in many areas the hills are stripped of trees and dedicated to subsistence agriculture. But the area is remote- here there are no roads- not even horses or mules can pass the treacherous and narrow trail that winds down from the cordillera, nor can they cross the foaming rivers that break the trail in numerous areas.

On Saturday, August 1^st, I set out with four companions: my friends Jim and Ryu, Peace Corps volunteers stationed in Panama’s indigenous sector, and two of Ryu’s friends from the States, Matt and Tim. We went without a guide because Ryu had done the trip before and was confident he could remember the trail well enough that a guide would not be necessary. We brought lots of food- two loaves of bread, hard boiled eggs, tuna, cookies, granola, peanut butter and honey. I brought a bag of cereal. For sleeping I brought a sheet and a warm sweatshirt. My hiking clothes included comfortable, loose fitting pants I had tailored by the Ngäbe Indians. I had been told that jeans are the absolute last thing you want to wear on a long hike- they are heavy, they dry slowly, and they chafe horribly. This is true. You should never wear jeans on a long hike. For walking I brought my rubber boots in the expectation of walking through deep mud and fording streams. My companions went in hiking shoes. In hindsight, I can say that most of the streams we had to cross were deeper than the height of my boots, and most of the trail was very rocky and not so muddy. If I hadn’t already hardened my feet by traipsing around in boots for three years, a three day hike in rubber boots would have been very painful.

The first day we took a truck up to the end of the road, at the top of the mountain range. This was an adventure in itself- the road is barely passable with a 4-wheel drive vehicle, and the truck was definitely being put to the test. We were fortunate that on the Pacific side of the country it had been relatively dry, and there was little mud. I find it incredible that the truck makes that trip once a day, weather permitting. The wear and tear must wear it out after just a year. The Pacific side of the country is much different than the Caribbean side, the side in Bocas. It is drier, and the hills have been stripped bare generations ago. At the heights we reached, one can see an endless stretch of brown and olive mountains, outlined in sharp, jagged ridges that descend down toward the Pacific. The air was crisp and even cold. The journey was very bumpy, and we were tossed endlessly around the truck bed- you can get calluses on your hands just from holding on. At one point, where the truck enters a narrow 100 foot passage carved in soft clay more than ten feet deep by previous trips, the truck got stuck. The driver and his assistant hopped out and dug us out with a pickaxe and a shovel. Ryu told us that during the wet season, the truck could spend up to an hour stuck in this ravine. And of course, the digging just makes it deeper and deeper. Fortunately, this time we only spent fifteen minutes getting out. We were encouraged by our luck with the weather, ignorant of massive thunderstorms that were rolling toward the Caribbean side of the cordillera, which we would have to face head on.

We departed on foot around 11:00 from the town of Río Hacha, the last point accessible by vehicle. The trail began wide and easy, and the cool, crisp air kept me from even breaking a sweat. The trail switched back and forth across the small creeks that form the headwaters of the Kricamola, but they were shallow and easy to ford. The trail was for the most part a slow descent. The weather began to turn and it began to drizzle. We passed through villages, cow pastures and corn fields. The indigenous houses we passed by in that area resembled teepees made constructed of bamboo and palm fronds. They are round, with dirt floors and walls only about four feet high made of bamboo or branches. The rest of the structure is made from a steeply sloping circular roof thatched from a species of palm tree. There are no windows or rooms, and the inside of the house is perpetually dark. A fire pit is built in the center, letting smoke escape from the very top. Despite this, the inside of the dwelling is often pretty smoky. As we drew closer to Kankintú, and deeper into the jungle, the housing style changed, giving way to rectangular wooden buildings constructed with uneven wooden boards over wooden posts sunk into the ground, topped with thatch roofs. The difference in style is due to the thick jungle that grows on the Caribbean side, forests long since cut down on Panama’s Pacific coast. We ate lunch in a remote store, which, despite its isolation, was surprisingly well stocked.

As we progressed, it began to drizzle, and the rain slowly increased. The rivers became faster and more difficult to ford, and the trail passed along narrow ledges, large boulders and slippery rock outcroppings. We were surrounded by high peaks, and the growing rivers formed deep valleys with very steep, rocky banks. The valleys are so rugged that the trail can’t stay on one side of the river and constantly crosses back and forth. I can only imagine how difficult a road would be here, considering how treacherous and narrow our footpath was. At one point, about four hours in, we came across cement stairs going up a huge boulder in our path- at the time I was quite impressed by fortitude of whoever had carried the cement clear out there to improve the trail. In one area we had to cross the river in a swing seat pulled across on a cable with a pulley. The operator charged us each a dollar.

We soon began to see evidence of massive mudslides, great brown grooves cut out of the steep green hillsides. Only two weeks earlier, a torrent of rainfall in the region had caused terrible flashfloods along the river, and entire hillsides had fallen. We had come during a bad time for the inhabitants of the region, because so many had lost nearly all of their crops. The deforested hillsides simply couldn’t keep the soil together underneath so much rain. The trails was obliterated by feet of mud in many parts, but we kept going.

At 5:00, after walking for five hours, we arrived, wet and tired, at village called Tolothe, wedged between two steep, towering ridges. Only the very tops retained trees- nearly vertical slopes hundreds of feet above the village were planted with bananas. Tolothe was the first town we encountered with a concrete school, where we intended to spend the night. Even in these remote regions, the Panamanian government has asserted its authority with the constructions of cinder block school buildings, establishing a permanent infrastructure far from any roads. To build the schools, Indian laborers are paid $10 a day to haul cinder blocks and 100 pound bags of cement, on their backs, for hours down the same slippery trail we were hiking, bag by bag, cinder block by cinder block. And schools have been built miles further out than Tolothe. The strength and endurance of the Indians is still impossible for me to comprehend. The human body, even malnourished, is capable of amazing feats of strength. The Indians who live in these mountains are hard as rocks, pure muscle, and they live almost exclusively off of plantains, rice, peach palms and the rare morsel of lentils or even rarer still, chicken. By choice they live in a land so rugged that it is rare to find a spot of flat ground larger than a tabletop. The school in Tolothe had a solar panel array as well, but I discovered that this had been brought in by a helicopter.

In Panama, teachers are a lot like Peace Corps volunteers- they are often young, in their early twenties, and travel from the cities to live in the remote communities where they work. In the case of Tolothe, the teachers, all Latinos, three women and two men, have no choice but to spend almost all of their time in the village. Although all of them, even the one chubbier teacher we met who was trying to curl her hair with tin sardine cans and toilet paper rolls, can walk impressively fast, the trip out is just too much effort to make a weekend excursion worth the trouble. I was impressed by their dedication. They were more than happy to see us as well- visitors are very rare for them. We talked for a while, and they mentioned to us that the bridge north of Tolothe that crossed the river had been washed away two weeks earlier by a flashflood. Another makeshift bridge had been constructed, but it was “dangerous.” They agreed let us sleep in one of the classrooms, but first we took an icy shower and then joined them in watching a movie with Liv Tyler in it on their 16 inch TV, powered by the solar panels. It was ironic end to a strenuous day, watching an American movie far from any kind of civilization. We bought rice and lentils and ate dinner with a local family in their smoky hut. Tim and Matt had their first taste of boiled bananas, and the hot sauce I had brought came in handy. Then we returned to the school house, where I bedded down on a long wooden table, which is infinitely preferable to the cement floor. I was the only one who had not brought a sleeping bag, to cut down on weight. It was cold, and I slept in two pairs of pants and two pairs of socks with my sweatshirt on, using my t-shirts as a pillow. Only in the morning did we discover, to our dismay, that there were mattresses the entire time in a closet.

We set out at 8:00 in a chilly drizzle, just as the first students were arriving at their classrooms. The trail followed the rocky banks of the river to the north of Tolothe, and the going was slippery and treacherous- several times we had to climb over steep rock embankments, feeling for handholds. The farms fell away and were replaced by dense jungle. Finally we reached the bridge mentioned by the teachers. Here the wide river was pressed through a deep gorge twenty feet wide, formed by great vertical stone cliff faces. Twenty five feet below, the water was a boil of white foaming water, churning through the opening with an awesome roar. The bridge had been a suspension footbridge- during the flood, the river at this point had risen 25 feet! In the destroyed crossing’s place were three long tree trunks, lashed together with vines, and a flimsy bamboo railing that served more as a psychological reassurance than an actual support. Nonetheless, here we crossed, with great trepidation, one by one. And we all made it.

After the bridge, the trail headed up, away from the river to cross over the valley in which we found ourselves. It steeply went up and up and up, a calf destroying ascent. This was one of the most difficult and exhausting section of the hike. But the scenery was incredible- we were surrounded by jungle covered valleys and green mountains shrouded in clouds. Finally we reached a lookout point from which we could see, far far below but still a good deal above the river, the fabled village of Piedra Roja.

Piedra Roja means “Red Rock,” but from our vantage point I could not make out the red rock for which the town is famous. Indeed, it didn’t seem like much more than a cleared out spit of flat land with thatch huts, built on stilts in the Bocas style, and a long concrete school building. Piedra Roja is famous among Indians in Bocas del Toro as one of the original villages that gave birth to their people. In anycase, it is the halfway mark of the trail- walking at the pace we were making, it would be a day and a half either to Río Hacha or Kankintú.

We bypassed Piedra Roja to the west and made the very steep descent back to the river. After filling our water bottles at a bubbling brook, we entered the river valley once more, but this time the river had slowed somewhat and entered a narrow but flat plain. The walking became easy, neither hilly nor muddy but a pleasant straight sand course. For the first time we saw rice fields, a crop impossible to grow at the higher altitudes where we had begun. Some of the rice was planted on the mountainsides, other varieties were planted in flat muddy paddies. It was long and vibrantly green, very close to be ready to harvest. The Indians had made scarecrows throughout the paddies by hanging brightly colored indigenous dresses on posts. The sun came out for the first time since we had begun, and, walking among palms, banana trees and rice paddies, hemmed in by high green mountains with a beautiful river before us, I felt like we could have been in Vietnam or Thailand. We reached a smaller river joining the larger one, and here we encountered another cable crossing. The young teenager who operated it tried to rip us off however, so we simply forded the river on foot and discovered that at its deepest it was not more than waist deep. We stopped and made tuna sandwiches on the far bank, a pleasant sand bar, and swam for a while in a calmer section of the river. We probably spent 40 minutes resting here, basking in the sun. Then the sun disappeared and it began to rain again, and we saddled up and hit the trail.

The trail was straight and easy for several kilometers, until we reached the cable crossing of Quebrada Negra. This time we would have no option but to cross on the cable- the far bank was a hundred feet away, crossing another mighty river that at this junction joined forces with the Kricamola. The junction itself formed a large and inviting languid pool of water, surrounded by massive yellow boulders. If we had more time, it would have been a great spot to stop for a swim, but as it were, we still had many miles between us and Punta Piña, our destination for the day.

We waited half an hour for a man to arrive from the village to send the cable car – a small metal square made of rebar - across to our side. There we mounted one by one- I went second. After I was seated and my companions pushed me off, the seat rapidly accelerated until it reached the middle of the cable and their it stopped, thirty feet above the water. From here the operator had to pull me in with a rope.

This last section of the hike was very difficult. Soon we left the river bank and forged upwards once more, away from the river. It wasn’t as steep as before, but it just kept going on and on, and at the end of the day, we were already pretty exhausted. We expected the community to spring up before us at any turn, but instead we encountered just more hills. Ryu, who had hiked this way before, couldn’t remember exactly how far we had to go. We crossed a creek many times, and then went up some more. The ground became muddy and it began to rain again. We began to trudge, demoralized, and night was quickly following when finally we crested yet another hill and arrived at the community. Punta Piña in the twilight was a somewhat sad looking group of huts arranged around a marshy pasture, with a muddy creek running right through it. We had walked from eight to six, 81/2 hours if you count out rests.

This time we sought refuge with an Indian family in their wooden hut, paying them for lodging and for a dinner of rice, boiled bananas and sardines. We chatted with the men and told them of our journey, warming around the fire while the women and children mostly avoided conversation. We slept soon after eating, on an elevated wooden platform made from the bark of a palm tree. In lands where there is no electricity, people sleep early, and as tired as we were, we were glad for it.

It poured down all night. When we awoke at first light, ready for the last day of walking, the little muddy creek separating the house where we stayed from the other half of the community had turned into a raging torrent. I found that my legs were somewhat stiff, but not really sore. We waited until 8:30, after the rain had subsided some and the creek had gone down a little, before attempting to cross. Shortly afterward it began to pour again, and Ryu mentioned for the first time that we would have to actually cross the Kricamola, and with this rain, the thought was worrying. But since we could hardly turn back, we forged on ahead.

The walking was easier that day. There were some steep uphill climbs, but most of it was down hill, not up, back toward the river Kricamola. The last descent was incredible- if the second day was hard on the calves, this day was hard on the knees. On the trail we met some travelers who had departed from Kankintú. One man was walking barefoot, which amazed me- the trail is alternately covered in sharp rocks or slippery mud, and he had been walking without any shoes or boots for many hours. Most of the Indians we had encountered, even the children, wore boots. We were overtaken by another party of Indians, a family heading to Kankintú. One of the women was carrying her small daughter in a chakara, a woven bag carried with the strap around the forehead. This became more remarkable to me when we came to the first river crossing, a boulder strewn rush of rapids and rushing water. They must have crossed it with the child in tow. It was difficult for us to cross, not because of its depth, but because of the strength of the current. At a little more than knee deep, I could hardly stand. We had arrived in a small village called Caracol, just a few houses. Scarcely after crossing the first creek, we had to cross another of even greater intensity. But we made it and headed on.

Upon telling other travelers on the trail of our plans to reach Kankintú before nightfall, we were informed a couple of times that our plans would have to wait, because there was no crossing the Kricamola River that day because it was too high. We began to grow concerned, but we kept up the same pace. For the most part, the going was easy, with gentle ups and downs. When at noon we finally reached the river crossing at Koronte, we found that the rumors were true. To cross the river one has to pay a boatman who poles travelers across, one by one, in a dugout wood canoe. However, with the river running high and fast, he insisted it was too dangerous. On our side of the river waited the family that had passed us earlier. On the other side, several families patiently waited under tall trees to cross while others fished with nets, hoping to catch fish brought down by the flood waters.

Fortunately, it has stopped raining, so we waited in a little shack and ate lunch. Most of Koronte was on the opposite side of the river, so at the very least we wanted to be able to reach the school if night began to fall. We waited for three hours when the boatman agreed to pole us across, in exchange for $2 a person. A little steep, but I’m sure he would not have even attempted to cross if we were not there (the locals pay much less). It was a risky endeavor- we entered the boat up the river, and as we poled across, the current quickly took the small boat and dragged it downriver. The pilot had to pole quickly and skillfully to cross the 75 feet of water and get his canoe to the other side before it got smashed in the rapids downstream. The river was at least 10 feet deep. Then, after depositing one of us, he poled back up the bank, picked up a passenger from the other side, and repeated the procedure tirelessly until we were all across.

It was now 3:00 PM. We were informed that it would take at least five hours to reach Kankintu, if we walked fast. A walk in the dark seemed unavoidable. Still, I had to work on Thursday, and the only boats leave Kankintu at 6:00 AM- we had to get there. So we quickened our pace, crossed another Indiana Jones bridge, a hanging bridge with a lot of the floor boards missing, and continued. The hike was not as tough as before, but our pace was grueling because we wanted to take advantage of as much daylight as possible. We began to see a lot more traffic on the path as well, a good sign we were drawing near to our destination.

The trail was for the most part flat and sandy, hugging the banks of the Kricamola. At this point, the river was majestic, wide and strong, at least as wide as the Potomac. We passed through two more towns before night fell and we unpacked our flashlights. We were on the final stretch.

But then our luck changed for the worst. As soon as night fell, around 7:00, it began to pour. Curtains of rain fell, punctuated by booming thunderclaps and lightning bolts so close that the entire sky turned dayglo and we could see everything. The rain made all the creeks flowing into the river become rushing waterfalls, and each crossing became more difficult, compounded by the darkness. Sometimes we had to stop to search for the trail because the water flows were changing the landscape. We began to walk slower in order to keep together. The rain kept coming down. I felt like we were in a jungle movie about the special forces. We crossed some hills and forest, went back to the banks and cow pastures, and then back into the jungle. Some of the crossings became scary. One creek was so swift and wide we crossed by linking our arms together, forming a human chain. My feet, which so far had resisted three days of walking in rubber boots, now began to hurt, and this wasn’t helped by the fact that my boots were constantly full of water. We walked and walked, but Kankintu didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Finally, we reached a river 25 feet wide. It didn’t seem too swift, but it looked deep. Our flashlights did not illuminate far enough to see the other side, but a strike of lightning revealed the trail ahead of us. We stared at it with dismay. Jim, a swimmer in college, volunteered to test the depth, leaving his pack at the bank. He started across and . . . the water was only waist deep! We were greatly relieved. We had to cross the same river again about 300m up the trail, our last major river crossing.

At 9:00 PM, a sidewalk appeared in the jungle and we knew we had arrived. We walked, very tired and very wet but very happy, into Kankintú, a city of lights and sidewalks and densely built, modern looking houses. A city where you can buy a cold soda and there are restaurants, where the highschool has two floors with arches and columns. We found a hostel, where we ate a hot meal and spent the night. The adventure, the most rugged and amazing trek I have undertaken in Panama, was over.

Nico Armstrong has lived in Panama for four years and is currently a tour guide at the Lost and Found Eco-Hostel in the mountains of Chiriquí. The Kricamola jungle tour is the most extensive tour that he leads. For further information, contact him at marvinlenke@gmail.com or check out the Lost and Found website at www.lostandfoundlodge.com

The Little Fish and Dam

2010-04-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

What did the little fish say when he banged his head against the wall? “Dam!”

For the past four years I have been that little fish.

At the urging of Panama’s tourism authority (ATP) and the former provincial director of Panama’s environmental authority (ANAM) my business partner and I built The Lost and Found, a hike in only eco lodge ten kilometers from a massive hydroelectric dam built by Hydro Quebec. Some call the dam Panama’s second architectural wonder. A feature in a Panamanian paper described the dam as having enormous turbines housed in soccer field sized chambers deep underground. Tunnels large enough to park a chain of jetliners burrow through mountains to new water sources. Or so they say. The papers were not permitted to photograph for security reasons.

This same paper says you can arrange tours so I have made repeated trips to their offices in the nearest city, David. But the maple leaf flags from my home country on the executives SUV’s were not as welcoming as the executives themselves. There were never any tours available when I asked. But this was not the rejection that nearly bankrupted me.

My builder, responsible for obtaining all our permits, assured me that he had everything he needed to build. Then our builder quit with the project unfinished, the provincial director of ANAM that urged us to build was fired, our environmental impact assessment was rejected, ANAM fined us and we were told our project was shut.

“Damn Dam”

It turned out the director of the Fortuna dam wrote a letter of objection to what is essentially the minister of the environment, the director of ANAM. We visited her -- she smiled politely, told us she loved the eco-friendliness of the project but that we first needed to convince the Canadian director of the dam.

“Bullshit” said the then director of Panama’s tourism authority, Ruben Blades. The government of Panama is the only authority that accepts or rejects environmental impact statements he told us. He was willing to go to bat for us but (in his words) we had better not be dicking him around. So before we asked for his help we decided to do another, much more thorough ($$$), environmental impact assessment.

For the new study I decided to visit the same environmental engineer that the dam used for their projects. I told him that I thought maybe the dam was worried about the impact we might have on the environment. My plan was to hire him to first make recommendations to limit our impact and then to do our study that we would submit both to ANAM and the dam. He thought it was a great idea but first he wanted to meet with the director of the dam (a friend of his) then he would take our project. A week later the meeting in his office was much more formal. He would not take our project. He said the director of the dam was furious with us but would not say why. He advised us to give up.

We chose another environmental engineer from a list of recommended engineers on the ANAM website. We decided if our second study was rejected we would take Ruben Blades offer of help.

Before Ruben Blades was the minister of the environment he was a famous salsa singer and actor. After his offer for help I began to check out his movies and noticed a trend… early exits. Whereas Arnie lasts the entire first Predator movie, Ruben dies fast in Predator 2. Like his films, by the time we would need a favor from Ruben he had already exited politics. (Arnie is still the Gubenator)

Our second environmental study sat collecting dust through national elections in which Dr. Blades government was replaced. Then our second study was rejected again supposedly because our environmental engineer had not turned in requested adjustments to our study within the fifteen days allowed. Apparently they can take over a year and half to make decisions but when they ask for amendments and adjustments we have to comply within 15 days. But, it turns out, our adjustments were turned in on time and we had proof. How did they loose our paper work? Why was our study sitting there without decisions being made?

We pulled that rejection out of the fire.

“Damn Damn Dam!”

I began to feel like the little fish constantly banging my head against a brick dam.

The dam company is powerful. It generates something between thirty and forty percent of Panama’s electricity. Forty Eight percent of the dam is actually owned by the Panamanian government. They make multiple millions of dollars a year. This did not encourage me.

The Lost and Found sits on an old coffee and citrus farm – an island of titled land inside the Fortuna Forest Reserve. “Titled” is the key word. The process of titling land is remarkably efficient and transparent for a Central American country. A legal surveyor maps the land, neighbors sign off and it is all logged and publicized on the internet along with land values before and after the sale. Our land was titled in the sixties before the creation of the Fortuna Forest Reserve. The vast majority of others in the reserve do not have the same rights as we do.

I wrote an email to the director of the dam asking him if he would like to work together toward the mutual goals of protecting the environment and educating the community. He wrote back saying that everyone in the reserve were considered tolerated squatters with little rights. He asked us to leave. He clearly ignored the fact that we held titled land. The only reason he gave for his objection – he did not want to set a precedent of development. But with one of the rare pieces of titled land in the reserve, this is not logical.

Makes me wonder that when Hydro Quebec proposed the building of the dam if the displaced people knew they would be one day considered “tolerated squatters”. Locals tell me that the dam company itself wrote the law that created the reserve.

The friends I have made in the local community are frustrated by a dam they see as taking a lot and giving little. Before the dam was created every business owner received a brown, wooden sign with yellow print from the dam’s PR team. This is the same color, font and style as signs in national parks so it was not surprising that locals were excited that they now lived in a park. And the businesses that received these new signs did well. Initially they were full with the workers that built the dam. Then they were empty. And now the donated signs are rotting on the side of the road in front of closed restaurants.

It seems to be a pattern outlined in a tell-all by John Perkins titled “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”. The book tells story after story of multinationals that exaggerate economic benefits and bribe governments to build a project with most of the expertise foreign and the capitol flowing out of the developing nation.

Two things changed the currents for us: the new president of the republic and the local community.

President Ricardo Martinelli was elected with around sixty percent of the popular vote. He was serious about closing down projects negligent with their taxes. At a project site where tax dodgers were dropping boulders into the Bay of Panama to make more land for a marina he erected a big fence and put up a sign, “Property of the Government of Panama”. Panama needed the money, he announced at a press conference, for better schools and improved health care. His popularity now hovers around the nineties.

He also got serious with the hydro dams. The contracts signed by previous administrations, he said, were biased towards the dams and whose profits were being paid for by Panamanians paying too much for electricity. He couldn’t revisit the contracts but he could tax the dams before they sold power to the grid, either by water usage or per kilowatt of power they generated. Now Panamanians power bills are lower. At least we know the current president and ANAM is not in the pocket of the dams.

I don’t know if the dams were involved in bribery. I cannot pretend to understand the inner workings of the higher echelons of the Panamanian government. But I have seen how locals have responded to the Fortuna dam. Shortly after the election of Ricardo Martinelli I was invited by a local coffee farmer to what I understood from my limited Spanish to be a coffee judging competition in a local village. When I arrived I was surprised to see hundreds of people. I was there at the invitation of the organic coffee farmer who wanted to show the villagers that even if the big Panamanian coffee producers don’t pay more for organic coffee, tourists will. The event slowly turned into a show of support for a town that despite being in the reserve and not far from electricity lines taking power to Costa Rica, they were still without electricity. Seemed I was not the only fish in the reservoir.

When our first environmental impact assessment was rejected after objection from the Fortuna dam I moved to the city to work on our budget overruns. My business partner opened low key mostly for events with the Peace Corps – anything just to feed himself while we waited for approval of our second study. He was at the one roadside restaurant in town and shared organic fruit wine made by the organic farmer, Don Cune. Cune is a character, part drinking buddy and wise grandfather, part crazy inventor. Everyone really does call him crazy and his farm is commonly referred to as Finca de los Locos. He is crazy, first for not using pesticides when he hasn’t yet found a market for his (amazing) organic coffee and second, for all the strange inventions to trap insects around his farm.

A school of fish swimming against the stream banging heads against the dam

Don Cune has become the perfect example of the perfect strategic alliance. Cune does not have title to his farm like The Lost and Found does. He has no sons. His grandson he hopes will continue farming. If he does not, according to laws of land possession for squatters, whoever uses the land owns it. But Cune is also worried his grandson will not continue the legacy of organic farming. The tours Cune runs with The Lost and Found are what make his farm viable. He hopes his granddaughter will continue the tours and his progeny work together long after he passes. His granddaughter has not missed a single English lesson run by our volunteers.

Pronat, a government organization facilitating the titling of land sent representatives to the provinces to encourage locals to consider titling. But when they came to the Fortuna Forest Reserve the agenda was different. It seemed the entire community turned up to learn how they could get titled like The Lost and Found. The community was disappointed to learn they would never get title. In an emotional moment for me, Don Cune stood up and asked that The Lost and Found not be harassed. With our title we were the ones the community looked to to bring tourism.

At present we have three full time workers. I like to note that this is three times as many full time local positions as the dam provides. This is easy for us to say when they have hired only one local person full time. We teach English to our employees that earn more from tours and as we grow, we hire more. I sometimes give rides to locals and just the other day a stranger told me how he makes extra money when Cune uses his horses for our horseback riding tours. Maybe we can get the ball rolling. Cune can make his farm profitable through tourism and more farmers will go organic.

Maybe some of the empty coffee shops will fill again with tourists like they did once with dam workers. Success is the ultimate revenge it is said. If it is the little fish from Canada instead the dam that brings tourism it will be the ultimate way to flip the bird to the multinationals that once asked us to leave.

It may be frustrating to be a little fish banging against a hard wall. But as a foreigner, invited into a school of fish, that learn to swim, jump and eventually cross the wall is a great feeling. The greatest rewards come with the greatest challenges.

On Thursday May 8th, 2010, I went to the offices of ANAM in David and signed the resolution accepting our second environmental impact assessment.

What to Pack for Panama

2009-07-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

To start, lay down all the clothes and money that you think you need. Take half the clothes and twice the money.

Bring your adult clothes to Panama, you want to experience some of the city’s legendary nightlife and shorts and flip flops scream gringo and the cool clubs won’t let you in. Flip flops are great for the shower though. Photo copy and laminate your passport because you need ID at all times in Panama but your passport is much safer left at your hotel. Oh, and bring a jacket; the coolest place in Panama is a cloud forest eco resort called The Lost and Found, in the Fortuna Forest Reserve and it gets cold up there. Foot powder has often been my favorite companion but you can buy that here. Most things you can pick up here. Which leads to this important question: Should you bring your significant other, pick one up here or travel solo?

Travel with the opposite sex?

The pre-trip poll of polls says…

50% Yes… 50% No

Traveling and women are a lot alike. You will have a terrible time if you think what you do or say can have any influence. You have to just flow.

Let me take you on the ride that is Panama and Maria. Both girls can provide extreme pleasure or can be a pain in the butt. These are the picks and pans of Panama with my girl:

1) Panama City -- Cayucos’s on Causeway – Maria and I traveled out to along a causeway built with the debris from the Panama Canal, to a series of islands with great clubs and restaurants. The problem is that unless you want to go to the subway there, they are expensive. So we found Cayuco’s on the last island a few restaurants down from the Bennegan’s. Here beer and traditional Panamanian bar grub will get you full and drunk for less than $10 each. We had Sangria, fried plantanes and watched the sun set in the Pacific to my left and massive luxury yachts with the Panama City skyline to my right.

Beginning of trip Poll of polls: 60% Bring your significant other. 40% Hmmm I wonder how I would have done at the cool all night clubs on Calle Uruguay solo?

2) The Lost and Found: We found this amazing cloud forest hostel, took a guided tour of an organic coffee farm, went horseback riding and still made it in time to share a bottle of wine and watch the sun set over a sleeping volcano.

Mid trip poll of polls: 80% Wine and volcano sunsets go well with the opposite sex. 20%

Maria passed out after we drank too much wine and couldn’t hike to waterfalls the next day.
But this was only after 3 days in Panama… we had a month to go.

I forgot to mention a few things about my girlfriend. We knew each three weeks before we started traveling and we decided what better way to get to know each other than to travel together. Travel is life on speed with opportunities and conflicts that in real life only happen in slow motion. Why not find out sooner than later?

I found out that my girlfriend is insane. She unapologetically sucks up life. She pees by the side of the road in full view of traffic. She accepts foot rubs from horny strangers with fetishes. She jumps from sail boats just because the water looked nice. Her motto is: Strangers have the best candy. She smokes weed in front of Panamanian cops. She hops the kiosk counter to demonstrate how to make real fried plantains. She searches deserted beaches for quiet locations to be naked. She came overland from Columbia by herself. She adopts strays. She is a stray that accepts adoption.

The day when we were exploring Bocas town we hadn’t even noticed the entrance to the Wreck Deck bar and we had walked past the street several times that day. But after a few drinks at Mondu Taitu, we followed the crowd to a spot where they were selling the mystery meat on a stick and now the gates nightclub opened up to garden paths that led to pool tables and a dance floor covered by a big bamboo rancho. The dance floor was packed with half locals and half backpackers and surfers dancing to 80’s music.

AT the back was a series of wooden decks overlooking the ocean one of which surrounded a sunken ship. Maria took my hand led me to sit around the square deck and we dangled our feet in the water. Fish attracted by underwater lights illuminating the sunken boat checked out our feet to see if they were edible.

Maria was having a Seco con vaca, a kind of 70 proof distilled Panamanian sugarcane she mixed with milk – what the locals use for a cheap drunk. People were already jumping in and it was like a big pool party with rum flowing freely.

I saw an older couple sitting beside some empty chairs behind us and so I decided to try to steer Maria there instead of the two surfer dudes talking about the phat waves while ogling Maria. The couple was in their 40’s, pasty white from Utah but not Mormon at least. They were talking about 80’s T.V. and for some reason between the three of us we couldn’t remember the theme song for Family Ties. What the hell is it… it stuck in my head and for some reason I couldn’t even concentrate on talking until I remembered this stupid song.

This geeky pop culture conversation isolated Maria and I could see her survey the energy around us looking for an opportunity to join others who might provide more fun. She began ogling the ogling surfer dudes. I liked the bar but I did not like the ratio.

3) The Wreck Deck:

End of trip poll of polls:

40% Travel with your significant other to learn if she is insane or not. 60% I hate the ratio of backpacker dudes to girls and them hitting on my girlfriend and her liking it. And hmmm some of the Panamanian girls are pretty hot.

I attempted to rescue the night. To stop her from wandering I tell the couple that Maria traveled overland to Panama through the Darien. This is course was the intro to let Maria tell her shit story.

She always takes the bait on this one and tells the story to anyone who will listen – she came across a village of Woonan Indians in the Darien gap and was invited to stay. She asked where the toilette was and they pointed to a kind of a platform on stilts (only this time when she tells the story it is a tower) She climbed up and squatted in the open on top of this tower. As she peered down between her legs at the ground below she noticed that there was not much in the way of shit piled up below. She was beginning to think this had been some kind of ploy until shortly after her deposits hit the jungle floor there came a rumbling and movement in the banana leaves. Then suddenly two wild boars charged out of the jungle, quickly devoured her feces then disappeared just as quickly.

Like many of her stories I am not sure how much of this one is true but everyone eats her shit up. She is beautiful and animated even when she is squatting to mime herself taking a dump. Although predictable I was happy to engage her into a circle with a male/female ratio where I would get equal attention… this is important when you travel and shirtless surfer dudes outnumber girls. Every 15 minutes or so a boat would pull up to the deck to take people to a neighboring island for a full moon party. The couple was going and we all hopped on a boat together.

We were early for the party – the moon hadn’t yet risen. The tourist couple was sour that it was dark and the party hadn’t even gotten going. They wanted to wake up early the next day for a full itinerary of sightseeing. I didn’t care. It gave me a chance to get Maria alone on a walk along the beach. Low tide stretched the beach out more than 50 meters and we walked in water only a few inches deep to an exposed part of what is usually the bottom of the ocean. We lied there looking up at the stars. We were silent.

Then we notice dark things flying over us. At first I thought they were bats. Bats often come out in Panama at night and flash so quickly near you that your eyes never quite catch them. But these could not be bats so far out. They were fish. And they were jumping over us as we lay looking up at the stars. We just laid there counting flying fish. Then like magic it became brighter. The full moon was rising.

“How many times have you seen the full moon rise?” Maria whispered to me.
“I don’t know…” I didn’t know.

“Right now there are people working at jobs they hate. When they die, even if they are old, they will realize that they have not had many times to see the moon rise like this.”
Sometimes I thought Maria was immature and I lament our age difference. But then she says things like this and I think she is wise. I mean I can’t even remember the theme song for Family Ties. How many important moments in my childhood, moments so important they shaped who I am, that I will only remember a few more times in my life? How many more times will I lie on the ocean floor and see the full moon rise?

Maria surprised me and reached for my hand and I knew this was one of those travel moments… life moments… a moment that tourists miss because their itineraries are filled with sightseeing.

Tourists often don’t know where they have been. Travelers don’t know where the hell they are going. I brought Maria here to Panama to get a lock on what we were to each other. We were travelers.

Women and travel you can’t control. When you travel – when you are in another country you either accept the differences and embrace them, or you become miserable and frustrated and you quit. Today I know--and accept--that one hour might mean two and that a simple meal in Panama with friends can turn into dancing all night around a beach fire. Or a three month backpacking trip can turn into lifelong friendship.

End of trip final poll of polls – 50/50

Save and travel even in an economic Shit-Storm

2009-07-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

So I asked my dad near the end of the first semester to loan me a bit of money so I could eat something other than ramen noodles and I get a lecture on financial responsibility. Hmmm I am the last child of six and my older brothers used to call me After-thought. I remind him that had he “planned” everything he would have planned his kid might ask for money at the end of his first semester in college. He said the lack of planning was mom’s fault and anyway who was I to complain about my conception.

So I reluctantly made friends with ramen noodles.

Funny thing though… I took his advice and the next year, on only loan and scholarship money and a bit of creativity I managed to spend 35% less and use it for a vacation in Central America. I will tell you how you can do it too.

The Conventional Wisdom

These are the no brainers that you just have to get up and do if you can.
1) If you have debts consolidate them and negotiate for the lowest interest rates possible. Interest rates are at an all time low now.

2) If you have credit cards hide them. Don’t let anything plastic distract you. Even many student discount cards lead you into thinking you are getting the best deals. Better than using cards is to write down what you need first, from the grocery store to weekend fun. Then don’t let anything, from air miles to a discount on something you don’t need, distract you.

3) If you have excess cash (savings or student loan money you don’t need at the moment) then:

a) Estimate your living expenses. (You can use www.mvelopes.com)
b) Deposit your living expense money into the highest interest bearing account with no penalties for low balances.
c) Purchase a 90-day CD with your excess money.
d) Repeat each quarter and watch your money grow.
e) Save

I know, I know – if you had excess cash for a CD you would not be reading this and consolidating debt doesn’t mean you magically have enough for a vacation – the quickest way to a vacation unfortunately is using credit. But I had no excess cash. I saved and still went out and did things. Here’s how:

Make a Budget to get you to your goal and then set monthly and weekly targets to save:

1) Pre-buy

For food this means buy bulk. It may sound crazy but pre-buy your ramen noodles, Mac and Cheese and peanut butter as well. But don’t wait until you’ve gone over budget to eat them. Mix them in with the healthy food like whole grain rice and fresh veggies which are always cheap. Never go out to eat after the bars. When you are drunk Mac and Cheese is as good as pizza. Pre-buy the Tupperware too so you can take leftovers for lunch and while you are comparing prices make a note of where to buy those other necessities you want fresh like coffee.

Coffee is one of the no brainers at the top of every list to save money and I saved a whopping $200 dollars in four months here. I bought a coffee maker that had the coffee ready for me in the morning and I limited my coffee to one a day. I kept a nice Caffeine buzz going with tea I bought in bulk and when everybody went to Starbucks I just asked them to get me hot water. You will need to get over the feeling of looking cheap. When I explained what I was saving for, my Starbucks friends respected me all the more and happily got me hot water for my tea. Saving for a cool goal is far different from being cheap.

2) Pre-buy busyness too.

If you don’t have access to a free gym like I did, then shop around. There is nothing worse than blowing your budget and then having nothing to do. One night I had $10 left in my weekly budget. My friends were all going out to dinner and then to see a band that had a $5 cover. So when they were buying pre-dinner cocktails I worked out in the gym. When they ordered appetizers I lay in the sauna and imagined I was on a beach and after dessert as they were forking over $50 each to cover the bill and tip I was showering at home with the stereo blasting Radiohead downloaded free and having a Meister Brau. (Exercise caution and discipline if you buy alcohol in bulk) O.K. lame you think but I made it to the best part of evening and still contributed to a pitcher of beer.

Courses are also good things to pre-buy to keep you away from expensive things. Want to go to Central or South America? Take Spanish or Salsa lessons. Me? I took a cooking course, which you’ll see later, paid for itself five times over while I was travelling.

If you already have an expensive hobby, substitute it. Or if you can’t, then match the amount you spend on your hobby with your savings. After all travel is going to be your new number one hobby right?

OK, Meister Brau? Tea? Cooking classes? You think I became soft – dare you say effeminate – to save money. For those I only offer you this photo of Isabella and Lynette from Panama.

3) Make technology your friend

Are you still not using Skype or VOIP for your long distance calls? Do you still pay for cable and internet when a search of ‘free tv online’ gets everything you want on demand? (If you want to watch on the TV screen ask around electronic stores for a ‘TV out’ of ‘S’ cable.) Do you still have old compact disks you don’t listen to that you can sell at the thrift shop or crap under your parent’s bed that you can sell on Craigslist or eBay? You download your music now, right? You have energy saving light bulbs right? Good. Just checking.

4) Bank your Free Money

Everything you earn that you didn’t budget for is free money and goes directly into the untouchable account. Five dollars for your birthday from Grandma, is five dollars from grandma to travel. And tell her that. She probably only gave you five bucks because she thinks you’ll spend it on booze. A raise? Same thing.

As a student I still found free money. Gone may be the days you can give blood for money (in most places) but I donated sperm once every three months for $50. I participated in a market research project three afternoons for $40 each just to drink beer and comment on beer commercials. (You didn’t know your two favorite hobbies could pay did you?) If your city has a university with a medical faculty then check out the poster boards and have a look at the business faculty for market research opportunities.

5) Form alliances

Networking tools are now endless. Blog your aspirations, use Facebook to form groups or if you are a student check out what clubs already exist through your student’s union or the international center. Also use Facebook to add friends from the country you want to travel to.

Three groups that were the deciding factor for reaching my goals were:

a) My cooking class
b) My college International Center
c) The student’s union poker club

First these groups kept me out of the bars – some of the time at least. In my cooking class I met more girls than the bar, but in the poker club I could still have a few beers – store bought – not beers from $8 beer night in the bar. I also cooked a whole lot more than the previous year and saved a load on food.

Second, these groups actually helped me earn money. The poker club let me host tournaments. I fed them with roast garlic in oil and bread that was a huge hit and cost me next to nothing. In return to hosting and feeding I took a ten percent rake from the tournament which paid for my ante and I even won a few times.

I ended up hosting some kind of party every weekend. If it wasn’t poker it was a potluck with the cooking class. When the cooking class finished I invited some of the students from the International Center (who are always looking for new friends) for movie nights and cooking demonstrations. A Thai girl showed us who to make Tum Yum Kun and showed us pictures of the temples and her family in Thailand. After, the leftovers stayed at my place and made it into Tupperware for my lunches.

My Goal

I wanted to go to Costa Rica.

Flight
(Check kayak.com or bookingbuddy.com)
$ 475
Costa Rica Daily Average
(Use lonelyplanet.com to estimate)
50 (a day) x 30 days= $ 1500
Total
$ 1970

Behind Budget

Two weeks to go and I was behind budget.

Savings over the previous year

Coffee
(Bringing my own saved me $2.50 a day)
$200
Cable
$120
Books
(Bought used books and resold them with class notes)
$230
Alcohol
(Went out less, drank at parties I hosted and ok ok I smuggled booze into the bar with a zip-lock freezer bag)
$250
Home Cooking
$200
Total
$1000

Income

Poker
$100
Sperm
(Damn could only do it once every three months)
$100
New Total
$1200

Short by $770

Here is what I did:

1) Asked Mom and Dad

I know, I know, how could I write about budgeting when I asked mom and dad had to come and bail me out?

I submitted to my dad my entire budget to show our organized and directed I was -- how I was not in the bars, how I spent more time studying and in the gym and that I would practice my Spanish in Costa Rica.

Good luck – didn’t work for me.

2) Birthday part and auction:

I invited EVERYONE to my birthday party, told the people in my cooking class I didn’t want gifts and to bring food I could sell. I made Hurricane punch with cheap booze (no one knew) and auctioned off my stuff.

cds
$10
Food and Booze
(Barely covered costs)
$15
My used clothes for auction
$0
Pre-sold two cartons of smokes and two bottles of liquor
$40

The idea of pre-selling came up from one of my guests from the International Center. Smokes are way cheaper in Costa Rica and so is alcohol – take the money and bring stuff back for your friends. Then the girl from the English Center said, “Why go to Costa Rica when Panama is like a fraction of the price.”

Adjust your Goal

I gave up the idea of Costa Rica and did some research for Panama. Not only is the country cheaper all rough I found a flight form New York City for $260 and I had enough saved right there just by switching destinations. Like Magic. But that’s not all. Here’s how I came back with extra money.

Volunteering in Panama

Evenings of salsa dancers swaying in the glowing nightlife of a vibrant city, hot days on white sand beaches and cool nights by the fire in the cloud forest waiting for the wild animals of the jungle to appear – this is Panama…

Here is a run down on average costs:

Alcohol

A beer in the supermarket 50-55 cents
In a bar in the country around 50 cents
City bar normally $2, but can go to $3
A bottle of national rum(Ron Abuelo) around $6 in a supermarket
around $40-$50 in a nightclub
A bottle of national alcohol(Seco) less than $3 in a supermarket
around $40-$50 in a nightclub
Transport
Long distance busesTaxis Around $1.50 per hourWorks on a zone system, most places in the city will cost the same fare.Most fares should never cost more than $2, but be reasonable.$1.25 for one person 25 cents
Going out
Entry to clubs $5-$10 depending on the club
Basic meal $2-$5
Medium priced meal $5-$10
Expensive meal How much do you want to pay?

Cigarettes- Marlboro $1.75 in a supermarket

Volunteering was a super idea. The Aussie owner of one of the best hostels in Panama City, Mamallenas, let me put the skills I learned from my cooking class and I hosted family style dinners and charged. I found an amazing cloud forest eco-resort called The Lost and Found, where I did the same… hosted family dinners and volunteered to stay for free. I took care of a honey bear they rescued and did about a half days work in exchange for free accommodation. I couldn’t leave the place and in the two weeks there and between cooking and volunteering I spent next to nothing. I had enough for Scuba diving in the incredible coral in Bocas Del Toro.

When I landed tanned and relaxed in New York City I had $300 in my savings account. Next year? Monte Carlo!

Finally the Quetzal at the Eco Lodge in Panama

2009-06-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

You will not hunt for the Resplendent Quetzal – when you are lost in the ambience of cloud forest it will find you – if you are lucky.

OK not my photo... they are hard to shoot.

Travelling Panama is not about the destinations – it is about getting lost and found.

I came to Panama three years ago and built and eco-resort called The Lost and Found. While here I try everyday to appreciate exactly where I am. I try to remember that I am growing nostalgia in the garden of my memories.

Early one evening after a long afternoon shopping for my eco-resort in a sweaty frontier town, I climbed onto a minibus along the Pan-American Highway and played ‘open seat lotto’. To play this game you actually sit in the seat made only for one and a half small children but you don’t spread you legs over the whole seat in an attempt to keep it to yourself. In open seat lotto you make room and see what you get. This trip I had a school girl in uniform, an Indian in traditional dress that smelled of open fire and a toothless farmer with traditional worker’s hat. Most Panamanians don’t outwardly acknowledge my gringoness and this man was no exception. Until his phone rang. (Phones don’t really ring anymore do they?)

His cell phone sang out, ‘Josie's on a vacation far away, Come around and talk it over, So many things that I'd like to say…’

With a machete in one hand and cell in the other he answered, loud and clear in English, ‘What do you want?’

I smiled knowing the act was for me and he looked out the corner of his eye and smiled. I appreciated the song… I stared out the window and The Outfield ring took me back to a memory of a junior high crush.

I have had birders come to my resort and ask questions about birds. In shame I hand them a bird book and plastic pamphlet with pictures. The birds are pretty I tell them. Several birders have come to my resort to and have told me that our place is one of the best birding spots in Panama. Several have written and published what they have seen here.

One birder came hunting for the Quetzal – one of the rarest and most prized birds of Central America. They told me that there was a high probability the birds were here… it is their natural habitat. I took him hiking along the trails of the Fortuna Forest reserve and he was really happy with what he saw. But we did not see the Quetzal.

I am lucky to live where I do because just as I am getting used to white faced monkeys storming my resort or several blue morpho butterflies that dance by, my guests will still remind how special it is.

The day he came I was having a particularly frustrating day. Our water had stopped and I spent all morning hiking searching around our coffee plants looking for a leak in the pvc tube that supplied the water. After an hour I gave up and just sat down to rest. I really don’t know how long I sat there. And I didn’t feel any sensation of being watched. I didn’t hear anything either. But there, only ten meters away, was a male on the branch of an orange tree. He jumped around 180 degrees to face me… waited a moment and flew away. This was more than a pretty bird. And you don’t have to be a birder to know that you have just witnessed something special and I learned that birders are not always after the bird... sometimes they are just there for the moment… to be lost in the present… in the ambience of their beautiful environment. So much so they are aware of what they see and make notes – little notes of who came by to say hi.

You can sit on the beach and watch the full moon rise over the ocean and think about the last person who broke your heart. You can stare at your guide book in the Spanish colonial quarter trying to find a road to a museum when you are in the middle of the most charming alleyway or piazza missing it. You can fill your iPod to remind you of only the past.

If this is you then you need to fill your iPod with this year’s music and then you need a vacation. I know just the spot to get lost in the moment and found by the unexpected.

A Tale of Two Coffee Tours - Boquete VS. The Backpacker Hostel

2009-04-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

Whether we would like to admit it or not there was a time in our lives when we stuck everything interesting we could find in our mouths. At one time or another we have tasted everything our bodies could produce. And now we have grown out of that right? Now we know what we put in our bodies.

Not!

On a recent backpacking journey through Panama I discovered a charming little coffee town filled with gardens and year round spring like weather called Boquete. I decided to splurge above my self imposed budget of $35 a day to take a coffee tour. The tour is run by Café Ruiz, a local coffee dynasty with a long history in these parts. The day long tour is well worth the splurge and the highlight is, of course, the taste testing at the end.

Rumor has it, according to our guide, that the owner of a famous coffee chain that has a name similar to a Battlestar Galactica character came to taste the coffee before he bought a large amount for the famous chain. He liked what he tasted but then he asked,
‘Before I buy this coffee, I would like to know how much you pay your Indian workers.’
‘Of course,’ Sr. Ruiz said. ‘But before I answer this question and before I sell you my coffee, I would like to know how much it costs for a double grande mocha half caf. Latte in New York City.’

Neither answered the question and both signed the contract.

Before this tour I was quite happy with the blend I had first encountered in high school. It was instant Nescafe, with three cubes of sugar and heaping spoons of Coffemate…. Makes your cup of coffee taste great. But what I learned on this tour came dangerously close to changing my regular cup of joe forever.

We were taken to huge pools of water… floatation tanks for the coffee beans. Those that float are skimmed from the top and sold to instant coffee makers. Why? They float because worms have penetrated the bean and the holes created the porousness that makes them float. I, who thought I knew what I was putting in my mouth, was horrified that I had been quite happy to drink worm penetrated coffee. Could I ever go back?

Boquete is also home to world’s best coffee… no kidding. I learned a few things from the coffee tasting part of the tour. For instance the bitterness of a coffee does not mean it is strong nor has high caffeine content. It just means it was roasted longer. So armed with more information I was ready to try the world’s best – Boquete’s own, Esmeralda Especial Gesha coffee. I would say it had some hints of bergamot, plum, pear and marmalade, with a light but full citrus body. O.K. so maybe I stole that from the Web. But what would happen if I became spoiled and could no longer be happy with my double grande mocha half caf. latte in New York City let alone instant coffee and Coffemate.

My next coffee tour got me back on track.

After the well beaten track of Boquete I found myself in a little travelled area of the highlands -- at a little spot in the mountains called The Lost and Found. A couple of Canadians run a small eco-lodge for birders, hikers and backpackers. Their place, believe it or not, is an old coffee finca nestled around lemon and orange trees. Perhaps they are too busy hiking to waterfalls and day tripping to the Pacific to realize they are sitting on a potential gold mine… especially with the rising value of coffee. The Lost and Found is one of the few places I have seen really contributing to the local economy. Boquete’s fincas are run by coffee barons and foreigners and the coffee is sold on the foreign market. The Lost and Found offers an organic coffee and wine tasting tour with a local named Cune.

I ventured out to Cune’s farm on a guided horseback tour where he proudly displayed his organic growing techniques. Cune has never met the owner of a big coffee chain, has never had a double grande mocha half caf. Latte and didn’t know what one was. After the tour, Cune came with us back to The Lost and Found to bring some of his coffee to sell to the guests. He brought with him some tomatoes, carrots and some of the organic wine he makes as well.
That night we cooked up feast… all of the ingredients were local. With the chicken we made a delicious Panamanian chicken soup called San Cocho. The meat was a little tough – the chickens were free range chickens. The wine… well a little like soft moonshine. The coffee was good. You know… I don’t know if it was good or bad but I liked it and what the hell, I put Coffemate in it and I like it.

Cune did not stop asking me what I thought of his wine. ‘I like it,’ I told him. ‘I love it in fact.’ He beamed. The soup, the wine, the coffee… it was true… I loved it because I could see the work this man put into it. And I saw with my own eyes where the food came from that I was putting into my body.

The coffee had no hints of bergamot and plum and pear that I could detect.
It was the pride that made it taste so good.

The Coolest Panama Destinations on the Web

2009-03-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

The following links will open your eyes to some really cool stuff in Panama but they are also the easy links contained in the The Lost and Found novel (Short stories of mystery, sex and betrayal on the road in Panama). Hard copies of this are circulating around the backpacker community in Panama but you can write me for a copy to download.

Click on the links.

La Isla Del Diablo -- An excellent rock video set on an island prison inhabited but the ghosts of dead inmates.

The Black Christ -- Documentary about the superstitious pilgrimage to the famous Black Christ that floated to Portabello and refused to leave.

Rough Cut shots of The Black Christ

Lucid Dreaming on TV

How to Lucid Dream

Going Down to Panama Song -- Cool song to get you hooked on coming down.

And finally!!!! The most beautiful spot in Central America!

Capitalinas VS Chiricanas... David - Panama's other city

2009-02-20T19:21:00.000-08:00

This guy is:

A) Neil Young ten years ago
B) A typical Chiricano partier
C) The Sasquatch
D) An ad for a beer called Soberana at a
DRIVE THROUGH LIQUER TUNNEL that serves open beers

Drum roll...... The answer is D!!! D as in…

David, Panama’s other city

Capitalinas

V.S. Chiricanas

My Capitalina friend said that Chiricanas are cholitas that wear high heels in dirt.

My Chiricana friend said that Capitalinas are ye ye wanabies that try to trap rabiblancos by wearing high heels in bed.

What? Well just imagine a hot town mouse in a bikini mud wrestling with an even hotter country mouse – the city mouse is pissed they are not wrestling in jello – both are wearing high heals and are ready to use them as weapons.

A Capitalina is a girl from Panama City, sometimes beautiful, liberal and cosmopolitan. In her early 20’s she’s still probably unmarried and not pregnant. She knows who the Beatles and U2 are and knows how old I am when they learn I listen to them. Damn!

A Chiricana is from the resource rich, fiercely independent and beautiful province of Chiriqui. She is always beautiful, proud and sheltered. But with all this parental sheltering they all seem to get pregnant and married (in that order) before 22. She’s in make up and heels to go to the supermarket.

The Capital of Chiriqui is David

At first glance David is a hot, dull grid of streets but a necessary transportation bottleneck. For anyone going to Boquete, The Lost and Found or beyond to Bocas, you first come to David. But David had more than meets the eye – and they have Capitalinas.

For the expats living in their Florida-at-half-the-price gated compounds David is the place to come for the day: 24 hour restaurants, supermarkets and CASINOS, mega mall style department stores like The DO IT CENTER and Price Smart. There is also a major airport and good hospitals and schools. And if you need your comfort food fix there’s FRIDAY'S, KFC, MCDONALD'S and THIS FUNKY LITTLE PLACE McPato which means McDuck. Flippin’ the bird at both Disney and McDonald’s. Here you can get a burger and coke for about a buck.

David is also the place to come to party. Boquete has become a quiet, sleepy town. I know more than a few retired gringos that sneak away from their wives to hit the CASINO to try their luck not only at Blackjack but with the Chiricanas that value stability ($$$) and image over whether or not their man has wrinkles or a sagging waistline. If the retired gringo strikes out it’s off to one of the STRIPPERS where odds are better.

And where do they go if they do get lucky? The Push of course. Ah the push button hotels. I was confused when a gringo once told me how he never took his girl to his house he always took her to the ‘bush’. I thought him quite insensitive until I realized I misunderstood ‘bush’ for push. A push is a love motel where you can drive in, push a button to close the garage door, and push another button to call the reception staff. The plethora of pushes is because almost everyone single lives with their parents.

But for those that have seedy desires to be filled there is a lot as well. La Barqueta is a great beach about an hour away in a cheap taxi. You can tour the Carta Vieja Rum Factory. Rum? Beach? Let’s face it… David is for parties. But you have to know where and when to look for them. The hard part is that Chiricanos don’t go to bars… they go to events… sometimes massive.

The best place to go for information about where and when these events happen is at Bambu – hands down the best hostel in David. Managed by Greg with help from a local, Benny, the team knows where to have a good time. The David International Festival is a huge ten day party of non stop party action. In the summer party season there is a huge festival of salsa rhythms, rum and reggae every other week. And in the down time, the more chilled party at their hostel is the place to be. Not only is Bambu the best hostel… it is the best place to spend the afternoon in David. Internet is free so it ping pong. David is hot… literally and metaphorically so the best way to cool off is with a margarita in a hammock under the Bambu rancho or around the pool. Bambu is the only hostel in Panama with a pool.

What is Eco Anyway?

2009-02-20T19:16:00.001-08:00

From time to time I meet a tourist that views me as a neo-conquistador disrupting a culture and spreading upheaval. My crime? Buying land in a developing nation.

This same tourist would charge that the eco-resort I built in The Fortuna Forest Reserve is not a true eco resort at all. It was not built with local materials, it does not have solar power nor does it have composting toilets.

My answer for this charge… My resort is not yet perfectly ‘green’ but is one of the most eco-friendly resorts Panama.

Like many communities in Panama my community has environmentally conscious citizens and others -- not so much. My community, Valle de la Mina, is inside a forest reserve administered by the largest hydro-electric project in Panama, Fortuna, S.A. Right now the environmentally conscious citizens are loosing the battle. The U.S. Peace Corps volunteer and a local businessman tried to organize the cleaning of local streams and the transport of garbage to a landfill sight. They asked for support from the dam administration but there was not much enthusiasm from them or the town. The Peace Corps volunteer left without being replaced. Hunting inside the reserve is widespread, pesticides are overused and our neighbors clear cut their land.

However there is hope. Take for example, Kune, the owner of one of the only certified organic farms in Panama. His coffee is not the quality of the big Boquete plantations. His wine does not compare to Napa Valley. But after a tour of his farm you will taste the pride in his coffee and it may well be the best cup of coffee you have in Panama.

Tourism officials in Panama want to attract wealthy tourists. One rich tourist they believe will spend as much as five budget tourists but leave a smaller carbon footprint. This is naïve. Budget tourists, like our customers, eat Sancocho with local free range chicken, not Australian Black Angus steaks. They stay at local bed and breakfasts not the large international chains. They are providing an alternative industry to many poor Panamanians that could turn to other industries that are not so great for the environment.

Although we have not successfully eliminated hunting in the reserve, hunters no longer use our trails to access the reserve. But the point is not to restrict their actions but to provide them with an alternative. The answer is in the economy not from pedantic moral lessons. One of our customers helped us raise $1500 for a local family that needed a new home. Kune, the organic farmer, gets 100% of his customers from us. Slowly, the community is realizing through our example, that there are dollars to be made in preserving the natural beauty of their environment. The composting toilets are important and will come but toilets alone do not raise the awareness of a community.

Thinking of putting your backpack down and becoming an expat in Panama?

2009-02-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

With apologies to guest writer Ezra Paskus

If your reasons are any of these two then STAY HOME!

1. I hate what’s happening in: America, Canada, Somalia, Darfur, Iraq, Barbados.

Granted there is probably nothing terrible happening in Barbados, but the point is that if you disagree with the current political/economic situation in your home country, this is probably not a good reason to leave. You cannot escape the effects of American politics nor its current shitstorm economy. Internet access is available from Rio Douche, Panama to Werthefuckamitenango, Guatemala. Unfortunately, so are CNN and even Fox News, although here it’s called Canal Comedia. And if you think your government is corrupt?

2. I hate: my job, my girlfriend/boyfriend, my drinking problem, black presidents, the fact that I’m a giant douchebag.

The problem is a douchebag in Panama smells much the same as a douchebag back home (unless you are French – quite nice there actually). If you don’t fit in where you live now, you wont fit in here either. You’ll be the raving lunatic that everyone calls “Gringo Loco”, trust me; I am still trying to shrug this off. Your drinking problem? Booze is considerably cheaper here.

Ok, so maybe neither of those apply to you, or you’re willing to overlook them, or that last line made up your mind to come to the land of cheap booze, or you have delusions of being a pirate, or you just want to see some funky Latina ‘gina. Read on.

I wanna be an ExPat and I’m willing to overlook the following in order to get to the funky Latina ‘ginas.

• Crazy ass drivers.

Anyone outside of USA/Canada is a crazy ass driver who uses the car horn like my 5 year old nephew honks his wee wee, and some of these drivers are honking their their wee wees and their horns at the same time. In Panama car horn is used to communicate any of the following, not in this order and sometimes all inclusive: you’re a hot chick, you’re in my way, I’m coming through the middle of your car, do you need a ride, my taxi is empty, my taxi is full, you’re not moving, you are moving, how are you, fuck you, you’re a fat chick, you’re a fat chick but if you get in my car I’ll sympathy hump you.

• Crazy ass Latina ‘ginas.

If you have blue eyes it’s easier to pick up here than taking money from the cup of a one eyed legless beggar. I know, I bought colored contacts.

• The combined smell of piss and campfire. This has apparently been bottled in Panama and is one hell of a hot seller especially for public transport.

• Lazy bastards.

There is a reason bribery is popular in developing countries. If you’ve ever tried to wade through ridiculous bureaucracy then you have wished that bribery was popular in the good ol USA. But it isn’t just bureaucracy, it’s on all levels, it’s a general air of undeserved entitlement, sorta like a country full of Kevin Federlines. As one Panamanian told me while we were looking out at the canal, his ancestors worked so hard on the canal he was born tired. You will run into this “manana” attitude everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

• Personal space.

It no longer exists in Panama. I cannot explain this thoroughly enough. Whether it’s the stinky assed armpit shoved in your face on the bus, or the stinky assed ass shoved in your face on the bus, something stinky assed will be shoved in your face… everyday.

• Cops and the disappearance of your “rights”.

Whereas in Britain cops will say “Stop, stop, dammit or I will have to say stop again,” in Panama they point an AK-47 at your head while you cash a check. If you call a cop and they can’t find someone to arrest they will arrest you. And while, “Hey, I got rights, and I’ll upchuck on your shoes if I wanna” might gain you a pity smile and a hardy chuckle, and possibly a phone call in the USA, here it will probably gain you a pistol whippin and laughter from the other 10 dudes loosening their belts in your 4ft by 4ft cell.

Still ready to come?

So sell all of your worldly possessions, which granted may not net you as much as it would in a bright shiny economy, but you won’t need much because you won’t be spending much. After all, loss of personal hygiene, cup ‘o noodles, and sleeping on the beach doesn’t cost that much and, you will be rich with experience and confident in your knowledge that you are a pioneer who will come back one day and write a best seller about all of your spiritual insights with your fellow man and how the girl with the hairy armpits dumped when you ran out of cash for 50 cent beers and had to sell your hemp necklaces and hardened Playdoh “water-pipes” to the unsuspecting tourists. Wait! What are all of these other trust fund hippies doing selling their “jewelry” (crap) on your street in paradise?

Still want to come? Good… I haven’t regretted a single day.

Panama Backpackers Party Here!

2009-02-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

Panama is the best city in Central America to party. But here are a few general rules:

1) Taxis are cheap in Panama. The most expensive taxi ride to get to a bar is Isla Flamenco on the Causeway which should cost around $6 but you could be asked to pay up to $8. Negotiate the cab fare first

2) Keep in mind the most expensive taxi ride is $6. If you meet a lady and the next morning she asks for $40 to take a taxi home then you may be in denial. If she asks for $200 for her sick kid in Cali then you have to admit to yourself that you just spent time with a hooker. If she is wearing a skirt made from a gym sock assume she is a hooker. If in doubt ask her what she does for a living and look for hesitation in her voice.

3) Bring a good copy of your passport with a photocopy of the entry stamp. You will be asked for this as police look for the girls described in #2.

4) Bring the address of the hostel with you. Taxis don’t use addresses and your drunk broken Spanish will just put dollar signs in the taxi driver’s eyes.

There are four general bar areas – more detail about each place after

Calle Uruguay is the famous nightlife area but it is slowing declining in popularity as nightlife branches out. There are a couple of classy lounges here with no cover but $4 beers, a couple of great places with strong Latin flair. Saharah has great live rock and 80’s music and La Bodeguita is super for Salsa and is on fire with action – sadly in both places most of the women are working girls. There are also five or six of the big nightclubs with all night partying but be prepared to pay an average of $15 to get in.

Uruguay Bars in detail:

Prive… Look for the two story building just across the street from Kraze. There is no cover here but that doesn’t stop them from making their money with four dollar beers. Wealthy and wannabe wealthy Panamanians put on their adult clothes and there are some pretty funky tunes spun by the resident D.J. It has the big disco feel but is the size of a pub. Worth a look before you dish out the cover at some of the other places.

Shahara… An institution in Panama for great live bands playing covers of Classic Rock. There is a large outdoor patio visible from the street with T.V.s playing 80’s music. There are two pool table near the back and another outdoor quiet area out back. Caution with the girls here though, many are working. Cover is $5 but it includes a free drink which goes for around $4 anyway so it is almost negligible. This place is empty until around 11 but picks up around midnight and goes hard till the wee hours of the morning.

Moods and the bar right above Moods…

To the right of Moods is a staircase leading up to a little bar with no cover and economical drinks. This is a great pre-drinking place but the party can get lively with dancing to reggeaton and salsa. Great place. But if you don’t like the ratio of guys to girls then you can shell out the $10 cover to see something very similar with lasers, disco balls $4 highballs but better ratio of dudes to chicks.

La Bodeguita… A Cuban bar on Calle Uruguay, playing Spanish music with Columbian hookers. The last point is really too bad but it can still be worth a look as this bar has the most energetic Latin Flair on the street. Cover can be steep at $15 after midnight but it is lower earlier… try before 10pm and try to negotiate a $5 entrance. The hookers are friendly but not aggressive and if you tell them you are not in the market they will either leave you alone or still flirt until someone with more money than savvy with the ladies comes. La Bodeguita is the last bar on Calle Uruguay before Avenida Balbo (towards the bay)

Guru… Also know as The Clubbing Cult and the elite moniker means that yes it is pretentious but the beautiful girls do come here to spend $15 cover or more for special djs. Mostly techno music but from time to time the dj might put on a couple of salsa songs to change it up.

People… This is a good place to see your average middle class party it up with a mix of music that includes a few salsa songs followed by a couple of marenge, then reggaeton (Daddy Yankie) then 80’s then pop then back again. At $10 it is also average for a cover charge.

The Causeway is an excellent spot for dinner, a stroll between the islands for photos of the bay, city skyline and luxury yachts. There are also a dozen or so clubs. The causeway is busy anytime of the day, the air is fresh and you can rent bikes. There is a brand new bar area planned just before the causeway and one or two place have opened in an attempt to start a formal nightclub area like other cities in Central America.

You hardly realize the causeway is made of three islands. The first is on your right with a couple of small restaurants with outdoor seating and just after it is Perico, the second island. There’s a Subway here and juice stand but other than these there are good but pricey restaurant. If you are there on a Friday check the last restaurant, Rincon de Andaluz for three for one bottles of wine. There is a small sports bar (usually empty) with no cover but better is to go to the opposite end (the way you came) upstairs to Sing City. There is no cover and late at night the crowd gets going with slightly less cheesy than normal karaoke. At the back with great views of Panama City (near the Rincon de Andaluz) is Bambu, the best disco on the Causeway.

The best place for pre-drinking is further down the Causeway on the last island, Flemenco. Skip all the cheesy Disney like bar at the Flemenco Shopping Plaza. Before that, just after the Benegin’s is busy place with no sign. It is called Cayuco’s. Great cheap Panamanian grub and cheap bears.

Casco Viejo is the gentrified old colonial area that should not be missed. The nightlife is more subdued but this is the place to come to learn that life is not a road but a series of alleyways and piazzas. Come to sit near the park, listen to jazz and have a $5 glass of wine. New lounges are opening up and there is one club of particular interest called La Casona popular with students and has laid back dress code.

Details: Many new lounges pop up monthly. Follow the rail lines through Plaza Mayor to the tourist cop shop to Indigo.(no cover) Follow the Jazz music past the cop shop and the derelict building where the Bond was filmed and you will see La Planetea for the swankiest and priciest Jazz in the city. Prices vary depending on the band. For late night partying La Casona is a great disco of laid back students and artists. There is a modest cover and usually there is some kind of modern art installation in the large airy warehouse. This is in a bit of a dangerous area near Parque Herrera. You may want to ask the friendly tourist police for directions or make sure your cab driver found the right place.

Around Multicentro

Near Multicentro shopping mall and the Decapolis hotel are a series of bars. The Decapolis is wear you shine your shoes, wear a collar shirt and pass out real estate business cards to actually pretty groovy music. A pedestrian overpass connects the hotel to the Majestic casino. Sometimes there are cheap Texas Holdem tournaments and of course all the other gambling games but casinos are great for good bar food for under $8 and beers around $1.50. On a Friday or Saturday night more Panamanains come for the free live salsa and party than for gambling. Panama’s Hard Rock café also picks up at night and is in MutliCentro. Next door to the mall along is Extreme Planet a complex with a bunch of movie theaters, a Bennigan’s restaurant on the second floor and on the 12th that is also home to Sky Bowling. This complex also has a huge Bennigan’s Pub with dozens of large screen TV’s to watch the sporting event of the day. Beers are around $2 here.

Behind the Decapolis hotel was a bar area that is now slowly shutting down but there are a few places to note. Rasputin is a tiny Russian bar with foosball and Guitar Hero. Great pre-drinking place with cheap beer. A good chic club is also here called The Galaxy in Plaza New York at the end of this street on Calle 50.

Via Veneto to The Marriott

Via Veneto is hard to miss with the Vegas Style hotel and casino of the same name lighting up the street with flashing lights. On a street running perpendicular is Istmo Pub with a pool table and one of Panama’s few micro breweries. The Veneto itself is big casino and right behind it (you can go through the exit at the back) is the biggest and liveliest casino with big stage shows, Fiesta.

A little ways out down Veneto toward Via España on your right you will see a few signs, Capri, Oaisis… these are brothels. But the last one is a great little place to have a beer and watch the street action roll by. If you stand at the McDonald’s and look across the busy Via España you will see two busy streets with light. Down the street where the Continental Hotel is perched you will find a great expat hang out called The Terrace. Street views and pool upstairs this is a great place to pre-drink. While seated here you will notice the Royal Casino and Marriott hotel attached. Right across the street from the front doors of the Casino is Kappas and Beirut. Right across the doors of the hotel is a little cigar bar frequented by gringo who frequent hookers.

Via Argentina

Is the up and coming nightlife area. Starting at its base on Via España just after the Blockbuster there are new nightclubs worth a look on weekends. Further up keep your eyes open for a big gorilla for the aptly named Rockin’ Gorilla where beers are cheap, there’s lots of pool tables and sometimes live music. (no cover) Three minutes walking further up is Taberna 21 across from a park good for cheap beer, no cover and good Sangria. Just past the park is one of the few English Pubs with live music and pool called El Pavo Real. There is no cover, a pool table and sometimes live bands.

These are just a small sample of places to stir up trouble.

Top Travel Songs for Backpackers in Panama

2008-11-28T15:31:00.000-08:00

The Soundtrack of your Panama Trip

Nothing transforms a memory into nostalgia like associating it with a really good song… even a girlfriend or boyfriend ripping your heart out is fine in retrospect if you can associate it with a good tune… then you become like a character in a John Hughes movie.

So open Limewire and get your iPod ready but don’t listen until you are on the plane. Here is my list… some old… some new… that I recommend as the soundtrack to a Panama trip.

1) My Cubicle

By: I don’t really know… ripped off from James Blunt.

Play it when you are deciding if you need to say screw it to the rat race

Key lyrics:

My job is stupid, my days a bore, inside this office from 8 to 4…

...no one ever looks me in the eye and I really should work but instead I just sit here and surf the Internet.

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjhi_FHxY8k

2) Save Tonight

By: Eagle Eye Cherry

Key Lyrics:

We know I'm going away
How I wish....wish it weren't so
Take this wine & drink with me
Let's delay our misery

Play it your lat night with you know who.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFBuFGG_04o

3) Panama

By: Van Halen

Play after the pilot announces landing in Panama City

Key lyrics:

Panama… Panama ha ha ha a ah ha ha ha.

Play it just after the pilot announces the landing approach.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjUq_Z3b1Y4 (John Mayer covering for something different)

4) Lawyers, Guns and Money

By: Warren Zevon.

Key Lyrics:

Well, I went home with the waitress
The way I always do
How was I to know She was with the Russians, too
I was gambling in Havana I took a little risk
Send lawyers, guns and money
Dad, get me out of this

O.k. Panama is not Havana but good luck finding a poker game in Havana these days.

Play it before or after a night of debauchery in Panama City.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPlMmwOq7U8&feature=related

5) Welcome to the Jungle

By: Guns and Roses

Play when you are at Multicentro a big shopping mall on Avinda Balboa. Across the street is the Vatican Embassy. You are, of course, in the concret jungle, with a new elevated costal highway above you. This did not exist when Manuel Noriega was holed up across the street in a rather nice house which is where Noriega hid from invading Americans. To get him out the American blasted Welcome to the Jungle.

Key Lyrics:

You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby. You're gonna die! (Well at least go to a jail in Florida)

6) Margaritaville

By: Jimmy Buffet

Key Lyrics:

There's booze in the blender, And soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.
Wasted away again in Margaritaville

Play it under the sun in Bocas on the terrace of the same restaurant that Jimmy Buffet played the song live with a Margarita in front of you. You may have heard the song a million times but this is what you imagined when you listened…now you are not imagining.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cbX4DUACYU

7) Wish You Were Here

By: Pink Floyd

Key Lyrics:

We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year, Running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

Play it while watching the sun set over Volcan Baru at the Lost and Found Eco lodge thinking about the person from song #1.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RKMB77U6GU (covered by Storm Large -- I know I know)

8) I’ll be home by Saturday

By: Hayden

Key Lyrics:

You’re the one thing I am leaving
That’ll come to my mind dreaming

You’re the first thing I’ll be thinking
When I’m taking off and landing

Play this one over and over again. Hayden makes me miss Canada.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt7-y-BqkyM (No video or good sound for a live version… this guy did a pretty good job)

9) Freebird by Leonard Skynard.

Key Lyrics:

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me
For I must be traveling on now
There's too many places I've got to see

Play it when you are saying goodbye to the Panamanian's who’s heart you are breaking.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMxUaeJxNuY (This is taken from the final scene of The Devil’s Rejects… although it has nothing to do with travel it is the best ending to any movie ever)

Five Spanish Artists to get into it:

1) Julieta Venaga -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v92OsaD40w ..que lastima pero adios… Me Voy..
2) Mana -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H7RWKXBcZY … Mariposa No Regresa
3) Shakira -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqeuSWTgtQo her breakthough is my favorite .. Ojos Asi..
4) Los Rabanes – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av8TBy0s0YE My commanding wife… Panama’s own ska band
5) Daddy Yankie -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4eeSHdbxoc Daddy Yankee is from Puerto Rico but reggaeton was invented in Panama… I thought this was the national anthem when I arrived…. Learn to like it. Backpack, Panama, eco lodge backpacker eco-lodge, hiking, resort, backpacker, backpacking hostel adventure tours gap trails, fortuna bird birding tour adventure cloud forest jungle Chiriqui central America costa rica

Disaster and Backpackers

2008-11-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

B

ackpack, Panama, eco lodge backpacker eco-lodge, hiking, resort, backpacker, backpacking hostel adventure tours gap trails, fortuna bird birding tour adventure cBackpack, Panama, eco lodge backpacker eco-lodge, hiking, resort, backpacker, backpacking hostel adventure tours gap trails, fortuna bird birding tour adventure cloud forest jungle Chiriqui central America costa ricaloud forest jungle Chiriqui central America costa rica

The Chiriqui highlands are a disaster zone. According to Don Winner, ‘38 houses have been destroyed and another 162 houses have been damaged. A total of 1,840 people have been affected by the flooding and 273 people are homeless.’

‘The road between David and Almirante has been completely destroyed in at least four distinct areas and there have been at least 100 mudslides all along the road and the route is now completely closed. According to news reports it might take as long as one to three months before the road is reopened. This road is critically important to the Bocas del Toro province as all fuel arrives via tanker trucks traveling along that route, so the most immediate concern will be access to fuel for disaster relief responders.’ – Panama Guide

Boquete, the town I used to live, has been divided in two with the two bridges that link both side of the Caldera River having washed away.

I am safe and sound in Panama City where surprisingly there has been little rain. But I am no stranger to disasters surviving a massive earthquake in Istanbul and the Asian Tsunami in Thailand.

My experience in Thailand (scroll down to the post Goodbye 2005 – The Asian Tsunami and my beginning) demonstrated to me the main difference between backpackers and tourists.

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” – G.K. Chesterton

I was on Koh Lanta for the destructive tsunami. Although closer to the epicenter there were fewer deaths on this island because the rising slope of the land gave no room for the wave to travel.

I lost what material possessions I had after leaving Korea but I had the clothes on my back, the tsunami did not affect bank account and I had my life. But there was devastation for the Thais. The evening after the tsunami I climbed up to a safe spot on a hill with a six pack and watched tourists become travelers -- out of their 4 star hotels chatting and sharing their stories with others.

The tourists went home. The backpackers stayed and helped the Thais rebuild.
So now tourist hotspot Boquete is a disaster zone. The tourists will go home disappointed. The backpackers know that being caught in the rain is not part of the plan but twists on the road and bizarre travel plans is God’s way of dancing with you.

Hostel Boquete is right near one of the washed out bridges but is housing people in an alternate location… give Dave a call for details at 6-436-1786

Nomba is open for business…

The Lost and Found is open and the last hostel in Chiriqui before Bocas so a good place to wait for the road to open. There are free pickups from Gualaca (While the Bocas busses don't run) and pick ups in David if you help cover the gas. Movies, books, foosball, games and all the rainy day activities there are free. You can also volunteer here to help restore water to the community. Call Andrew at 6-589-9223

The Best Backpacker Quotes Ever

2008-11-21T13:15:00.000-08:00

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.”
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do - especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”

“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”

Many more stories from the backpacker trail to come...

The following are from my old blog about buying land and building an eco-resort... I would still love to offer insight to those who have questions about these experiences..

This is:

A) Neil Young

B) A hairball Andrew coughed up after he decided licking himself is better than cold showers.

C) A small possum.

D) A caterpillar

Drum roll please.... It actually is D. I thought it was a small rodent until I saw its underside. Now that I have a picture of this caterpillar it will yield significantly less points in The Lost and Found hunting expedition. What? We plan to lend cameras to people and award points for interesting wildlife photos. 5 points for a morpho butterfly, 10 with its wings open. All the way up to 2000 points for the black panther. Points are redeemable for food, drinks and accommodation. The crab on the right is common in the rainy season. The guy on the right is a cacomistle. Just about as cute as Dokada Fanning running from aliens. These guys call out to each other and playfully jump from tree to tree. They are hard to photograph though.

The tarantulas are hard to find but if you know just which rock to look under they can be found. I used to be afraid of these guys until one party when a Texan buddy of mine picked one up and squeezed some of its venom into a shot glass, added tequila and then tossed it back. Now I am afraid of my Texan buddy.

So when you're at The Lost and Found bring your camera and keep your eyes open.

Friends

A lifelong friend visited me last week and recommended the movie Garden State. Zach Braff is swimming in a pool with Natalie Portman (Note to self: my new goal is to write a movie script in which I’m swimming with Natalie) and talking about his return to his childhood home. He told her he felt he was chasing an idea of home no longer attainable or that was imaginary to begin with. The nostalgia of the past drove him to look in the corridors of his former home only to find them empty and he found only distance when trying to connect with old friends.You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in...isn't really your home anymore.All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your shit...…that idea of home is gone.You feel like you can never get it back.It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist.Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know?You won't ever have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself. Another lifelong friend gave me a call today. She felt nostalgic after getting into contact with someone who after many years longed for the good old days when they rode in fields now being appropriated by a growing city on horses that since passed.Most of you who read this blog have left home. But to make it easier we left with those promises that we would write, we would stay in touch, and that when we return it would be like not a day has passed. And then one day we realize this was all a lie of convenience.Yeah, times change. When we see old friends we don’t always relate in the ways we used to... we get older... we make different choices. Would we really want it any other way?And this is why I am grateful I had visit from an old friend I share a long road of memories with and his new wife that he will make an even longer road of memories.At the end of Garden State, after unsuccessfully trying to return home, Zach Braff is standing on the edge of an abyss in the pouring rain. But he’s standing with a new friend and an old friend. And that moment, I’m sure, is fuel for future nostalgia.Plenty of room for old and new when The Lost and Found is finally built. And plenty of room for more days we will one day be nostalgic for. These are photos of old friends meeting new friends here in Panama.“Understand that friends come and go but a precious few hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps between geography and lifestyle because the older you get the more you need people that knew you when you were young.” – Baz Lauman from Always Wear Sunscreen

The Other Side of the Rainbow

I'm still young, but I know my days are numbered 1234567 and so on.

But a time will come when these numbers have all ended. And all I've ever seen will be forgotten. Won't you come... To my funeral when my days are done

Life's not long... And so I hope when I am finally dead and gone...That you'll gather round when I am lowered into the ground -- The Crash Test Dummies

Greg Lamb passed away Sunday morning of a sudden and massive heart attack. He was an expat Calgarian that fueled his bed and breakfast with raw, in your face, friendliness. This brought an eclectic group of people around but not always the actual electricity. I had forgotten, until his wake, that it was him and his friendly bed and breakfast that brought Andrew and I to many of the people we know and work with here. Andrew and I would sit around a table near the pool, sometimes with our builder and architect, always with a few drinks. Two things Greg would love to give, whether you needed them or not, were drinks and advice. If there is a heaven, Greg is up there with an Atlas beer in one hand, a butt in the other, and he’s saying with a sincere look, No God, I don’t think you understand. You’re not listening. And God is listening mostly for the entertainment value.

Andrew was a pallbearer and literally buried his friend yesterday. Greg has me thinking about my own funeral and I guess more importantly about my life. People were really left unprepared, guessing at what Greg would have wanted and what to do.

So here it is: My last will and testament, if you want something of mine and it isn’t here then speak now or forever hold your peace.

Patrick Sean McGreer’s Last Will and Testament

For my ex-girlfriends: Nothing

For my family: Nothing

For my friends: Nothing

For my wife and kids: Nothing

O.K. This is a trick – I have very little but my resort (and debt)... I’m not married and have no kids. If I had a wife I guess I would leave her everything except my shares of the Lost and Found which I think some should go to Andrew so that he becomes a major shareholder. Unless, of course, my last words are Honey what are you doing with that knife? Owe! OK, very funny now put that down. Really… Ahhhhh

I think leaving money for people when you’re dead and gone is silly. Spend it all when you’re alive. Of course I don’t know when I’ll die so there might be some left over which I would like spent as much on my friends as on the ridiculously high costs of laying someone to rest.

I was never particularly high maintenance while alive so I don’t plan to be while dead. So maybe all of these things can’t be done. Whatever, I’m dead. Just don’t let Andrew do that Weekend At Bernie’s thing at the beach with my corpse.

First my estate should pay for the damn hospital bills and funeral. Actually if I could jam on those bills I would. Rather spend it on fun things. If I have credit card bills for God sake don’t let those greedy bastards get any of it. Next, my estate can pay for a nice little service in Edmonton for those who can’t make it to Panama. If my mother is still alive (Good God I hope I outlive her) then it should be in a Church. If not, a hall or someone’s house is fine. I don’t understand why some priest who never knew the deceased is allowed to speak. Someone may as well say, Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to honor #456-B's life before consigning him to lot #5, space #A-16. Praise God.

People can cry (video tape this and post it on the Internet so I can check it out… heaven is not heaven if it has no WiFi) for a while and stuff but I would want people to have a good time. Really I’m dead, I’m not in pain. Stop your blubbering. Someone should reserve the roof of The Black Dog (The Wooftop) (unless it’s winter then reserve The Underdog) Everyone should drink all they want and talk about the good times and funny Patrick stories, even the embarrassing ones and my estate will pay for the Grasshoppers and Trad. If I can really transcend the realm of the dead I’ll come say hi to each of you in the toilette there so be open to the spirit realm when you use the john. hostel panama backpacker hostel panama backpacker hostel panama backpacker hostel panama backpacker hostel panama backpacker hostel panama My real funeral I’d like to take place at, you guessed it, The Lost and Found. If there are people at my wake that would really like to go to the funeral at The Lost and Found but really don’t have the cash, then I’d like my estate to foot the bill for a few friends that can’t afford it. Unless I’m rich when I die, in which case, everyone and their dates can come and it’s all on me. Hell first class if my accountant OK’s it.

Don’t know if it’s legal but I’d like a funeral pyre at The Lost and Found and I’d like it to be set in something like a burning man thing. Big party. Lots of food and alcohol. My favorite songs. The above quoted Crash Test Dummies song. Light My Fire for when the thing is set ablaze. Only the Good Die Young with the volume turned up at the part where Billy Joel sings I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners have much more fun. (Also Warren Zevon -- Keep me in your heart for a while.) I’d like my ashes collected and mixed with colored sand for a Mandela to be set under glass in a small round structure in the middle of the hedge maze. Maybe there can be a plaque or something that has my last words. I don’t know something like I’ll go to your funeral if you go to mine. I’ll have to give that some more thought.

Anyone who would like to speak can do so. Just try to keep the whole Patrick was great thing to less than 2 minutes and someone should read this first:

Funny how people who die become the greatest person you ever knew. So let me just say it now before others speak. I’m the greatest blah blah blah. Done. I read somewhere that people’s number one fear is public speaking and the number two fear is death. And here I am public speaking while dead. Fearless I am. Actually this is kinda spooky. I’m dead. Weird, eh?

Don't praise me or be sad but remember and share the times I lived my life the fullest I could. Whatever that means. I hope I tried to the end.

Joseph Campbell: People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Lester Burnham: Maybe I should be just down right pissed off that I’m dead. But it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst ...And then I remember ... to relax, and not try to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. Don't worry ... you will someday.

Goodbye Greg. Catch you on the flip side. Have a cold Atlas waiting for me.

Sign, Sign, everywhere a Sign.

The SIGN blew over again. Ahrrrrg. But this time it was stolen. Can’t imagine there’s much of a market for a big yellow and red sign that has The Lost and Found written on it. If anyone comes across it at Sotheby’s or something then let me know. (Sorry Selina). MY FRIEND from Panama City painted it. She’s now in NYC studying art but I guess now she has to come back to paint another sign.

In some ways it feels that signs are all Andrew and I have. I live in the beautiful town of BOQUETE where all the pretty flowers are and Andrew lives in David where all the pretty girls are. I study Spanish and run and just hang out until something needs to be signed. My lawyer or my builder or my accountant will call and I’ll have to take the little yellow school bus that didn’t pass US safety standards and go to an office or restaurant and sign something.

Sometimes I go the notary and sign something. Maybe a P-2862 Y. I usually don’t know what I’m signing. But this is all I really have to do until everyone at the Environmental Agency called ANAM (Administration for Nuisances And Mismanagement, I think) which could have given us approval a month ago but has engineers dragging their feet because we aren’t dangling any carrots in front of any noses. The notary is an entirely useless office that puts an unneeded level of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is an industry here. Take it away and the jobless rate will sore. They’ll be selling cell phone calls on the street.

Signing at the notary is usually just silly. Take for example when I lost my passport. In Panama City the nice lady at the Canadian Embassy wasn’t empowered to look at the photo of me, then look at me, and sign something that said the person in the photo was me. For that I had to go to the notary. So in some office a Panamanian man who I never saw signed some paper he couldn’t read that said he saw me (which he didn’t) and saw the photo, and that I was the man in the photo. Two hours and ten dollars.

Andrew has been busy making signs. He helped design the logo for our business cards and just recently THE STICKER FOR OUR TRUCK. Yes the company bought a 2001 GALLOPER for around six grand. Of course Andrew had to date the previous owner’s daughter to get it but that relationship is sailing along. Wait no, O.K. maybe he was dating her before. Anyway it’s a great truck for us and a great girlfriend for Andrew. Tested it out on the sand on LAS LAJAS. (The truck) Not too expensive, seats seven and has four wheel drive. Now I LOOK LIKE a real Hemmingway kinda rugged expat in the jungle. Well if you squint your eyes. And if you keep squinting our truck looks sort like one of those UN VEHICLES.So we’ve been signing, got our sign stolen and made signs for our truck and now have logos for t-shirts, ball caps and stickers. Anyone want to order one?We can’t wait for you to come down and paint signs that say, Waterfall or Fortuna Park with little arrows pointing down garden paths.

That was Then, This is Now

Then.

Then...

Now
Then...

Now
Then

Now

Pushing Sand and Moving Rock – By Andrew

Well, we are 3 quarters thru Feb. We have about 30 men and 4 horses carrying sacks of rock and sand to the building site. It is quite fun to watch...I carried one sack about 400 meters and realized that I could camouflage myself into the jungle and avoid further hard labor, much like I have done most of my life.So, things are moving along. Tomorrow we are working on the water. Purchasing more materials and dumping them on the land. We are still awaiting the final approval from ANAM. They will complete their Environmental Impact Study by the end of this week, hopefully!

Part of their study involved myself, and our builder. We traveled around the neighborhood and collected people´s signatures that approved of the project. Nobody objected, and most appeared very interested in what the final product would reveal. Since people have noticed that this project is truly happening, many have approached me for work. I already have a collection of resumes. I often hear..."I have a friend who has an Uncle that needs to work." I really do enjoy the fact that the Lost and Found is creating jobs. That is part of the Lost and Found's promise...giving back to the community, job creation, along with education and low impact tourism.

Now is a very exciting time to be involved with this project. Shaping the structure, making it functionable, cool, unique and affordable are things that we are focusing on at this moment. I will load pictures on this site as soon as I move them off the camera. I will be up on the land, lending my 'expertise', tomorrow. Basically, things are under control...knock on wood. We now have an English speaking accountant on our team, and are in the process of developing a new website. Patrick is studying Spanish, exercising, coming up with marketing strategies and making important decisions that will ultimately have a large impact on the project. I am meeting with the builders, overseeing construction, and doing other details such as finalizing the purchase of the car and developing the Lost and Found logo. Never running out of things to do. From business card creation to construction material comparative shopping. From meeting people doing similar projects to getting a Lost and Found sticker for the car. It is fun. Learning a lot of new things.

Moving material with horse...

....and muscle... to avoid environmentally damaging equipment.

Goodbye 2005 -- The Asian Tsunami and my beginning

Eight years ago I spent my first real Christmas outside Canada alone in Thailand after taking a teaching course in Bangkok. Last year was also Christmas alone in Thailand but it was different. The Asian tsunami, I know now, will always be the anniversary of a new beginning.

I was up unusually early on the island of Koh Lanta shopping for a shaving cream and razor when the shop became eerily empty. I learned later that a big wave hit the beach and the water receded. It attracted many, including those in the shop, down to the beach to watch the strange spectacle. I waited. I heard that people were throwing flapping fish back into the water as divers suddenly standing instead of swimming began to run to shore. The second wave hit in confusion and I saw people running for their lives between the bungalows. I couldn't see the water at this point and thought some of the Muslim, Buddhist violence had spilled over into the tourist areas. Then I saw more running and screaming and dark, swirling water carrying people. I turned and ran with the others.

What happened on Koh Lanta was nothing like Phuket or Koh Phi Phi (my original destination that I skipped because it was over booked) I saw scrapes and cuts and scared panicked faces. Waiting on on high ground with people searching for loved ones was heart wrenching. About sixty of us were waiting on high ground when a German man on a scooter drove up the dusty road and shouted ¨Veronica¨ about four or five times at the suddenly silent crowd before dropping his head and riding away. On my island, about 14 died. I didn't´t learn for sure until the next day that this indeed was a tsunami and how many had died on other islands.Just before dusk I wandered down to my cabin complex to find the main kitchen and reception completely shattered. It was dark and I needed light. The tourist at the pricey complex next door reluctantly leant me a flashlight under strict condescending orders that I return it. I found my bungalow and pulled a fire extinguisher from the wall to bust open my door. Water had filled and thrown things about but didn't destroy my stuff. My camera on a high shelf was fine but anything paper, the original copy of my degree, work reference letters, etc were all destroyed. I loaded everything into a black garbage bag and headed down to the beach to wash the sand from my backpack and shoes. The sand was filled with random objects, a tire, a dolls head, an open suitcase. I wandered in search of a place to sleep but prices were inflated more than 1000%. I saw fires high up on the gravel quarry where I and others first took refuge. I got a six pack and joined the suddenly open and warm Scandinavian tourists too frightened to go back to the beach.

Well I drank the six pack, talked around the fire and finally slept on a log. I woke with my backpack with two sandy pairs of shoes, luckily my wallet and passport in my back pocket and a jacket (given to me by a girlfriend in Turkey which is now the longest material possession I have owned) but my bag with all my other possessions were stolen.I had witnessed helpful Thais carry the wounded to the hospitals on their minibikes through the dangerous mud and give away water and food. And I had experienced the greed of a 1000% rise in hotel prices and most of my possessions stolen.

Days after I wandered down the beach and watched wealthy tourists sit as if nothing happened. I witnessed backpackers helping rebuild the place many of them called home. Over the last eight years I´ve lived in Thailand, Turkey, Central Europe, New York and Korea. Each time I made friends and each time it was hard to say goodbye. After Korea I decided it was enough and began shopping for my home.Now I´ve stopped globe trotting and found Panama. I just celebrated my first Christmas and New Year´s Eve, exactly one year after the tsunami disaster. Exactly one year in my pursuit to find home. I´ve written about searching for land and building structures and business ideas but what will make The Lost and Found a special place will not be the bricks and mortar but the community. The friends. I don´t even really know yet who will join Andrew and I but I feel the beginning of a community. Since I spent the last few days with my lawyer, builder and architect and with the type of people that really will make The Lost and Found special... a home, I decided to just finish this blog with their faces.

The goddess of Retroactivity

At three P.M. I’m bouncing down a rather nice stretch of the PAN AMERICAN HIGHWAY. My seat is the swing seat – vacant at the beginning of the trip but intermittently occupied by passengers on short trips. I thought of spreading my legs out and feigning sleep to discourage new passengers from encroaching on my butt space. But I wasn’t feeling particularly sleepy or selfish. I decided to let myself be amused by the open seat lottery. A Ngobe Indian woman (Six months in Panama and I still can’t pronounce this) sits next to me. She wears the traditional blue dress and smells of open fire smoke. She has the vacant eyes that most of these Indians have. I’d love to hear her story. I make a promise that one day I will. She’s gone and an old man that looks something like THIS, sits next to me. ¨Funky Town¨ by Lipps Inc. is being played over the radio speaker. I look out into the bright sunshine and smile. First I smile because the annoying reggaeton (rap/reggae mix) music constantly interrupted by the radio DJ´s bull horn, screaming and laughing isn’t playing and second because ¨Funky Town¨ brings back a distinct memory from my childhood.

I turn to the old man next to me. He sees me smile and gives back a wide toothless grin. ¨Remember this one? ¨ I ask him knowing he won’t understand. He smiles wider but says nothing.

It was the summer between grade three and grade four when I bought the Funky Town 45, the first music I ever bought. I was moving from Edmonton, a metropolis I thought, to a small town in Northern Alberta. When I hear the song I remember being in the basement of a friend’s house in the big city and daydreaming about moving to this small town.

Gotta make a move to a town that’s right for me

A town to keep me movin’ keep me groovin’ with some energy

Well I talk about it talk about it talk about it talk about it

Well I talk about talk about talk about movin’

Gotta move on Gotta move on Gotta move on

I still remember the images I had in my head while I was sitting in that basement listening. They were of me as some rich kid in this town I hadn’t yet seen. Rich just because I was from a big city and I thought everything in a smaller town must be cheaper. I pictured myself riding around gravel roads, the only kid in town with a dirt bike. (Never got it) The tallest image on the horizon is a church bell. How is it that a song can bring back childhood images from decades ago that were pure fantasy to begin with? -- One of my favorite quotes from The Sheltering Sky:

Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

I’ve been going through moments of caution when I think about my life’s plans and investing in The Lost and Found. Should I pump my life’s savings in or keep something in my retirement fund? There was the bitter European Know-It-All that flat out asked, ¨Where is your land?¨ ¨On the road to Chirique Grande,¨ I told him. He smirked and said condescendingly, ¨It will never work.¨ Holy shit. Is he right?

But then sitting on the bus next to the toothless man, listening to eighties music I think about how lucky I am. I think about how everything does only happen only a certain number of times. And at this moment one of them is repeating. There must be a playful god of retroactivity – Retrometrius? And she is visiting me again on this bus. Was it the Indian woman? I Fantasize about The Lost and Found, my new home approaching. ¨Gotta make a move to a town that’s right for me.¨ And I think Fuck it. Give it all. Events do repeat themselves but life is not an inexhaustible well.

Land Ho!!!

Andrew and I searched high and low, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and in two continents in search of land. (Editors note: this not an exaggeration as all of this is possible to do in Panama in just a weekend) We wrote about our favorite places on this blog and rated them. In the end chose none of them.

Found-- 11 hectares plus of virgin rainforest in the cool, MIST SHROUDED MOUNTAINS of Fortuna Park with views of the Pacific Ocean and towering volcanoes.

How Did We Do It?

There are plenty of great sources of information on Panama. The Escape Artist http://www.escapeartist.com/ and International Living http://www.internationalliving.com/ are inspirational. Their pictures and stories inspired me to come to Panama. But their detailed information (usually for sale) makes Panama seem like a daunting puzzle.

When we looked for land we used few of these online resources. Real Estate agents were to be a last resort. Panamanians who price land that have access to great resources are aware of the mad rush for land and price their land in the stratosphere. A tiny vacant lot on a noisy road in Bouqete is on sale for $100 000. We traveled like our future guests will travel -- by bus with the Lonely Planet in hand. We checked the Spanish language newspapers. We met travelers and locals and we told them exactly what we were up to. We looked at the web sites but they only frustrated us with high prices. In the end it was a phone number on a sign on the side of the road that led us to our land.I’m not saying it was easy or that Panama is a breeze to navigate. It isn’t. There is no secret ´How to´ manual. ¨Take it easy, breath, people have done this before, it can be done, our lawyer said after I spat out, ¨What... park... land... cut trees... approval? Road... how... access... approval... Corporation... Buy... Sell...What? ¨

Andrew and I just took it one step at time. We found the hotel with the Lonely Planet. We met a nice lady in our hotel who recommend a lawyer. We checked the prolific writers on Yahoo groups like Panama Real Estate ttp://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Panama_Real_Estate/ for references (found two) or warnings (none) and our lawyer recommended a good legal surveyor, and so on. Things roll -- no magic, no expensive ´How to Manual´. (If you’re out there searching for land however, please send us specific questions.)We got a good deal because we weren’t competing with any of the other forces that drive up the value of the property. The land is too steep for farmland and it’s in the park anyway. And those in the retirement communities filled with those looking for Florida at half the price I guess were unaware of this new road.The spot is ideal. It’s a 45 min. drive from David, a modern city with 24 hour restaurants and shopping and an airport where you can catch a one hour, $60 flight to anywhere in the country. And as Fortuna would have it (sorry) we discovered by accident a brand spanking new road, paved just weeks ago that takes you to Bouquete, the number on retirement haven in the world, in just 45 min. The PAVED ROAD in front of our land has busses from David fly past every 20 min. to take travelers on to Bocas Del Toro. (Our land begins to the right of the road in the photo.)We’re thrilled because the majority of backpackers that travel around Panama will pass by our place, The Lost and Found Eco Resort. The backpackers that land in Panama City and take the bus to Bocas will pass by as well as the ones coming from Costa Rica through Bocas and on to the city or Chiriqui highlands. Either way, if they’re taking the bus around Panama and hitting at least a couple of major spots, they will pass by our place. (And see the big sign) And The Lost and Found will offer one of the only places to stay to break up a long Panama City, Bocas trip.But right at our property you feel as though you’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s not much near by but a small restaurant for sale, a gas station, park ranger's station and a lovely Bed and Breakfast run by a friendly Swiss couple, called Finca La Suiza. They have over two hundred hectares winding around the cloud forest in and out of the park.

The Lonely Planet wrote a stellar description of this place so we hope to benefit from the fact that as isolated as this area may seem, it’s already on the Lonely Planet radar. A few km down the road, 5 hectares are for sale, for U.S. $120 000. The land owner is preparing this for a retirement community.The closest village is Gualaca, about a half hour down the mountain. The village has a SCHOOL we hope might want to work with us on a community outreach program in which long term travelers staying with us can volunteer to teach at in return for free accommodation. And just minutes from the town, up the road toward our property is a charming little STREAM, just wide enough for an inner tubing excursion. It empties into this SWIMMING HOLE.

Our land is actually titled land inside a protected park. A path used by park rangers runs through our property and into the endless hectares of hiking trails in the park. Because we’re in the park we’ll need an environmental impact assessment and approval to cut any trees. Perfect for an eco-friendly resort. We think we’ll have a road through our NEIGHBOUR´S property that will lead to the center of the land where there is a FLAT PART that may be good for the first building and the hedge maze.THIS is the view just off our property. At this point the land is far too LUSH to see past the jungle but you can imagine what the view would be like from a tree-house or in an area slightly cleared of undergrowth. There’s cell phone access all over the property and a small creak runs through it. Cool breezes will blow through the yoga hall with the smoke from incense drifting down to hedge maze. The Lost and Found will be place travelers will want to put their packs down for a while. The Lost and Found is now taking reservations now for some time in the next six months to two years. Leave your reservation in the comments section here we’ll pencil you in. First come first served.

My Dream Resort

A tired backpacker sees the huge colorful hand painted sign for The Lost and Found Lodge and Cabins on the side of the road. She knows the bus driver has stopped at the right place. She’s holding the flyer for a 25% discount for an eight day massage course she got at her hostel in David, Panama’s third largest city. She’s always wanted to learn massage but mostly she’s tired of the road and wants to put her pack down for a few days in a comfortable place, challenge herself by learning something new and above all be in a friendly environment that facilitates meeting and interacting with other backpackers.

After the short hike into the virgin jungle rainforest she’s greeted by one of the friendly owners. She is offered the customary free drink the other backpackers have been talking about, a shooter called The Bite, a drop of the snake wine (with a real snake in the bottle), tequila and a dash of Tabasco. Instead she opts for the free massage given by one of the former massage students who had taken the course the previous week and needs to practice. She’s thinking about trying out a three day fast directed by one of the doctors that runs the health centre. Maybe she’ll do the eight day fast if it goes well or might just try sticking to the raw, fresh and organic menu. There are bright signs that were made by other backpackers in the art centre pointing the direction to the climbing wall, the horse stables, the organic and of course the garden with the famous labyrinth and hedge maze. But she’s given the tour anyway. She’s shown where the backpackers are staying in hammocks for two dollars. It looks something like THIS. The TENTS are a buck more and tree houses a few bucks more but she decided to splurge and stay in one of the cabins. Her pyramid shaped cabin is actually owned by a woman in Amsterdam who stays in Panama only for the winters. Actually most of the cabins are owned by individuals. Some live there year round others rent out on a rotating basis when they’re away. Some are painted in bright psychedelic colors and are given names like The Cuckoo’s Nest and The House of Usher. Hers is named Luxor. It might look like THIS but a little smaller.She puts her pack down and uses the outdoor shower, shielded by simple bamboo behind her cabin. Then she wanders down to the main lodge and finds other back packers playing darts, ping pong and board games. Others are just relaxing, drinking local Panamanian beers. They just help themselves to the fridge and mark down whatever they drink next to their names.

The walls are covered with posters about the many activities and courses. There’s a rock climbing wall, river rafting trips, mountain bike tours, a four day eco-adventure survival course/trek to the Caribbean. (The possibilities of the courses offered are endless, almost everyone has something to teach – painting, arts and crafts, meditation, massage, yoga, Tai Chi, every kind of dance lesson, Spanish and English classes, archery, beer and wine making, breath mechanics, guitar lessons or other music lessons, creative writing seminars, maybe poetry open mike nights, fitness classes, running groups, first aid classes, Shamanism, organic farming and cooking.)

She steps into the library where a couple of people are quietly reading. The walls are covered with pictures of FAMOUS LABYRINTHS from around the world. She had almost forgotten about that. So she leaves the lodge, crosses past the badminton nets and sees THE ENTRANCE to the four acre HEDGE MAZE THAT LOOKS LIKE THIS. She wanders around listening to the birds, stopping occasionally to breathe in the flowers and gaze up at the mountains. She’s sees an old man doing Tai Chi next to a small statue of a Greek god. She looks down and almost missed a cryptic message made of broken ceramic pieces on the path. Half an hour later she comes to a clearing and sees several others tanning themselves next to a large fountain slightly resembling a big bird bath. “Is this the end?” she asks. She learns the hedge maze isn’t about beginning and ending. She wanders more and finds a smaller stone labyrinth maybe LIKE THIS and a little later, THE TOWER. She climbs the tower and sees the stunning view above the trees. She noticed she only saw a few of the things in the maze. She missed the two guys PLAYING CHESS on the life sized chess board. There she finds a map and has a birds eye view of the maze to help her find her way out.Back at the lodge she re-unites with the massage instructor she got the flyer from. He tells her there’s a demonstration by one of the former students and a short question and answer session for those who’ve signed up for the course. The course starts in two days. “It can’t start tomorrow,” her instructor says, “There’s family dinner (common group meal) then a kite and paper lantern parade, then drumming by the fire pit and drinking and dancing until dawn.”She does indeed dance ‘till dawn and needs the day after hangover special. An aspirin and ice blended orange juice, made with the fresh oranges grown in the orchard. She lies in one of the hammock areas near the lodge that is playing the softer music. She listens to Bob Dylan thinking about the new friends she met the night before and how many days she wants to extend her trip. When she falls asleep she thinks about how much she can get for her car back home and the possibilities of buying one of the cabins herself. She heard at family dinner she gets a cheaper monthly rate if she volunteers to teach English to children at one of schools in the town nearby. Her life has changed.I dream about a place like this I think it’s all still in the realm of the possible. I’d love to hear your dream place in the comments field. Or tell me what things you would add to make this place even better.I imagine this place would start with an inexpensive hammock and tent area like those I wrote about in a previous blog. People can come and stay for free if they help and given free materials to help create the art. The instructors also stay for free. At first the instructors can ask for donations from the students. Of course it may take time at first to find students but putting up posters and handing out discount flyers at other backpacker centres will help. Later when they hit their stride and have satisfied customers, they can charge a set price, a certain percent goes to the lodge but they still don’t pay for their accommodations.

This works because both the instructors and the lodge will have it in their best interest to get customers and promote the place. The instructors really don’t risk anything but their time.I don’t imagine backpackers paying to stay either until, the restaurant, and the lodge is running efficiently. When things start to run I can see asking for donations but I think it’s better to have a solid reputation and a good customer base before asking for money. When prices are introduced I don’t imagine them to high except for luxury things like the Internet. We could also rent binoculars and cameras for bird watching. All profit can be reinvested in the project to continue building cabins or add things like a climbing wall or swimming pool. The profit for the owners will be made through their investment in the land. If enough land is bought a percentage can be sold. The value of the land will be much higher when there is a reputable eco-friendly resort next to it. Individual lots with cabins can also be sold.There are several ways to participate in this project. One is to invest with us.

Andrew and I will buy land but we would also speak with anyone who wants to invest with us and help shape the vision of The Panama Project. Those with less money can save now to buy a cabin later to rent out or sell at later date. We might consider pre-selling cabins at a reduced rate. If there is profit from the sale it can be used to fund expansion of the lodge. If you have a skill like cooking, we might consider contracting out our restaurant. Those without money can also participate. Once we’re up and running anyone with a skill or art to teach can stay for free. We won’t ask for a percentage until you’re up and running smoothly. Polish up on your skills now, save a few dollars to offset your costs and come down. Or come down and work at a place like Los Quetzeles (previous blog) or teach English until construction starts. Before we’re open to the public anyone wanting to come down to paint and create art or even just hammer nails can have free room and board. And there are ways to participate that I haven’t even thought of.

Andrew and I are close to choosing land. The next steps would be getting a lawyer, negotiating, drawing up buy/sell agreement between us, surveying the land and contracting an architect to make blueprints before doing my favorite part – planting the hedge seedlings for the labyrinth. When construction starts depends on what we pay for our land but it may have to wait one year for us to round up more cash. Once construction does start the first thing we’ll put up will be simple kitchen, and a tent/hammock area. When that’s finished we’ll be ready to invite anyone interested to come and start developing the artwork, and if there are instructors, start offering courses to the few backpackers that wander in. And the ball starts rolling.

First Impressions

I left my run down $72 dollar a night, hostel in Manhattan and took a $60 cab to Newark airport. The lady at the US Airways check in was no lady. “You have no onward ticket. You can’t get on this plane.” She scolded with the condescending glare of a middle school math teacher two years away from receiving her pension and one month away from burning out. I have a long list of travel woes, but in brief I had to pull out the credit card and had a hell of time getting a refund later from US Airways for my ticket back to the States.

I wandered the next day. To be objective it was mix of excitement and dread. I wandered down AVENIDA CENTRAL an exciting crowded mix of every kind of person except it seemed, gringos. At the Parque Santa Ana I saw the landmark COCA COLA CAFÉ but made a wrong turn HERE and wandered down one of the dangerous areas called Chorrillo. When I day dreamed in Korea about my first few months here I thought I would buy a volkeswagon van and sell cocktails out the back to learn about business in Panama. They worked in Bangkok and I thought they might work in Casco Viejo. But when I was looking at the dilapidated BUILDINGS in Chorillo I thought these people will drink all the booze, then drink the gas except for the little they leave to cook me to sell my flesh out of the back of their new van.Casco Viejo and Why People Are Falling In Love With ItI was relieved when I actually found CASCO VIEJO. LAUGHING CHILDREN playing on cobblestone STREETS. Life is not a road but ALLEYWAYS and PIAZZAS I read once on the wall of hostel in Budapest. Casco Viejo certainly has those. There are stunning views of PANAMA CITY. Andrew and I went back there to take a closer look and we found a beautifully restored condo development. We made a quick video. CLICK HERE and be patient for the download.Not Perfect YetBut Casco Viejo doesn’t have the people on an afternoon stroll with their gelatos. No groups of backpackers hanging out playing hacky sack. No buskers. But if should. There are a few nice restaurants, but the clubs and bars fell out of vogue with most Panamanians. TAKE FIVE a cool, sleepy jazz bar that reflects its namesake was the busiest place when I ventured there on weekend night.Casco Viejo is as beautiful as any European city and I can see why foreigners are buying up the property and doing their best to renovate and promote it.

For sure, it was not love at first sight when I arrived. Hot, scary sometimes and filled with the shock of how much work was ahead of me to turn my dreams into action. I couldn’t find a Greenwich Village type coffee shop with someone reading a Hemmingway novel I could approach. There was no ready made expat community playing pool in bars. (You have to find them on the web www.expatsinpanama.com) But then I remembered that I chose this place because I wanted more of a homogeneous atmosphere without the US and Them I experienced in Asia. The reasons the foreigners are not crowded into their own coffee shops and bars is because Panamanians are people you want to know and their bars places you want to be. You don’t have to huddle with your own. This might take more work – it means learning the language.There is a lot of work to be done to make Casco Viejo the next Paris of 20’s. There’s a lot of work for me and The Panama Project. But the most rewarding goals are often the most difficult to achieve. But that is what is exciting about Panama. It’s not quite here yet, but those that are building it feel the excitement, challenge and sometimes frustration of being the ones responsible for bringing it.

Best Hostels in the World

The top three places I’ve ever been in reverse order:

3) Kadir’s Tree Houses in Olympus, Turkey -- a national park with a phenomenon that I’ve been told gave rise to the Chimera myth. From deep within the bowels of the earth gases ignite when they reach the oxygen at the surface. The fires used to be large enough to be seen many miles from the coast. There is also a nice pebble beach that has a kind of Galleon type ship called a Gullet moored offshore carrying backpackers that stay in the tree houses built amongst Roman Ruins. But this is not why people stay. It’s the communal tree houses run by Kadir that make people set their packs down for longer than they thought. Breakfast in the big common hall. Psychedelic painted tree houses with names like – The White House, The House of Usher, Jabbah the Hut. There’s a common fire pit that has nightly congregations. This is one of the places I keep in mind when I dream of building something in Panama.

2) Finca Ixobel, Guatemala -- In the middle of nowhere in Guatemala, set among buried Mayan Pyramids and deep limestone caves. An American woman kept it going after her husband was killed in the savage civil war. The parrot interrupted my chess game, the monkey could unscrew my toothpaste top and devour it, I almost lost my life in a river cave, poisonous snakes abound but it makes number two. Again the communal aspect hooked me. Just take beer from the fridge and mark it down. The bill was bigger than I thought when she added up all those after dinner coffees and cinnamon buns. The activities made me stay. Maps for self guided tours through caves and a big common room for group dinners make it a place to think about when I dream about what to do here.

3) Haad Tien, Koh Pha-Ngan, Thailand -- I call it the Hippy Beach in a short sighted description to those who need the short hand. Some landed on the beach and saw the hugging and dancing and strange clothes and thought it was a cult. Spontaneous hugging and dancing? Must be a cult. I was fleeing the desolation of post tsunami Koh Lanta and then the impersonal TV sets and horny tourists of Haad Rin. (Well I wouldn’t have fled if they were female) I was going to leave Haad Tien after the massage course but stayed to have a credit card mailed to me that was taken by the horrible disastrous Tsunami. Then the Shamanism course started and I decided to hang with new friends after old friends left.Then there was Church to stay for. In the fifties people in North America went to church to show off their new hat and to see and be seen and to catch up with gossip. Haad Tien is the centre of three beaches accessible only by long tail boats when the waves aren’t too high or by a two hour trek through the jungle. The three beaches come together once a week, to gossip, to show off new clothes, to dance – well not at church but at Guys Bar, a once a week ritual of dance, drink and well… for many hallucinogens. Some people on these three beaches eat fresh raw and organic food. Some do eight day colonic cleanses. Some keenly read the Tao of Love, Sex and Longevity and will not mix their carbs and their proteins. Many do Yoga and Tai Chi and some kind of breathing. (Still don’t know how to study breath mechanics) But there were also mushroom shakes and MDMA and pot. Most people did a combination of healthy and unhealthy things. Some would light a cigarette as they spoke about the benefits of fasting. For some it was a spiritual awakening. Others thought they were escaping rat race problems but slid down a slope losing self esteem and confidence.I sometimes wonder if two people were not once sitting on an empty beach smoking weed and talking, “I bet I could get people to not eat and give me $350 a week.” The other said, “I bet I could make people live in a prison like Buddhist monastery and not talk and give me $350 a week (another popular thing people do when they put their packs down is a silent meditation retreat). And it was done.O.K. I exaggerate. Remember this is my favourite place in the world. But on Haad Tien, the peace, love and community is not practiced by the owners of the establishments that created it. The peace love and community is there because of the people they managed to attract. The seed of this was what I imagine to have been a well meaning resort called The Sanctuary now often called the Scamtuary. I loved this place but it made me dream about how much more it could be. If The Sanctuary didn’t milk its bread and butter, the people that teach the courses that make people stay. If only those teaching the courses would come together. Hmmmm.As far as I know Panama has no place nearly has unique and as cool as these… Yet.

How did I end up in Panama?

Maybe the seed was planted one of the dark mornings in February when I shielded my face through ass biting winds to work at a desk in a downtown office tower. Between the four or five hours of sunlight that barely penetrated the stale industrial lighting I may have stopped at a Corona ad in a magazine I was flipping through. Coconut palms, olive skinned girls, pristine white sand beaches... You've seen the ads. That may have been the time I thought to myself, "I will lie in a hammock on a tropical island... and this will be home." But the seed was still a long way off from sprouting.

There were (are) obstacles. I traveled and taught ESL to erase the red ink from my student loans and kept my eyes open to find this perfect life I saw in the magazine. Thailand (where I got my CELTA certificate) had the beaches but everyone wants to teach there so are easily exploited and replaced. It's cheap to live but not great to earn and save money. You can make a fair chunk of change in Saudi Arabia but then in the delirium of heat exhaustion you come to the epiphany that money is useless if you forget how to take pleasure in life. And of course the women may be olive skinned in the Gulf States but if you dare to lift up the veil to check, it has consequences. I went to Istanbul and fell in love. I was in a groove there but as a good friend told me, 'Be mindful of grooves, they are sometimes a thin veil for a rut.' A career there like journalism would bring job satisfaction but would be paid in lira -- worth nothing after the bills are paid. After three years there I paid off my student loans with US dollars teaching at a private high school but the classes were like small scale riots and tear gas was frowned upon. I couldn't run a business unless at the mercy of a Turkish business partner. Owning land was impossible at the time and restricted now.

Was there no paradise where quality of life, job satisfaction and money came together? I decided to look at the world like a shopping mall. Pick and choose which one to go to but not expecting one store to have it all. Canada is like a bookstore, great to get an education and bring the kids to play in a safe place. And if they do fall down the bandages are free. But man they need to fix that central heating. The cafe with the Turkish coffee was great but for me not to a place to linger indefinitely. There was no perfect place. I decided to take what I need from each place so that that eventually I will come to rest a great place with what I need. The seed had sprouted.

The next place I decided to go was the bank. Friendly, good service, efficient but rather dull -- Korea. Korea was the bank that made Panama happen. Peers in Canada were all taking advantage of low interest rates and the housing boom and locking themselves into mortgages. I put my money in stocks and wondered what I would one day do with it. Andrew talked about a couple of Web sites called International Living and The Escape Artist.Here I discovered that Panama had what I wanted. The nicest city in Central America, diving, surfing, sailing, fishing and olive skinned girls. It was the Corona ad I had seen in the magazine. But more importantly were the foreigner friendly laws regarding the pensionado program, visas for foreigners and not only could foreigners own businesses they are given the red tape red carpet and tax incentives. And land was going to boom when retirees discovered it. I had decided Panama was the place. My little sapling was poking its head from the dirt.After three and half years in Korea it was time to leave the bank. I sold most of what I had in Korea and lost most of the rest in the tsunami in Thailand. But as Janis once said, 'Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.' I was unscathed but I wanted to leave the tsunami side of Thailand. I remembered a poster I saw in Bangkok for a massage course on Koh Pha-ngan. I registered online so I secure a room at the resort. Near the famous Full Moon Beach you can take a long tail boat to a group of three isolated beaches. It is an odd mix of people doing very healthy things like fasting, eating organic, meditating, practicing yoga and doing what some may see as unhealthy like hallucinogens and smoking various things. I met hippies, yuppies, doctors, lawyers, shamans, tango instructors, teachers and students and got their e-mail addresses and some are reading this now. During a break in my massage course the tango instructor from Stockholm took the hand of the student from Canada and danced. They caught everyone's attention. I asked the student if she would stay one more week to take a tango lesson. And I asked the tango instructor if he would stay to teach tango. Both emphatically answered, "Yes". And I thought more about what I could do in PanamaI imagined a bar on the beach. Typical beach bar. Jenga. Maybe an old computer for customers to download music. Cocktails served with a leather cup with dice. Roll doubles and the next one is on the house. Keg nights with cheap beer. Trivial nights. Topless Scandinavian Tuesdays. Blended screwdriver specials with Tylenol and Tums for those who show up before noon. But the beach in Thailand got me thinking about the value of combining talents and cooperation. I stayed on the beach in Thailand because my eight day massage course ended not soon before the eight day Shamanism course started.Maybe my customers could sign up in the bar for a deep sea fishing trip. The captain can bring the catch and the customers back and the chef can cook the fish and the customers can eat for free if they buy drinks. Why not take this cooperation further? I can give coupons to use for the coffee shop/used bookstore/craft shop next door. The bungalows and the adjacent land can give coupons to my bar. Together we could build a hall for those massage courses or tango lessons. Why stop there? Music lessons, yoga, writing workshops, etc. Better yet, build this together and watch how cooperation can increase the value of the land we bought.This dream may be still distant. But right now I can look over the monitor at my apartment in Panama City. I can see the yachts at the hotel across the street sail off to fish around the island of Tobaga as pelicans dive around them in the bay. That ass biting wind in Canada is distant too. The seed is growing and it looks a lot like a coconut tree. Backpack, Panama, eco lodge backpacker eco-lodge, hiking, resort, backpacker, backpacking hostel adventure tours gap trails, fortuna bird birding tour adventure cloud forest jungle Chiriqui central America costa ricaBackpack, Panama, eco lodge backpacker eco-lodge, hiking, resort, backpacker, backpacking hostel adventure tours gap trails, fortuna bird birding tour adventure cloud forest jungle Chiriqui central America costa ricaBackpack, Panama, eco lodge backpacker eco-lodge, hiking, resort, backpacker, backpacking hostel adventure tours gap trails, fortuna bird birding tour adventure cloud forest jungle Chiriqui central America costa ricaBackpack, Panama, eco lodge backpacker eco-lodge, hiking, resort, backpacker, backpacking hostel adventure tours gap trails, fortuna bird birding tour adventure cloud forest jungle Chiriqui central America costa rica
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