Trek Photos

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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 jungle hostel website at www.lostandfoundlodge.com

The Little Fish and Dam

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

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

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

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.