A man, a plan, a canal: Panama

Panama City

Sept 22 - 25

Marbella

If you ever find yourself in need of a hostel in the Marbella district of Panama City, we highly recommend El Machico, which is brand new and is run by two extremely friendly and helpful Italian guys. These guys will wait in the street with you in order to help you negotiate cab fare. They will proudly serve you a free breakfast of white bread and grape jelly. They are eager to provide you with directions, even when those directions all start sounding a lot like "leave the hostel and turn left and then you are there!" They´re stoked about doing your laundry. They are the best and the whole world could benefit from having more effusive Italians in it.

We checked into El Machico on the evening of the 22nd just in time to watch a group of young Australians push each other into the pool and threaten drunkenly for hours to order pizzas from Pizza Hut.

Casco Viejo

The next day our first stop was Casco Viejo, the city's old town. The route that connects Casco Viejo to the towering financial district where we were staying is a walkway along the bay that is exceptionally pleasant and almost aggressively well planned, with its play structures, outdoor gyms, waxy lawns and gardens, and periodic art pieces. Panamanians treat fitness like a religion -- as soon as 5:30 rolls around, those outdoor gyms are full of young business-people just getting out of work, and the walkway looks like the route of a marathon with all of the serious joggers passing through in pristine workout gear.

Casco Viejo is about half beautifully preserved old buildings, and half just old buildings with rusted door hinges that smell a little like urine. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, so it's slowly working its way toward refurbishing the whole area, and is for the most part very picturesque and not sketchy. And it is home to the absolute best mojito you will ever find, at a cafe called The Da Vinci, where they hand-make their own pasta and the wait staff scare away their customers by hovering austerely over anyone who pauses along the sidewalk to glance at the menu. It is delicious and always empty.

Casco Viejo by day!

 

Casco Viejo by eve'!

The best mojito ever made (ignore the embarassing drink choice to the left)

A second Honorable Food Mention to the restaurant Sake, where they draped sauteed plantains over their sushi rolls and it was so good, even if they DID make us sit on the patio because we were wearing shorts.

Panama Canal

This year is the Panama Canal's 100th birthday! We went to the Visitors Center at the Miraflores Locks of  the canal and arrived just at the right time (9-12 daily!) to see cargo ships passing through. We ate hot dogs and potato chips, and sat to watch boats wedge their robust frames through a gate only a meter wider than their own breadth. Now, the Panama Canal is unquestionably an engineering marvel, and very cool to see in person. Were the hoards of tourists gathered on the observation deck really justified in pushing each other aside to take minute by minute photos of a cargo ship moving at a glacial pace through a 30 meter gap? Jury's still out on that one.

We walked through the four floors of the museum, which in addition to explaining the mechanics and history of the canal, also tries admirably to position it to children as something really fun and adventurous. There is a room devoted to describing all manner of fearsome insects and wildlife that inhabit the surrounding area, an animated 3D video, and a "simulation room" which shows you a captain's-eye-view of a cargo ship moving slowly through a narrow passage. A for effort.

This is a lock

Odd chunks of the canal's history, particularly the parts involving its transferral as a project from one nationality to another, are skimmed over entirely. But one thing is notably clear throughout the exhibit -- the canal may be an incredible feat of engineering, but the truly laudable success is in Panama's triumphant repossession of the canal in 2000 and its recent decision to expand the locks for enhanced commercial prospects. If your knowledge was based solely on the literature of this museum, you would assume an impassioned rebellion on the part of the Panamanian public had forced the grudging hand of the United States to loosen its chokehold on the rights to the Panama Canal, and turn it back to its rightful owner-- the PEOPLE! Its a much better story than saying that Jimmy Carter just signed the handover into motion in 1977 due to boring business matters with China, which is what actually happened.

Amador Causeway

Everybody told us that a really nice thing to do in Panama City is to walk along the Amador Causeway, which is a strip of land that extends out into the bay and is scenic and has little shops along the way. What exactly nobody told us before we stepped out of the taxi that took us to the very end of it and then sped away (presumably laughing) was that the Amador Causeway was under construction, and thus all of the views were obstructed by temporary walls and burlap-covered chain link fence. We walked the length of it anyway, in what was essentially a really hot, paved tunnel. And then, perhaps because Eian just felt a spiritual tug leading him to the promised land, we continued to walk for another two hours, down unpopulated stretches of frontage roads, following some locals over a highway.

"Wait," Eian said at last, his eyes turned toward the water and the setting sun. "Do you see that?" He sniffed the air. Tested the wind.

"What is it?" I asked. "Is this the wrong highway?" I had been suspecting that it was.

"No. A skate park." He broke into a run, the teeth of his backpack's broken zipper tearing away from each other with his every joyous leap. And there, off of the overpass, around the corner, across an expanse of grass, were the trucks of airborne skateboards glinting against cloudless blue sky. As though coming upon an oasis in the desert, Eian's face shone with disbelief and enchantment. Borrowing a board from a Venezuelan teenager, he proceeded to skate the cement bowl for three glorious minutes, torn between concentrating on his craft and gazing happily at the surrounding green hills and the distant pastel walls of Casco Viejo.

And then we stopped on our way home at Da Vinci for celebratory mojitos.

Next stop; Boquete and the worst volcano ever hiked.

Colombia Part 3: Welcome to Panama!

Sept 19 -- Sept 22

Most backpackers, when they need to get from Cartagena to Panama, either fly or sail via one of the many boats that pinball between the two countries. The cost for either option used to be significantly cheaper, but with the rapid increase in tourism to Cartagena, the price has doubled in only the last two years or so. A sailboat ride that used to be between two and three hundred US dollars now costs $550 to get to the Panamanian coast, and a plane ticket isn't much cheaper.

But don't worry guys, because for the low, low price of $150, we can get you not just to Panama! All you have to do is go through the mildly unsavory city of Turbo!

Graphic swiped from panamacolombiasailing.com

Here's the route:
We took a five hour bus ride from Cartagena to Monteria, then a five hour ride from there to Turbo. From Turbo we took a two hour boat ride to Capurgana, and another boat ride, this one only 20 minutes, to the Panamanian town of Puerto Obaldia. In Puerto Obaldia we took a short flight to Panama City. 

Turbo sits right in the Northwestern pocket of Caribbean Colombia, and thus is the only artery through which one may exit Colombia overland to the North. It has a not wholly undeserved reputation for being awful, on account of all the activity there that involves the transport of illegal substances over the border. And if you ask any hostel in Cartagena for information about how to get to Turbo, they will say they don't know, and you shouldn't go there anyway, it's far too dangerous, here, take this brochure about sailing trips.

But of course Cartagena doesn't want you going through Turbo -- they rake in too many pesos selling boozy island-hopping adventures to care about directing you elsewhere. And we are here to tell you, Turbo is not as bad as Cartagena likes to make it out to be. Though still maybe a little rough around the edges.

We left Cartagena the morning of Friday the 19th. The bus station is filled with competing bus companies, and as soon as we stepped inside, an agent from each materialized at our sides to 'help' us make our ticket reservations. Thanks, guys! After painstakingly double and triple checking with the lady at the information desk, we found the right bus, a twelve passenger van. On the way, the driver stopped excitedly to pick up a couple on the side of the road, ushering them over only to realize that, in fact, all of the seats were aready full. He squeezed the woman into the aisle anyway, and the man waited in the rain for the next bus.

The van dropped us off several blocks from where it actually told us it would, but you know, still in Turbo, so points for trying. We only had to ask directions three times before making it to our hotel, Residencias Florida, run by the very helpful and intuitive John Boltero. When making our reservation with John over the phone, at no point did we actually tell him that our reason for spending a night in Turbo was to catch a boat out of there the following morning, but he called the boathouse and reserved us tickets anyway. I think John's been in this business awhile.

Toilet for pillow.

The Residencias Florida is barred at the entrance, and the lobby is guarded by a German Shepherd named Sammy who lies sprawled in the middle of the room, staring at the door. On the other side of Sammy is the door to John's room, and a small balcony where John and his friends sit on plastic green chairs and smoke. The guests' rooms are furnished with a bed beneath a ceiling fan, and a toilet directly behind the head of the bed, next to the shower, which is a bare pipe jutting out from the wall.

Our room smelled overpoweringly of bleach. We went to bed with our pillows covering our faces, our eyes burning. The next morning John poured us coffee into Dixie cups and sat with us in the lobby, and the three of us watched The Dog Whisperer in Spanish until it was time for us to catch our boat to the Colombian coastal town of Capurgana.

Splash zone.

We had heard that one should try to get a seat at the back of the boat, to avoid getting slammed around on the waves up front, as that is allegedly how grievous injuries have happened in the past. Fortunately for us, the waters are relatively calm this season, because guess which lucky people got front row seats! I have a theory about seating on these boats, and that is that if you are a white person, you are not going to get first pick. Fair enough. For your own future reference, here is the trick all the locals know -- when the ticket taker calls for all the elderly and mothers with children to board first, you just go. Every single person in our launch stepped up claiming to be elderly, with the exception of about six of us who were foreigners.

Capurgana's real pretty.

When we reached Capurgana, a fellow passenger, and irritating French woman, told us she'd found the cheapest hostel there, so we followed her to a little jungle fort called La Bohemia (it was French). When I told her I was from Napa, she sniffed and said, as if graciously searching for something kind to say of the new world, 'I've had some decent wine from Chile...'

Charming.

Eian thoughfully snuggles a cat at La Bohemia. 

Capurgana is a little village, five blocks by five blocks. The social center of town is a sports field, and at almost any time of day, there is either a futbol or baseball game being played. Locals sit on the porches of the surrounding restaurants to watch, and blast -- BLAST--their music at insane decibels. We went for a hike into the jungle and were two hours' walking distance away, and one town over, before we could finally no longer hear it.

Oh, it's Anytime O'clock? Time for a village wide soccer game!

Beyond the sports field is a small airport. No one ever talks about this airport. The planes leaving fly only to the United States. Make of that what you will. On the coastline sits a derelict hotel that children play in now. Apparently it was once a magnificent resort, but the owner was arrested for exporting cocaine a few years ago, and no one has done anything with the remains of it.

The place is filled with military personnel, some of them uniformed and on duty, and some of them in swim trunks, twirling semi-automatics as they stroll along the beach.

For breakfast in the morning, we walked to a restaurant called La Arca de Noe, where a woman said 'Do you want breakfast?' We said yes, and she told us to sit down. Ten minutes later she brought us a plate of eggs, white bread, and a slab of cheese. Her kids wandered around our table, trying to stare without actually staring at Eian's guaged ears.

Hiking through the jungle to Sapzurro.

The border of Panama was within hiking distance, so after breakfast we hiked over the hill along the outskirts of the Darien Forest, to the town of Sapzurro, and then into the Panamanian village of La Miel. When we got into Sapzurro, which is sleepier and smaller than Capurgana, a man, without being prompted, simply saw us and pointed: 'La Miel, that way.' At the border a pair of military personnel sat listening to music, and watched with amusement as we took pictures beneath the 'Welcome to Panama' sign. They didn't bother with stamping our passports -- there's not really anywhere we could go beyond La Miel without taking a machete to the forest.

Steps up to the border of Panama

As we made our way down the main street of the village, we passed an awning, under which a group of people were sitting and nodding along to their music that was honestly louder than I had even thought sound could be? It was so loud, I was surprised we couldn't actually see it pushing the air around us. And the people were just listening casually next to the speaker, nodding their heads like, 'great song, right?' The eardrums on this coast are insane.

We sat on the beach and had fish and rice, and watched a boat bring in a whole soccer team of excited little boys holding trophies.

La Miel

Later we grabbed a boat back to Capurgana, and it was fun passing the chunk of jungle we'd hiked through to get there.

Storm's abrewin'

In the morning we took another boat up the coastline for Puerto Obaldia, a border town of Panama where we had heard they take security very seriously. As in, everything must come out of your bags to be checked, they will hold your passport for hours, they'll want to see proof of your intent to leave Panama, and proof that you have enough money to sustain yourself while you are there -- that includes bank statements and at least two credit cards. So we were prepared for the worst.

And all of this is true if you are Colombian. But it turns out Panama doesn't really care that much about what's in the backpack of an American. And when you tell them about your vague plan to be in Costa Rica at some point, they look at each other and shrug, like 'good enough for me! Give these crazy kids a stamp!'

We walked the length of the town, about three blocks, to weigh our bags and check in for our flight. No one handed us tickets. On their receipts for our fares, both of our names were spelled wrong. Not a problem, as no one would trouble themselves with looking at our names for this flight again.

We were early for our 11:50 flight, so we went to a restaurant that was entirely empty except for the cook, who stared us down for several seconds before yelling for her neighbor to come help her in the kitchen and disappearing. We sat down at a table, thinking to ourselves, 'let's eat quickly so we can get over to the airport with enough time to get through security.' LOL.

The airport consisted of one lobby filled with folding chairs, with bars instead of walls on two sides of it. There was one lady inside pacing around, who beckoned us forward when we showed hesitation at moving beyond the 'No Trespassing' sign on the gate. We took seats and hung out until 11:50. And then until 12:50. We went up to ask the pacing lady when the plane was going to arrive. She shrugged and said, 'The plane is in Panama.' 

The plane

Just as we'd been having the eery feeling that we'd be the only people on the flight, Eian looked across the street and realized the nearest restaurant was full of people with suitcases. And when the plane came bursting into view at 1:45, they all jumped up and hustled over to the lobby/jail. The pilots, two high-fiving bros who looked younger than us, left the plane smacking each other with papers and swaggering because they knew they looked sharp in their pilot costumes. They came over to let us onto the runway, and we stepped into the nine passenger plane and climbed over the top of all the seats, and also other passengers, to get to our spots. The pilots hopped in and we left. This plane landed, turned around and took off again in the span of probably ten minutes.

Hola Panama!

The flight was the best we've ever taken, even with the crampedness.The windows were four times the size of a regular plane window, and the view was amazing as we flew right over the Darien Gap rimmed with coastline, and then the dense forest cleared and it was all shiny cars and skyscrapers.

The ride was an hour, and then we landed in Panama City! And then all nine of us waited in a room for five years for our passports to clear. WOO! YEAH! WELCOME TO PANAMA GUYS, SIT RIGHT DOWN AND ENJOY THIS HOLDING CELL, HOPE YOU HAVE A DEEP AND ABIDING APPRECIATION FOR CANALS, BYE!

Next post is going to feature special guest The Panama Canal, with an honorable mention to its museum's barely disguised contempt for America.

Colombia Part 2

Sept 15 - Sept 18

On the morning after we rolled around in mud for twenty minutes and called it an important cultural experience, we woke up at Hostel Mamallena without a plan for the rest of our time in Colombia. We realized that we may have overestimated the number of days we would want to keep blowing money in Cartagena, so we made a split decision to get on a bus leaving twenty minutes later...

For SANTA MARTA. And adventure.

This decision turned out to be an excellent one, but we can't really take all the credit for its ingenuity, because basically we just followed Charlotte and Andreas. They didn't invite us, per se, so much as conversationally share their plans with us over breakfast, but that didn't stop us from suckering on to them like hungry leeches.

Santa Marta is four hours east of Cartagena. After leaving the hostel, the bus stopped for about 45 minutes at a bus station, presumably in hopes of filling that very last seat. Spoiler alert: we did not. Oh, Colombia. So five hours later we arrived at our hostel, The Dreamer, just in time to watch Deuce Bigelow for Monday Movie Night (thank God).

And on Tuesday we spent the day being the stars of our own adventure movie at...

Tayrona National Park

The directions we were given for getting to Tayrona Park by our hostel were, ¨go out to the street and wait for a green and white bus to drive by. You're white, so they'll assume you need a ride.¨ The first green and white bus we saw when we got out to the street was parked, not the correct bus, and the driver was clearly on his break, but we walked up anyway and asked if he was going to Tayrona.  He said no, but that he would take us to a bus that would. This guy drove us to two buses parked on the side of a road. As soon as we got out, one bus driver yelled ¨Tayrona? I'll take you there for 10,000 pesos!¨ The other driver said ¨I'll take you for 7,000! Come with me!¨ We hesitated briefly, thinking maybe the first guy would have a counter offer, but he just shrugged like, ¨fuck it, you win.¨ So we went with the second guy, and looked back to wave to the man who had driven us there, who had even stayed to make sure we got on the right bus. Colombians might take labored, circuitous routes getting from A to B, but they take a genuine interest in helping you get there too.

Our bus was full of Colombians, none of whom were going to Tayrona, and I suspect Tayrona is not even a regular stop for this bus. But I'm not sure that 'regular stops' exist anyway. The bus dropped us at the outside of the park, at which point we could have taken a shuttle to the beginning of the hike. But because we are rugged adventurers, and also because we were unaware of the shuttle at the time, we walked in for about an hour. It was pretty and we saw monkeys, so it was all good.

The real jungle hike, closer to the belly of the park, was absolutely amazing. It's exactly what you would expect a jungle hike to look like if your only frame of reference was Indiana Jones. The hike winds out to the coast, and when you stand on the beach and look back at the forest behind you, with the rows of canopies layered into the hills and deep grey storm clouds rolling over them, it really does look like a movie.

When a dog stares into the abyss, the abyss stares back into him.

The path cuts out to a beach for a moment before continuing on through the trees, and coming from our direction, there was no sign indicating that this wasn't the end of the trail. So we stepped onto the beach, looking for the bar and hammock rental we´d been told would be there. Looking up and down the coast, we saw only a man hurrying over and shouting at us, waving his arms frantically to get our attention. He told us to get off the beach and led us into the trees to where the trail continued. Pointing at a 'Don't go on the beach' sign that we wouldn't have seen until we´d actually crossed the beach, he stared at us and said, incredulous, as though exhausted of explaining this to tourists, 'It's right there. In six languages.' That guy has a thankless role in Colombia's national parks system.

The Forbidden Beach

The park has an option to either hike on one trail to the coast, or to ride horses on another, so on the way out, we chose the horses (which look really healthy and well-cared for, a fact you might doubt if you were looking only at the cheap cost to ride one. But I'm here to tell you, they look good, and that park does not hurt for cash). As we headed out on horseback with a guide walking along beside us, it started to drizzle, and flashes of lightning began showing through the canopy. It took about five minutes for the storm to evolve into thundering downpour. It was absolutely the best. Maybe not the best for all the stuff in our backpacks, but for us it was the best. Because we were riding horses through a Colombian rain forest, in escape from a thunderstorm.

Soaked by the end of the ride, we got in a taxi (which slowed down when we passed pedestrians to ask if they needed a ride -- gotta fill that middle seat), and ate quesadillas at the hostel in celebration of 'Mexican Night.'

Coffee Farm

And what could possibly top that epic adventure but a sedate tour of a coffee farm, amirite? Wednesday we headed to Minca to learn about coffee production. Our tour guide Jorge picked us up, along with a couple from Scotland, Catherine and David (lot of couples going on in the South America backpacking scene), and drove us for an hour and a half in his taxi sedan up mountain roads riddled with potholes and rocks that scraped alarmingly against the undercarriage of the car. People who had done this tour previously said they had gone in a Jeep, which, in retrospect, makes a lot of sense. Our taxi stalled out pretty regularly.

The beans go over here...

Jorge took us first to a waterfall where he allowed us to frolic, while he sat, with an eye on his watch, among the other parents grouped on the banks watching their kids jump off of rocks. After about half an hour he gestured that it was time to go, and we hiked out and drove on to the coffee farm. The guide at the farm said she didn't speak English, and so she gave the tour in Spanish while I translated/grossly paraphrased for the others. Colombians speak Spanish quickly, and kind of slush their words together, which makes them difficult to understand even for other native Spanish speakers, let alone gringos who took high school classes. So my translation went something like: "The coffee....goes over here....and then it goes up there....and then people clean it..." Solid stuff. A+. On the way out I heard her giving a tour in English to another group.

The farm was gorgeous, all hilly and green and Colombian. And I don't really drink coffee, so this doesn't mean a ton coming from me, but that was the best coffee I've ever had! Eian DOES drink coffee, and he says the same thing, but he's been known to exaggerate, so I guess neither of us can be trusted. You'll just have to go to Minca for the truth.

Yes hello, I need coffee please, it´s an emergency.

For lunch Jorge drove us to a tiny, one-table restaurant that was pretty much a guy's living room. He served us juiced mangoes that he'd pulled off the tree outside his house, and some meat with plantains. It was one of the best meals we had in Colombia. When we left, the cook gave me a plastic cup so I could take the rest of my mango juice to go, which became a tricky balancing act every time we hit a massive bump in the road on the way down the mountain.

Enrique Iglesias's "Bailando" came on the radio and Jorge cranked the volume all the way up. The subject of Enrique prompted Catherine and David to ask us, genuinely baffled, where Pit Bull had come from, and why he keeps shouting about being well traveled.

Legit dining establishment

Thursday morning we got on a bus headed back West to Cartagena.  We only drove around in circles for about an hour picking up passengers before we officially left Santa Marta. A little girl in a Rapunzel dress got carsick and vomited next to Eian. And we were off!

Next up is our journey to the Panamanian border, which is nuts.