Homeless By Choice

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls

Wrong Cat. Sail from Ft. Lauderdale to San Blas? Layover in Cuba?

Mackie says I have to move tomorrow, my room is booked for Carnival. Alan wants me to watch his house while he travels to Ecuador and Columbia. Jody and Dean have departed for the Pacific. Mario has left for San Blas and then Cartegena. A bud in Boquete wants me to watch his house while he is back in the states.

I want to run a 40′ cat charter between San Blas and Categena, run a hostel in Volcan, another in Bocas, and an eco-lodge near Almirante. Oh yeah and program on the side.

Should I run a resort in the mountains? ATV from Boquette to Volcan?

An Eco Resort in Bocas?

Run a cat from Bocas to Catagena?

Need lots of fresh talent in kibinis.

Seven in the morning found me awake in bed, annoyed by the barking dog across the street. I walked down to the typico (typical, local food) and had an omelette and coffee for $1.65 and the walked back to the hotel. As I was uploading some pictures, Mackie, the owner, who is about to burst with a son waddled up. We chatted for a bit and she inquired about Juan Salizar, the Bocas Wharf Rat. I relayed tales of his Bocas adventures, which in no way surprised her but did amuse her.

As Chester is in town I gave him a call. He was in a meeting and had been requested to cook for a party for one of the cast from Little House on the Prairie and 50 friends, so he was tied up for the day, but we agreed to get together tomorrow morning.

The morning was wiled away with posting pictures, reading email and surfing the web. The aclock ticked passed 11:30 so I packed up for my noon meeting with Dean and Jody to walk the Quetzel trail. With five minutes to spare (I hate being late) I approached their lodge to find them exiting the drive. “What the hell, you’re leaving without me?” Jody replied, “I couldn’t hear you last night and Dean was past it, so we thought that maybe we agreed to meet at Amigos.” We walked to the town center and hailed a cab, got in, thought he was over charging us and got out.

We walked a couple of blocks to town center and hailed a cab. A young asian couple made steps toward the cab. As they were waiting in front of the bus stop, we thought that they were waiting on a bus. We indicated that we were going to Quetzel Trail and agreed to share the cab. Once again, I was assigned the front seat and the other four squeezed into the rear seat of the small sedan.

The ride to the trail was longer than we expected, the Lonely Planet obviously had bad information and we felt bad about our treatment of the previous cab driver. Upon arrival we paid the driver our $2 each. The friendly rangers took the $5 entry fee and showed us the map. It was apparently 8 km to Cerro Punta. Our round trip drive on Thursday was 300 km.

This trail was like an M.C. Escher drawing, uphill all the way on a closed circuit. Returning to the ranger station we were advised that there was a 20 minute walk to the bus stop to catch a ride into town. I guess these people tuck there heads between their knees and roll down the hill. It would been 10 minutes on a bike as it was downhill all the way, but it took us 45 minutes to reach the bus stop. After 20 minutes of waiting we resume hiking and finally flagged down a van that moved its cargo and drove us to town.

We were informed that Saturday night is fight night in Boquette and that we could watch fisticuffs in the alley behind the grocery store. I walked home and took a nap that lasted 8 hours.

It is 3:30 in the morning, so rather than describe the walk, I’ll just post the pictures.

On Monday, a group from Lost and Found took a tour to the petroglyphs and hot springs on the way to Boquette. Ben, the consumate peckerhead, retained his title, continually and arrogantly spouting disdain and nonsense. Arriving at the petroglyphs he felt the need to climb the rocks and stand on the ancient carvings.

Mario and I checked into Villa Verde while the rest of the group stayed at Mamallena. I prefer the spacious private rooms at Villa Verde for $15 a night. If you come, make sure you bring your own toilet paper and soap. At 7:30 I told Mario I was going to take a nap. The nap lasted until 7:00 Tuesday morning when I was awakened by the sounds of cocks, dogs, traffic, and the strong sun light pouring in the many windows. I spend most of the day taking care of business over the internet.

Around noon the sleepy Austrian showed his face and we went out for lunch. I told him I had a copy of a computer based Spanish course and he wanted a copy so we started the transfer process back at the hostel. I took one of his backpacks and 3 bags and walked him over to Mamallena. The attraction for Mario were that Mamallena is right in the center of town, cheaper and had a large quantity of travel guides.

My friends from San Blas, Jody and Dean sent me an email indicating that they were in Boquette and we agreed to meet at El Centro at 6:30. It appeared as though it would take an hour to transfer the 3 GB of data to his box so we headed off to Paradise Gardens, arriving at 3:00 which left us but an hour to enjoy this animal rescue sanctuary. We walked back, stopped at Fresa Mary and had some wonderful strawberries with whipped cream and a pretty dreadful cheeseburger. It was 5:30 by the time we walked back. Mario collected his notebook computer and moved back to Mamallena.

I walked up to the El Centro at exactly 6:30 and was met by Jody who informed me that she suspected I was an extremely punctual person and that she had only come out of the bar 2 minutes earlier to wait for me. At 9:00 they had to head back before the taxis shut down for the night and I walked home. At Moreno’s supermarket, I ran into the Dutch women from Lost and Found, who it turns out were also staying at Mamallenas and noted that Sam and Mario were there also. I said “so is dickhead” to which one responded laughingly “Ben?”.

It was definitely time to get out of David. David is not known as a destination for much other than transferring buses, shopping and dining. I am not convinced about the dining. A brochure for the Lost and Found Lodge in the cloud forest of Chiriqui sat on the dining room table. A fellow guest at the hostel, a young Austrian named Mario and I discussed going leaving over a spectacularly bad Lebanese restaurant recommended by the owners of Bambu Hostel in David.

We agreed the that the Lost and Found looked very attractive and decided to head out in the morning before it got hot. I woke at 7:00, checked my email, had a coffee and tried to rouse Mario without success. I made another attempt at rousing Mario at 9:00. Giving up I had another coffee and then requested the housekeeper to call me a cab. Mario stepped out of the bathroom and asked if I was leaving immediately, to which I responded that I was willing to wait if he was getting ready to go. The cab showed and I told the driver to return in 10 minutes. Upon his return with no small effort, we loaded my two big suitcases and Mario’s back pack and grocery bags into the small taxi with some effort and quickly found ourselves at the bus terminal. People were boarding the bus to Changinola as we pulled up. My bags were left behind the bus with the bag attendant and I boarded the bus, putting my backpack under the seat in front of me. The trip was said to be just over an hour in duration. As we approached the first toll booth I handed the brochure to the bus lackey that was standing in the open door and a couple of minutes later we stopped in front of three large yellow rocks. Lost and Found was up the hill, out of site. The trail was steep with steps improvised from rock, concrete and board risers with earth “treads”. Leaving Mario to watch the bags I climbed up to the resort to summon some help with our bags. The lodge was an impressively solid structure with concrete floors and walls with steel framing and a metal roof. This was a far cry from cute cabinas in the jungle, this had been designed by someone who must have spent most of his time designing bunkers. ???, one of the two owners greeted me and asked if I had a reservation and expressed no minimal consternation over that fact that I did not have one as he was expecting an additional 30 people to arrive for the night. He did state that if we had some hammocks we could see if we could rough it out, but it gets windy, cold and sometimes wet at night in and above the clouds.

A volunteer ??? and I walked down to the road again to get Mario and our bags. Gabriel had returned from an errand to fetch propane and he was going to carry the propane up the hill. Gabriel was a fit middle aged ??? Indian and took my fifty pound bag and ascended as though unburdened. I was still wondering how much to tip them, I figured $10 a bag was fair, when I found that Gabriel had hauled up innumerable 80 pound bags of cement up the hill during construction for sixty cents a bag.

My second trip up the hill my additional burden of two back packs and some grocery bags with unknown content was much more burdensome and I had to sit down and rest on three occasions.

It was finally agreed that the could build an eco-lodge on the property, which was previously used as an organic coffee plantation, but no roads could be cut up the path and minimal tree cutting could occur. There is no doubt why this stop between David and Bocas is frequented by the young and fit. It is not an easy climb.

It turns out that Gabriel carried the concrete up this hill, two bags at a time for sixty cents apiece. One of the owners tried to carry one bag, vomited and abandoned any pretense that he was up to the task. I can’t imagine how many bags of cement, gravel and sand were hauled up this long steep hill. The Lodge is in a national park and is one of only two titled lots in the park. The French Canadian owners of the local hydroelectric plant had waged a multi-year plan to get the “Panamanian Squatters” off this piece of titled property. The “Panamanian Squatters” are a couple of guys from Vancouver, British Columbia.

Last night the party ended at 4 or 5 am, nobody was quite sure. What is sleeping here going to be like?

The peace corp arrived, a collection of body piercings and expensive outdoor gear, Under Armor, North Face. Most were stationed on Chiriqui Bay in Bocas working with the Gnobis. Dinner was a long ways off and people queued up at the stove. An English woman who described herself as “Free Range” (not with the Peace Corp) fried up some tomatoes and cabbage into a brown glop that she put on bread. She said “I hope it tastes better than it looks.” To which I replied, don’t hold too much hope, I was married to a woman from England once. That evoked cat claw pantomime and then she asked if I was serious. We got into a long conversation. She had flown from England to take a thousand pound, six week course in tree climbing. Weighing nothing probably makes it a lot easier. People continued to trickle in, two or three at a time. Some had walked 30 minutes to a store buy beer and breakfast supplies.

My attempts at cooking dinner, did not fare well. The propane stove seemed incapable of ever bringing the pot of water to a roiling boil. I placed the noodles in and waited. Half an hour later the water was still not boiling and I choked down some seriously “al dent” spaghetti.

I found a spot to hang my hammock, next to the kinkajou enclosure, which was far too big to be considered a cage. The enclosure is just past the lodge on the way to the showers, snapped some shots, chatted with people and ate dinner, an uninspiring combination of rice and beans. Due to the large number of guests the simple dinner was the

I write this at 7:19, the stereo died, the lights went out and the only illumination for half a minute was the screen of my notebook. Flashlights quickly appeared. Six minutes later electricity was restored.

Backpacks with cameras and notebook computers are unattended and ubiquitous. I don’t fear someone walking in out of the jungle to steal my stuff and this crowd doesn’t seem like thieves disguised as social workers.

9:02 I just finished talking with Gabriel. He walked up the hill with 2 bags of cement at a time (160 pounds), 3 to 4 trips per hour, 8 hours a day, 6 days a week for 3 months. It took three months for twenty five people some working 2 days a week, some working 4 to carry up all the supplies to build the lodge. They carried up the beds, the foosball table, the refrigerators.

I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. This was a quick $1.50 taxi fare. When I got done I couldn’t find a taxi that was unoccupied so I walked about half a mile to a large avenue and waved one down. He stopped, as I opened the back door to find a startled old woman he opened the front door. I told him I wanted to go to “Casa Bambu”, he said “Bambu House?”, “si”. After backing up the old woman’s driveway he opened the door and led her to the house. We then pulled back down the driveway, closing the door by banging it against the gate post on the way down. He then drove me to a bar called, curiously enough “Bamboo House” which was not my hostel. The phone number I had for the hostel was not corrected. I told him hostel about a dozen times and he took me to the other hostel in town. The woman came to the gate, knew what I was talking about, called my hostel and handed the phone to the driver. I made it back and wrote down the correct number.

“Marco I’m out of here. Where should I stay in David?”

Bambu

“How much does it cost to get to the Bus Station?”

“$2.50”

The first cab I waved down wanted $8 (always ask first).

I stopped another cab, “quente boos terminAL” “Aeropuerto?” “boos terminAL”
“Albrook mall?” “Boos terminAL” “boos Terminal?” “Si”.
“dos dolares”.

Finding the ticket counter was no problem. Getting to the bus was strange.
I located the terminal but the gate was blocked at the turnstile. Some Kuna Indians were standing perplexed in front of the turnstile. “What the hell is going on here?” I asked. “Do you have a nickel?” “Sure.” and I handed him one, he told me that I needed it for the turnstile, a sort of exit tax.” What the hell, couldn’t they have just added it to my ticket. “No Cambio” (No change). I gave the Kunas two nickels, walked to my bus and walked around the adjacent bus to the entry door from the rear. The throng was packing the sidewalk but not boarding.

After entering the bus I tried to put my backpack in the overhead bin. It wasn’t going to fit without a healthy push. In a former lifetime I cracked the screen on a notebook doing exactly that so I extracted the notebook from my backpack and tried again. Still no success, so extracted the bulky SLR camera and tried again. This was easy now. After securing the camera bag to the backpack by tieing the straps I sat down.

The bus was loaded with passengers and some low quality video was displayed on the overhead monitor and a horrendous sound track blared from the jack in the box quality speakers. Spanish sound track to an American movie. I grabbed the shure form fitting ear plugs and blocked my ears.

The 9:45 bus left on time. Around 2:45 we stopped for food at a chinese road side bus only cafeteria. “Pollo?”, “No, Puerco”. pointing “Puerco y arroz por favor.” It was really nasty, grisly and fatty with bones, like tripe and fat. God knows what part of the pig it came from.

People lined up outside the bus. I had left my backpack on board and was anxious to get back to it. After 10 minutes the door was opened and I boarded the bus to discover my backpack was not in the overhead. Nor was my book on my seat. Was I on the wrong bus? This bus was destined for David. Can there be two arriving at the same time? Trying to swim upstream with people hustling down the narrow aisle was next to impossible. What a douche bag. There in fact was another bus going to David which to my relief had my backpack. Around 5:30 we arrived in David and I opened my backpack, slipped out my computer and pulled the backpack from the overhead, ready to depart. It was stuck as it was tied to my camera bag. Good thing I compensate for my idiocy. I packed the camera into the bag and exited the bus. I looked up the name of the Hostel and showed it to the cabbie, he said it was a $2 fare.

We drove through town for $15 minutes and I was deposited in front of a ranch house with wrought iron gates. The bell elicited a quick response and a private room with bath was available for $30/night. Dorm rooms with 10 bunks were available for $8 a person night with breakfast included. I opted for the single room.

This was a much older crowd than I expected. The average age of the guests was about mid forties. After 15 minutes I found out who owned the place, how much it cost, what the gross and net proceeds were, where the restaurants were and had a co-owner introduce me to his girlfriend who is an oral surgeon. Tooth implants for $795. I scheduled an exam and tooth cleaning for the following day.

Trying to hook up to the internet was a pain. I didn’t know I had the world’s tiniest wireless disable switch on the front of my new viao.

It’s cool outside, I’m sitting pool side.

The Hammerhead Othere was restless and provoked. I turned and ran but I could not hide. That great head crashed against massive stout trees and … oh fuck it’s 4:00 in the morning, that’s Marcos banging on the door. Did I pack? No, of course not.

I jammed everything I could see into a suitcase and stumbled down five flights of stairs with two 50 pound rolling suitcases and about 25 pounds of expensive electronics in my backpack. We drove to a supermarket and hung out for at least an hour, with no explanation as to what the hell was going on. Late model 4×4’s showed up, bags were switched and instructions given in Spanish and English. I think most of the people were Israelis. They all spoke at least Hebrew, Spanish, English, some also spoke Russian or German.

Bags were double bagged in 2 mil trash bags then unceremoniously lashed to the car top carrier. My backpack, bearing an $800 camera body, two lenses, 2 teraabytes of storage, a new notebook computer that I spent to weeks configuring.

I passed out in the first seat of the Toyota SUV, undoubtably snoring my ass off. At 7:30 we arrived at a supermarket and got shuttled from one car to another and waited for the second coming of Christ.

My backpack benefited from my refusal to allow this treatment to my backpack, with its $4,000 of electronics content. When we arrived a surfboard carrier had obviously flown off the top of the car and bounced down the road and was subsequently re-lashed to the top of the car.

I was jostled as we spun up and down dirt roads in the central northern region of Panama. Finally we arrived at a river and mysterious fees were presented. $2 for something I still don’t know, but the importance of keeping my receipt under penalty of death was conveyed. Another $6 for use of the canal, that was not previously explained or included in the $15 boat fare. It subsequently turned out to be a fee on the outbound side only, or just a fee because we didn’t know any better.

Seventy minutes later we arrived at Isla Robinson. WTF? This isn’t like any San Blas island I remembered.

I arrived with the Philipino with a plan to create a leather bound coffee table book with his tiny little point and shoot, the dutch couple, the Brazilian couple, the Canucks and the ever present israelis. My quarters were half of a thatch roofed hut with a shitty little mattress and the sheets thrown on top.

Whatever. Lunch was deep fried bonito and rice. I’ve never used bonito as anything other than bait fish. It could have been worse. More just hanging out. Dinner was “Langosta y arroz” (lobster and rice). At 6:30 the sun went down and we sat around the dinner table and discussed Literature for 3 hours. I know few people in the states who would have felt at ease discussing Twain, Michner and Hemmingway. These people spoke English as a second language. I was the only person at the table that didn’t speak at least three languages.

Oh hell I’m tired of all the details, and you probably don’t care. Day 2 I went back to check out the Kuna Museum.

My gurkha was seized by Panamanian security on my way back to the states. The guy at the airport said “You can’t take that knife in here.”

I thought “what knife” I checked my backback. Oh that 18″ fighting knife behnind the rubber float bag. Shit. I ended up giving it to him. He got a really awesome blade.

I bought a Columbian 24″ 1/8″ machete today with a nice leather sheath for $10. The blade edge was worthless, course ground on a wheel. Not nearly as good for killing and chopping as my ghurka but better for clearing grass to walk on. Got to make sure the bushmasters and fer-de-lances aren’t there. I was sharpening this thing back at the hostel on the porch. Despite the fact that I am down to two bags I still have two diamond hones. “How do you know when you are done?” “When I can cut a free hanging 1/2″ piece of hemp rope in single blow.”