A walk in the jungle seemed like an appropriate activity on a warm partly overcast day. I couldn’t get any charters to Salt Creek so I thought I’d walk from Bastimentos Town to Red Frog. Janpan indicated they would take me and then dispatched a girl to go find the “Captain”. Ten minutes later the supervisor at Janpan was communicating with the girl who was two blocks away via hand signals in the street. I gave her a shrug and walked away.
There are a lot of water taxis here. A street hustler saw me walking toward the boat taxi area and asked me where I wanted to go. They get 10% for securing business so he just earned himself 30 cents, except for the fact that they had no other passengers to Bastimentos, so I would have to pay $5. Fine, I’ll pay $5. We were third in queue to get out of the docks, there were two other boats in our “lane” that had to leave first. Then we went 30 feet and the captain yelled out something in Spanish and two other passengers appeared, and elderly black woman and a middle aged eastern european looking man with two back packs. WTF? I thought there were no other passengers.
We arrived at the “Central Park” a dock in about the middle of town. I gave the pilot $3, he insisted on $5 and feigned any lack of comprehension that he under stood “dos hombres, uno damas, no solo”. Fuckstick, I gave him $5.
The short climb up the stairs found me in front of a galvanized metal front grocery store. I had no doubt it was run by a Chinese family. The only “road” in town is a two meter wide concrete sidewalk that parallels the shore. I turned right and headed toward Red Frog Beach. The inhabitants were all antillean blacks, not an Indian or mestizo in sight. This was clearly a lower class to lower middle class residential neighborhood. Colorful flowers were in abundance but I had the distinct impression that the were planted long ago and left to fend for themselves.
A little hotel had a dirt filled cayuga (dugout canoe) out front supported by two blocks near the ends. The middle was broken and rested on the ground. The flowers planted in the dirt disregarded the neglect and flourished.
Palm trees dotted the shores on the far side of the houses. The path veered and climbed off to the left, away from the bay and then up and to the right to a cemetery. Concrete above ground vaults half covered with tile formed the only burying style that I observed. I walked to the far end of the cemetery and observed a trail. Two seven or eight year old boys scurried about with no obvious destination. They informed me that I was indeed on the trail to Red Frog Beach and that they would show me the way for “ten dollah”.
Across the way was a fence that looked like an flaural cycle fence, woven from sticks like a course basket. The trail was muddy and trash of all sort was everywhere as though somewhen had brought up large bags of trash and dumped them. The trail was very narrow, less than a foot wide and at a minimum muddy. I stomped on the ground as I walked to scare away any of the ground dwelling vipers that frequent this part of the world and watched my hands to ensure I didn’t disturb their arboreal kin. Digging my heels in while descending slopes made this part of the walk akin to really bad skiing. This went on for a while and 25 minutes into my hike there was a manicured hill that had obviously been well grazed and the trail become level and very walkable and couple of meters wide.
I encountered the cayuga cemetery. A steel sided house on stilts had five or size cayugas that looked more akin to flower bedding material than maritime equipment. Fiddler crabs and hermit crabs scuttered about but there were no insects of any sort. At the 45 minute mark more swamps and bridges made of chain sawed sections of log on other logs stretched far into the distance and around a corner. I spent 20 minutes walking on the break wall as there was no shore.
An Indian came down the path. I asked him how much farther it was to Red Frog. Lots of gesturing and incomprehensible animated Spanish later I came to the realization that he was telling me it was on the other side of the island. This was not a revelation as I had been there and travelled like cattle in the their transport trucks over the island.
He indicate that he had an amigo who could transport me in his panga. Then he ran up the hill and was never seen again. I proceeded down the trail and one hour and twenty minutes into the trek encountered a house on stilts in the water with the land surrounded by barbed wire and a no trespassing sign. No way forward and a miserable trek back. A mestizo came out of the boat house “Necessito panga Bocas Town por vavor” I yelled out to him. He came out an I ascertained that he had determined that i needed a boat ride back to the main island. He indicated I should wait and 10 minutes later signalled me to come in. I don’t know what they were doing in the mean time, but there was a lot of commotion in the boat house. I took the ride back to the real estate company in Bocas.
I had mud up to my knees and my shirt was wet with sweat.
Jonathan Allen LaFleur