Panama

The World’s Greatest Palindrome:

“A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA”

Panama – “Just The Facts Juan”

It’s fitting to begin this tale with the history of the Panama Canal. It is, after all, the reason this country exists in the first place.

 

The French started the canal in 1880, and in typical French fashion they surrendered. Disease (note the paltry figure of 22,000 dead), the jungle, mud slides and the enormity of the project got the better of them. The US took over in 1904. Why 1904? Good question. Let’s look at the birth of a nation.

Panama got their independence from Spain in 1821. That's a little deceiving because they weren't really a country until 1903. That’s the year they seceded from Columbia when Teddy Roosevelt propped them up with a human puppet because he wanted that canal to happen.

The canal took the US 10 years to complete, so in 1914 the first ship passed through. The locks raise the vessels 86 feet above sea level, and then lower them 86 feet back to sea level once on the other side.

They call their currency the "Balboa" but it's the US greenback dollar. Not a facsimile - the exact bill. They've been using it since 1904. They have, for some confusing reason, created their own coins though. They are exactly the same size, weight and value as ours but with a picture of Balboa on them. However, our coins are used too, so both are in circulation. It’s a little silly.

Elsie goes to Bocas Del Toro

Now, Who Is This Balboa Guy And Why Is He On A Coin?

Vasco Nunez de Balboa – In 1501 he “discovered” the Pacific Ocean (I think building statues to him and putting his image on coins is tantamount to the American Indians praising Columbus. I guess the locals identify more with the Spanish then the indigenous people? That’s strange when you see the faces and realize there is very little Spanish blood in Panama). He sailed for Spain, and he slaughtered lots of natives, and they stole tons of gold and silver from Peru and it all passed through Panama.

I should never have taken Elsie to Bocas Del Toro

We Have Gold, Silver, A Thin Isthmus And Lots Of Mariners Ready To Take A Chance. Yep, That Means PIRATES

In July of 1668 the English Pirate Henry Morgan took all of Portobello

Portobello today

which was the Spanish stronghold on the Caribbean side of the Isthmus. He held it ransom and threatened to burn it to the ground unless the Spanish in Panama paid up. They paid up. 

Then in 1671 he marched with his Pirate army across the jungle from the Caribbean side to the Pacific side and defeated a Spanish army of 1600 soldiers. Then, through torture and every other means conceivable he extracted enough silver and gold to load 175 mules as well as capturing 600 prisoners. He marched it all back to the Caribbean side and sailed home to Jamaica & a hero’s welcome.

Who remembers Alex Dorsey from our sailing days? He's back in Panama after crossing the Pac and now on a bigger boat

As for Panama City; he super sacked it. Torched it to the ground. Gone. In fact - Panama Vieja is where the city used to be (Cool archeological site). When they rebuilt it, they did so miles to the west, at a place now called Casco Viejo.

Authority figures agree that drunkenness is a valid excuse. I plead it when they try to make me leave in the night. "Pero Senor, estoy borracho" Armed robbery is my only real threat. I'm rather buttoned up, and I have a strict cowardice strategy of total surrender. 

Casco Viejo is one of the most interesting neighborhoods here. It thrusts it’s bull neck out into the Pacific with its ancient Presidio walls. It used to be dangerous and half deserted, now it’s only slightly sketchy and filled with boutique yogurt and coffee shops, but the reward for walking its streets are glimpses into the far and recent past. It’s some of the oldest that the new world has to offer.

Oh the roads I've driven

Let’s talk about Noriega – that pockmarked narco non rocker. The US came in here (Misnomer cuz we were already here. It was 1989. We controlled the Canal remember, but they love to call it an invasion so who am I to spoil their history) under the catchy slogan “Operation Just Cause”, with guns blazing and smart bombs exploding. We cornered him in the Vatican embassy and then played Van Halen and Metallica for 40 days and 40 nights and it broke his will to traffic cocaine and commit murder. In fact, he surrendered after 10 days. Latinos have zero appreciation for guitar driven rock n roll.

Bamboo Carwash

But sometimes they pay off . . . 

Party like it’s 1999! – In that year the US handed the Canal over to the Panamanians. Carter signed off on it back in ’77. They recently opened a whole new canal to handle the increased size of the world’s ever growing cargo ships. It’s rather impressive.

3^rd World Mustache

Most of my time in Panama was spent wearing a ridiculous mustache. My post doc dissertation is on the correlation between mustaches and third world prominence. I needed to get into character.

My Thin Cruel Lips

Food - It’s a pleasure common to all human’s. Dining is a simple unifying action. Everyone is proud of their national food, and I’ve found that sometimes, as a foreigner I get samplings and special treatment that a local wouldn’t be given because the people are boastful of their cuisine. In Korea – I never ordered a thing and I was never better served. I simply sat down, smiled and shrugged – they took great care of me. The guy literally cut our meat for us, and the food was over the top wonderful.

Top Roping in Boquete

Since I am now safely out of Central America and with no intentions of returning for years I can now ask the following rhetorical question in complete safety: “How many Central American restaurants have you ever been to?” Really? Can’t think of even one? Not even in a major world city like Paris or London or Tokyo? You’ll find Mexican restaurants everywhere and you might find an El Salvadorian restaurant selling pupusas but you’ll never find a Guatemalan, Belizean, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Costa Rican or Panamanian restaurant. 

"I'll be playing the Noriega compound
 in the American zone from
 the 14th to the 21st.
Bring your narco dollars and don't forget to tip your waitress"

Why is that? It’s so simple – it’s because their food is freakin awful. Sure, you can get it down and it’ll quell the hunger pains, but it’s not worthy of replication. So this begs the question: When every country in Central America can grow and produce the same food and ingredients that the Mexicans have, why can’t they match their cuisine? The Mexican’s make some of the most sought after dishes on the planet (usually in the top 3 list of popular cuisines) and their neighbors produce boring unimaginative starch & gristle atrocities that you can barely push past your lips. Why? I don’t have an answer and I’ve spent way too much time thinking about it. Let me know when you get your heads around that one.

When you just really want average food best described as "Typical"

Tenedor Porfavor:

Their food hovers just above awful, but how great is it that total strangers say “Bon provecho” to each other?

I Get Paid In Sand Dollars

Here’s my Life in Elsie: Time to leave / The shelf goes up, pack away all that will fall, disconnect power cord, close all windows and hatches, warm up diesel engine, the surfboard moves from the truck cab to the floor of the camper, check tie downs, fill tanks, Check pressure in airbags and tires, do a walk around, plug in and mount phone. Then I pick a new location on the navigator app and the next adventure begins.

What you can't hear is the cacophony of frogs that sound like a Japanese video game being played by the all-time high scorer

3 Levels of Cooling”

Boondocking – I use my 4 / 12 volt fans. I run them all night. They barely pull any amps, but they barely provide any cooling.

A step up from that is when I’m plugged in for elec but the amps or volts aren’t high enough to run the a/c unit on the roof of the camper. Then I break out the 110 volt 10” fans, put them on high and redirect them as I move about. 

"If I eat here, can I park for free?"

The height of decadence is when I’m plugged in and they have solid clean electricity and I can run the a/c non-stop. I have my own generators, and I do use them, but the thieves would take them away if I were to leave them out and go to sleep.

Like surfing, only smalller

They are perfect for what I call a mandatory siesta from 1-4. After 4 the shadows are longer, the rays are less intense, and the sunset is only a couple hours away. Congrats, you made it to the evening cool down. 

  

Family

My mother and brother flew into Panama City.

That sweet Birdy Mae made a new friend

I put Birdy Mae on a forced march up this trail and she was mad at me for 2 days. She went home and had hip-replacement surgery.  I'm carrying around an extra 40 pounds of guilt these days. Good thing seamstresses are cheap in the 3rd world. I had to let all my shorts out.

Vent over my fridge. I ripped it off when I hit a low cable. Good training.

Skinny - The brother with the good hair

I picked them up and drove them around the entire country and I’ve got the pictures to prove it. First I dropped off our mother, and a week later I dropped off my brother.  

Skinny lives in Tokyo and plays Frogger all day in real time

The Friedmans: There are only 3 in this small immediate circle and we live on 3 different continents. I’m certain it isn’t what our mother thought she was signing up for, and it makes for some sad goodbyes.

A Return To The BYC

I parked on a familiar street.

BBQ, awning, mini low height table. I love my set up

That’s a first. I ordered some buffalo wings. I cracked open another ale. There was a 2 piece band playing innocuous favorites in the corner. It all came rushing back to me why I used to enjoy this place. The Balboa Yacht Club! I lived here for 6 months 10 years ago while I waited for the weather window to open and for Suzi Roberts to arrive from England. It was from here that we set off across the Pacific Ocean.

BYC - A few of the same remain

This time around, instead of stumbling down the stairs and walking the long dock out to the pontoon to catch the shuttle to Barraveigh, I moseyed back to Elsie who was parked in parallel with the other Overlanders. Full circle baby.

Hey sailors - look familiar?

Earlier Overlanders jury rigged a street light to grab power

The Darien Gap

The Pan-American Highway extends from Alaska all the way to the bottom of Patagonia. However, there is a missing link. The distance is only 60 miles as the crow flies. The road stops at Yaviza Panama and starts again in Turbo Colombia. Why the gap? Most think it is to stem the flow of drugs headed north to the US market, and there is certainly truth to that but the largest factor is that the 60 mile natural barrier stops foot and mouth disease from spreading into North America.

Overlanders Ship Their Vehicles

What did it cost? $1537 USD and mine went Roll-on-roll-off, which is more expensive then sharing a container. Elsie’s ego is too large to fit in a container. It won’t be contained. She is a Freedom Machine damnit. All that money and hassle for 60 miles.

It's not free and easy, it's actually expensive and lots of work

Elsie gets a lot of stares. Mostly they are accompanied by thumbs up and big smiles as the people reflect on the freedom that my machine represents. However, that's not always the case. Sometimes the expression is one of complete bewilderment. Why would a rich guy from the US (and by comparison we are all rich in the US) want to live in that? The real question is: why would the locals camp? Most of them are abjectly poor and their normal lives are only a scratch above camping anyway. Camping, as we in the first world know it, is just a lifestyle counter measure to our pampered first world existences. When you are still living in a cave you don’t collect kindling for fun.

Goodbye To Elsie, Hello To The Sea / DJ And Fun Without My Rig

I handed over my key, shuddered, and walked away from my Freedom Machine. That was hard. I paid a very expensive taxi to once again cross the Isthmus of Panama from Colon to Panama City to meet a friend from S’Mish

DJ Birnie as Pippy Longstrom

who was flying in to sail with me to Colombia. We drank way too much, stayed up far too late, met way too many great people and sweated more than a fat kid at wrestling practice.

You’ll have to tune in to the next episode to read about that.

I’ve flown to Panama, I’ve sailed to Panama, and now I’ve driven to Panama.

Your Man On Point,

Capt Bobby Blacktop

Random Clearing House

Random Clearing House / 1.5 Years on the Road

It’s been 6 months since I’ve posted my orphaned ideas and half-baked musings.  These are the underdeveloped notions that sat down and wouldn’t play nice with others. Hell, let’s just acknowledge that not everything can be an anecdote. But, for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to abort these zygotes with the delete key. Congratulations folks, it’s another unrequested episode of Bobby’s Random Clearing House.

6 Years On Sails And Solar Panels

– I’ve bought my carbon credits. Yes, I now drive a 7.3 liter diesel. Yes, I get less than 12 miles to the gallon (5 km per liter). But, I only drive 10,000 miles per year. That’s less than the average and I still live off a solar panel and clean burning propane. Not to mention, I never reproduced. How many diapers did I save the landfills? Come to think of it – I might be one of the most environmentally friendly people I know.

If you’ve had a kid, sorry but you’ve lost your chance to complain about my truck. If you’ve had 2 kids I could burn soft coal every night and still be a better friend to the planet than you. And three kids? Why not just melt glaciers full time? If you have 4 kids, you are a Mormon, and also have enough firepower, ammo and powdered milk to do whatever you want. I love those blonde children of the corn. In conclusion – stop breeding.

Let’s Keep It Dirty

I always keep one finger nail long so I can clean the grime from the others. It collects incredibly fast. I still think in English instead of Spanish but my English has an Australian accent because I feel so feral.

Coffee Irony

When I order a cup of Central American coffee I know it’s going to be spectacular. Wrong – The good stuff is grown here but it’s all exported for top dollar. The shake they sell here in the local eateries is crap. You can find the good stuff, but it’s in “Whitey Town” in-between the new deli and the pet clinic.

Heart and Lungs

2 reasons to never drive behind one of these enormous passenger buses: 1.) There is no regulation on emissions so you will be driving in a black cloud of death. 2.) They will break your heart with all the trash you’ll see them toss out of the windows.

I didn’t know the bus went there – It doesn’t. I got a Freedom Machine

There are those places that tourists just don’t venture. They aren’t on the circuit because no buses go there, so no hostels spring up, and because no hostels spring up the bus schedules don’t change. They stay pure.

You might rent a car and drive there for an afternoon but with no lodging you’ll be gone before nightfall. This is why I am a strong advocate of Overlanding & Cruising; self-contained travel with bed, toilet, shower, & kitchen included.

Death Awaits You

People ask if I’m happy. Is “happy” the goal? It seems like we might be setting the bar too low.

“Happy” sounds too mundane, too pedestrian. I want to feel challenged and alive and vibrant. It’s ice water to the face when I realize I don’t hold the local currency, I haven’t mastered the language,  I don’t know where I’m parking when the sun sets in 3 hours, and come tomorrow -  I don’t know where I’ll find food and water. Now that’s interesting! Now you have my undivided attention. I can’t “phone it in” in those situations. There’s no sleepwalking through days like these.

I think if all you are asking for is “Happy”… I think you’ve missed something, a very important something. Let’s shoot for full vitality. Let’s keep our mortar tubes pointing straight up so we get the best view of our own Supernova. And let’s strive for nothing less than Supernova. You don’t score a Supernova when you only shoot for “happy”.

You must stop tallying your life by how many “likes” your post got, and how many “friends” wished you happy birthday. Congratulations, you just lost another year. Listen, if you aren’t interested in what I’m doing - no problem, I don’t blame you. But do something more than the commonplace.

You saw The Matrix. Take the red pill and stop being a battery for society. You do realize we all die, right? My hunch is, that whatever you are doing; it isn’t making you as fully alive as what you could be doing. I realize it isn’t easy to do anything outside of the norm. Everything in society pushes you towards marriage, kids, a soul crushing mortgage and a job that sucks the life out of you for the next forty years to pay for it all. That’s how society makes a battery out of you. Know that it is possible to design your own life and that no one has ever knowingly applied for the position of “battery”. Take an inventory and “check your fire”. Is this really as good as it’s going to get for you? If your aim is simply –“happy” – you are aiming too low.

Potential squints into the Klieg Lights of Actualization and does one of 2 things: Gallops headlong into it, or turns away. Please, don’t turn away.

Changing Continents

As of today, it’s been exactly 18 months since I broke the border and entered Mexico to begin this snail pace adventure in Spanishland. I spent 6 months in Mexico and 1 year in Central America – I feel pretty good about that. And, it’s actually the 2^nd year I’ve spent in Central America since I spent over a year when I was here on Barraveigh. But that was back when I was a “grotty yachty”, now I’m a “dirty driver”. They are only slightly different tribes and today I combined them just a bit.

I put Elsie on an enormous freighter bound for Colombia, and in 5 days I will embark on a sailing adventure to meet her. It’ll be 3 days of cruising the San Blas Islands before the 48 hour passage to Cartagena.

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Blaise Pascal,Pensées

Back-on-a-boat-Bobby

P.S. - Next blog: Panama!

Costa Rica

Aesthetics Count

Lets’ get the bad stuff out of the way first so I can end on a positive note. If you were a beautiful girl with messed up teeth, you’d fix your teeth. Costa Rica, you are a beautiful girl but you can eat an apple thru a tennis racket.

Fix your teeth for Christ’s sake. And by teeth, I mean these horrendous roads. They are the lifeblood of a nation. They are the arteries used to feed the body. How goods are transported, how relatives are visited, how foreigners judge your infrastructure. Fix your teeth Costa Rica. Fix your teeth.

You don’t have an Army, Navy or Airforce. With all that money you save - perfect your roads. The majority of them north of Puntarenas are atrocious and the last 30 miles on the Carretera Interamericana into Golfito are absolutely dreadful. It’s like driving on a patched quilt. What a joke. They’ve been temporarily repaired so many hundreds of times that whatever level may have originally existed is long gone.

I couldn’t drive faster than 20mph. I would imagine this must be what a road looks like after it’s been cluster bombed. It’s fragmented dirt with cement remnants and huge craters that I can’t always fit between my tires.

The only thing bad roads are good for is “mandatory vibrato”. Everyone sings better while driving in the third world because the bouncing on these lousy roads makes it inescapable. 

(For those of you foolish enough to view this website as anything other than my own ego trip of subjectivity please note that the roads do get better south of Puntarenas with the exception of the Osa peninsula)

Latin Kitsch: They are so good at bad

Adventure Lite

It’s a good starter country for a rookie traveler. It’s safe, the paths are well trodden, you can drink the water, and you don’t even need the local currency. I saw a 25 pound rat. I thought I had seen my first capybara. No, it was a rat. This is what happens when you saturate a third world nation with a rich expat populace.

Even the vermin can overachieve on the detritus of this country. Here are the signs that a town has gone “white” (Large expat community): 1.) A humane society for animals. 2.) A proper deli with quality meats and cheeses. 3.) A craft brewery. 4.) White expats organizing trash pick-ups. You’ll find these all over Costa Rica. I’ll let you decide if that’s a good or bad thing.

If you thought Cabo San Lucas and/or Cancun were the epitome of ruined Latin America, you would be right, but Costa Rica is closing in. When I was here ten years ago I disliked it. Too many gringos and the prices were ridiculously high. It’s worse now. But – something happened this time around. I got it. It really is beautiful and its charms aren’t all fake.

I’m not buying into the Pura Vida marketing hype, but Costa Rica does have some magic. I’m not sure it warrants the price tag, but I see the shine, and I really enjoyed my 3 months there.

Now For The Good Stuff!

I stayed for well over a week at what was essentially a hippy commune in Monteverde. The temp was delightful, the rum was communal, the people were beautiful, albeit a little ripe and gamey. “Hey, they’re just water conservationists!” We hiked to waterfalls and they made music almost nightly. It seemed as if everyone played an instrument. Everyone but me. 

I support all "Zorba the Greek" types

The Coastline From Jaco To Uvita

Jaco - When I was here 10 years ago it was all hookers and drugs. Now it’s hookers, drugs and casinos. I guess some things do get better.

Matthew’s Visit

I got a friend. This guy is such a pleasure to travel with. Meet Matthew Evert. He flew into San Jose, immediately got conned by the taxi driver and then rode the bus to Puerto Viejo.

I met him there and the drinking binge began. I was parked at Punta Uvas. All of this is on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and very much worth visiting. We snorkeled the Atlantic, hiked and caught fish in the high altitude ponds of Tapanti and then surfed the pacific.

Cahuita

If you pronounce it like a gringo it sounds absolutely filthy. I love saying that word. (My other favorite Spanish word is “cunada”.

It means sister-in-law but doesn’t it sound like the dirtiest of insults?) I had never surfed the Caribbean before. One foot waves still count right?

Limon is Sketchy

I’m not a doctor but based on the appearance of the people I saw on the street, I think there is a lot of meth in that town. I locked my doors and rolled right thru it.

On the way back I did pick up a hitchhiker even though I swore I never would again but this time I had Matthew with me. 

“The hardest part is yet to come. You will cross the country alone.” ~Death cab for cutey~

Maybe one of the best things about the countries of Central America is how easy it is to swap coasts.

Snorkel on the Caribbean, surf on the Pacific, and cool down in the middle while passing over the high altitude spine. I drove across Costa Rica twice and the road that got me there was one of the prettiest drives of all of Central America. From Dominical to Cartago the road runs the length of the central corridor mountains and puts you in cloud canopy rain forest in complete white out conditions. It was really wild.

Poor People the World Over – Not Just Central America

"Have many children do you have? Have you built your house yet? Did you make it strong against the hurricane? What are you growing this year?"

You can't grade an uneducated undeveloped populous by the same criteria you would use on an educated first world urban populous. We ask things like, "where did you do your under grad". Or, "how was your trip to Bora Bora?

They are no doubt just as smart, but their intelligence is unarticulated due to a lack of education.

You need look only a little deeper at their creative engineering to realize that the brain power is all there and then some. And though they don't hop on jets to Bora Bora, they have fascinating stories about finding Mayan ruins in the jungle. They just don't know how interesting that is.

Their lives are spent raising children and toiling anonymously in a field. The contemplative life requires surplus, and when you practice subsistence living there can be little leisure time to entertain higher thought. Hence, the conversations end somewhere after agriculture, child breeding stats, and building materials.

Usually, it devolves into a mutual agreement about how lovely that woman's bottom is. (Full disclosure: my Spanish and Bahasa are still a long way from perfect so if you disagree with me, here’s your silver bullet)

You with me so far? Good. Now hang tight, because here comes the subplot, and you get the dangling participle for free. Working to improve my Spanish, the intellectual conversations still seemed to elude me. I wanted to learn the language so I could have deep meaningful conversations with the locals. What I found instead was that the average locals have sixth grade educations and the chances of a deep meaningful conversation are about as likely as discussing Nietzsche with the beach savages back in S’Mish: “And that’s what he meant by Ubermensch”. “Dude. Did you see the waves? Dude, they are Sick!”  

I never really needed to learn Spanish. The educated people speak great English. But I am anyway. It’ll be a lifelong effort and I’ll forever need retuning (my next formalized classroom awaits me in Colombia). I find it interesting how the end lesson is often different from what we were expecting.

Back To Our Uneducated Populace

They should be graded on the following: 1). Honest 2). Helpful 3). Humorous. These are my 3 H’s of determining whether a people are great or not. Honesty – it’s the basis of all that is real & good and without it we have no foundation for any relationship at all, and that goes for every human in every situation. Period. Helpful – I might be a simpleton but Ray Allen once said, “Being ‘nice’, goes a long way”. I couldn’t agree more. And humorous? I’ve always found that if a people are quick to smile, able to find common ground in a joke, and willing to drop their guard, which is the prerequisite to laughter – we’re gonna do just fine. So… provincials the world over – I salute you, I want to meet you, and I apologize in advance for my remedial Spanish and caveman Bahasa Indonesian, but please forgive me when I tire of our repetitive discourse on the subjects of  3^rd world small talk. Really? Am I such a bastard for saying that? Come on ex-pats, tell me who you spend the majority of your time with. . . . ? Yea, I thought so.

Your man on point,

Captain Bobby