Bocas del Toro → David → Las Lajas → Aguadulce
I'm on a boat! Well, a ferry. A proper roro ferry where you can go upstairs and there is even a little snack bar inside. Everyone i spoke to in the hostel took water taxis to and from the mainland, which admittedly are much faster and only a little more expensive, but they don't seem as fun to me, sitting in a little boat just zooming over to shore. Ferries go slow, you have that joyful period of waiting for them to leave, seeing truck drivers wiggle their way in to improbably tight spots, everyone kinda sitting around, half-bored, half-anxious. You feel like you're part of the global supply chain, in touch with how the economy works in the modern world. I love it.
I think i would enjoy working on a ferry, perhaps more than a sailboat. They feel like real work. Which of course would mean i'd need a real work visa, so that ain't happening. Still, every time i sit on a ferry i idly consider it. Same way i idly consider working in an airport every time i sit round in one, waiting for something to happen. I love these in-between spaces, the places where people travel through without noticing. There is a sense that everything is transitory, nobody ever sticks around. It's comforting for me.
-o-
From ferry to minibus. I didn't have enough time to grab a bite to eat, after walking to the bus terminal, then being told the buses to David go from the other terminal. I walked through Almirante, which was once a company town for United Fruit Company, and there is still a massive Chiquita freight terminal there. It already felt less oppressively touristy than Bocas, with local people going about their own business, playing music for themselves, making food for themselves. Walking through a town like that makes me feel like i'm visiting a real, functional town and not just a theme park or something. Although there were a few random people calling out in English trying to help me find a bus, which i hate that i don't trust them, but i don't. I don't tend to trust anyone whose first attempt at communication is English, and even less if they pull out a "hello" in three different foreign languages. It's that seeing-me-as-an-ATM thing.
Once i got to the terminal the conductor called me onto the David minibus (in Spanish). It was one of those buses where they might dangle around off-schedule for a while to try to make a certain number of people before leaving, and i was one of the last on. That meant i got the seat with the least legroom, which sucks as a tall person, but what you gonna do? We idled our way out of town, picking up people from all over the sides of the roads, dropping them off just a half mile later for some of them. The conductor did a great job of remembering who got on when and how much they owed (it's pay when you get off). We were sardines, but it was okay.
The road was steep, mountainous terrain for 3 hours straight. Zigging, zagging, straining up the hills and barreling back down. Did i mention no seatbelts? No seatbelts, although they probably wouldn't save us if we went flying off the edge. Houses and huts perched right up on the side of the cliff, you wonder why the people live there and how they earn a living. I never really understand these mountain areas. I've taken buses through them all over the world, and it always seems like such a weird lifestyle to me. Stuck on a precipice, dark for at least half the day because the mountain blocks the sun... And in this part of the world, raining most of the year and landslides wiping out the road over and over again. (The evidence was everywhere, in the gravelly, rubble-strewn and potholed sections.)
I kept thinking about if i would like to cycle it. On one hand, it'd be cool to stop at some of those mountain settlements, get some food from a random kiosk (if it's even open). On the other hand, this landscape is exactly what i dislike, whether on bike or in a bus - thick jungle on both sides, rarely an opening for a view... And the steepness of the hills could make getting to the next place with accommodation a tall order. Not sure i could string my hammock up between two trees on that sheer of a drop-off. Nice waterfalls to look at, though.
-o-
I was typing that last snippet when we pulled into the David terminal. David is a strange little town. It appears to be fairly middle class, in the sense that there is no extreme poverty visible on the streets. Little-to-no beggars. No real slum-like areas, that i came across (and i spent about 6 hours walking around town today, so i feel like i would've seen it if there was). But it does have the sense it is a middle class town in a poorer country, because a lot of houses have tall fences around them, and some even have razor wire on the top of the fence. Last time i saw a lot of that was in Namibia, and it really creeped me out. Especially in Windhoek (the capital) it felt like all the wealthy people lived in prisons. But David is more like Walvis Bay, which was the most comfortable town i visited in Namibia (albeit only for a few hours, so i didn't get the full picture). David is a comfortable town. It feels like the kind of place anyone who lived in a country town before would be happy to live in. All the houses are bungalows. There are only a handful of buildings over one storey, and they're in the downtown commercial area near the bus station. Once you leave that small area, everyone has a garden and a big porch. In the evenings people play music and grill outside, and you can hear the chatter from all your neighbors. Yesterday was Mother's Day, so there were a bunch of families having get-togethers.
If this is sounding like i am in a residential area, it's because i am. I am in a hostel where i got a private room, no windows, shared bathroom. It's right next door to people's houses. And so are the restaurants. In fact, the entire town seems to have no zoning restrictions, so you will be walking past houses, then suddenly there is a restaurant, then houses again, then a warehouse, then a convenience store, then houses again. It feels a little disorganized, but also it makes walking more comfortable than in towns with endless residential suburbs, because as a pedestrian you know in the next block or two you are always going to find a business where there will be some people to help you out if you are being chased by an aggressive dog or a followed by a shady character. Despite that, very few people walk. Everybody catches a taxi, or walks to the nearest main road and gets a bus. Sidewalks are an afterthought. There are no parks.
Dude, there are no parks. It's so fucking weird. There is almost no greenspace at all in town, as if everyone just hides out in their own garden (or the restaurants with the massive al fresco dining areas). Every little green spot i walked to on the map was barely a block big, and most of them were just abandoned bits of land filled with trash. Some had picnic tables or benches that obviously hadn't been used in years. I walked up to el Cerro San Cristobál, which was a small hill i saw off in the distance... and there was no way to climb it. I tried three different access points that i could see on my map - one was a gravel road with a big gate across it saying no entry - private property. One was just an eroded landslide-like thing that i would need proper hiking shoes to climb (i was wearing flip-flops), and even then it'd be near-vertical climbing/scrambling to get up there. And the third one, after heading back behind some houses, i saw a guy sitting on the side of the hill and asked him how to get up. He grabbed his huge machete and said he'd show me. Fortunately i had seen a bunch of guys with machetes earlier "mowing" lawns, so i knew he was a laborer and not a dude about to chop my head off. He bushwhacked me a bit of the way through a barely-trafficked path in the knee-deep grass, then said it'd be a scramble up through a shoulder-deep patch to get to a clearer path. I told him my shoes weren't good enough to get up there, and he agreed. He offered to exchange numbers if i wanted to switch my shoes and come back, but i was reluctant - mainly due to not wanting to depend on someone with a fucking machete just to go for a walk in the middle of town. He suggested i go to Boca Chica or Volcán next, which are two of the more touristy areas in Chiriquí province (although perhaps less touristy than Boquete, where all the Bocas del Toro backpackers had been before and/or were going next). Apparently there are hikes there that i would enjoy.
Amazingly, we had this whole conversation in Spanish. And, i think, this is the reason i wanted to walk around in a place like David and not in a place like Bocas del Toro. This guy wasn't trying to sell me anything, he wasn't speaking English to me, he was just a local guy trying to be helpful to a weird gringa trying to climb a hill that almost nobody - not even the locals - bother climbing. That helps me learn Spanish, and it helps me get an idea of the culture of the people who live here, and perhaps it gives them a fun story to tell down at the bar tonight.
In the end i failed to climb the hill. I'll get you next time, San Cristobál! I also visited el Parque Metropolitano, which actually isn't a park at all just yet. There is one big chunk of greenspace, right on the edge of town, which OpenStreetMaps shows as a park, but Google Maps just shows as blank space. The truth is somewhere in between. There is clearly a project to build a park in that space, but according to the signs the project started in 2018, and there doesn't appear to have been any work done on it in quite some time. I saw four kids jumping the fence ("unauthorized entry prohibited") and asked them if it was open. They said it's not open but you can still go there. So i did. And it was very odd. There are some children's playground things, and a locked toilet block, and fully-paved roads and bridges... but then - randomly - a bridge that's just girders that drop straight into the water. The water is that grody weird greenish-blue that i saw a lot in China, obviously polluted as fuck and not the kind of clean mountain spring you'd hope to have running through the first and only goddamn park in town. It was really bizarre. There were some squatters camped out along the edges, or possibly just very poor people in the only shacks they could afford. I avoided them to respect their privacy. One section had an off-leash dog that looked a lot meaner than the multiple dogs i passed in the poorer districts around el Cerro San Cristobál, so i turned on my heel and headed back out of the park.
Very weird. There is obviously plenty of money in Panama to build all manner of ridiculous skyscrapers over in the national capital, but it doesn't seem to trickle down to this provincial capital. I wonder if there is some corruption or other local political stuff going on that i don't understand. This is kinda how things were when i visited China too, where sometimes municipal projects seemed abandoned halfway, and it wasn't clear why. But in China i could spend all day searching the internet for the reason and i would never find anything, because China's politics are deliberately opaque, and not even the citizens who live there know the reasoning behind why stuff does or doesn't get done. I would hope that Panama would be a little more open, but my Spanish isn't good enough to know the right search terms to figure it out (or ask a local who lives in the area), and that is a block for me right now. I need better Spanish.
So, i will head back to Panama City to do 2-3 weeks of intensive courses and see how far that gets me. It's expensive, but i think it will be a worthwhile investment. I had a much better experience of China after i learned enough Chinese to be able to have a conversation that went slightly deeper than just asking directions or ordering food. I don't know if i will be able to reach that level in Spanish so quickly, but it is an easier language than Chinese so we'll see.
-o-
(I subsequently googled the park thing and apparently this year the government announced the "third phase" which involves building an ampitheater. Supposedly the park will officially open when the "second phase" is done, but no timeline on that, and no indication of why on a workday like today there was nobody working there...)
-o-
I am sitting in a little slice of paradise.
Leaving David on the way back to Panama, i decided to look for an interesting stop-off instead of charging back on a single 6+ hour bus journey. I basically picked it by searching for hotels all along the Pan-American Highway and picking one of the towns in between David and Santiago (the middle-point for David-to-Panama express buses). This morning i headed to the David bus terminal and jumped on a minibus to Las Lajas, which seemed to have a little cluster of B&Bs. There is a beachfront about 10km out of town with resort-like accommodations, but i thought it'd be more fun to get dropped off near the highway and stay at a B&B-ish hostel.
One of them had a special last-minute deal, since i guess nobody had booked, so i scored a private room with private bathroom for under $20. I got off the bus and walked around the sleepy village and then headed up to the hostel where i was greeted by the host, a ripped German expat who runs a gym in the front and a hostel in the back. We spoke Spanish most of the time, with me occasionally switching to German when i didn't have the vocabulary. He's set up a delightful spot. I am typing this sitting at a picnic table on the balcony looking out at rolling hills with banana trees and other tropical vegetation, bushes with salmon and fuchsia flowers, bright yellow butterflies, listening to the tweeting birds and crowing roosters. I think there's a cow somewhere out there too. On my way up here i passed a local riding a horse. "Muy tranquilo, aquí," said the host. He's right. This is like the ultimate rural retreat. Super peaceful. No twentysomethings planning a rager every night. This is the kind of place i could relax for a few days and catch up on email. So much better than Bocas. Maybe i'll make this a little reward spot to return to after i spend a few weeks doing a Spanish course.
Tomorrow i would like to continue on to Santiago, which this time will involve sitting on the Pan-American and just waiting around for a long distance bus to pass by so i can flag it down. I'm not sure how successful that will be, but worst case i give up and go back to David.
-o-
I wish i knew why pancakes are The Thing for serving to foreigners here. Last night at dinner someone recommended me a place to go where i could get "the best pancakes in Panama". And this morning i got pancakes at the hostel. But who actually eats pancakes in their normal life? I know in America it's one of the half dozen different accompaniments that you might get with eggs at a traditional diner, but i never really saw it as a regular thing. I suppose it's convenient to just keep a huge box of pancake mix floating around so you can just add water (i think?), fry and go. But surely toast would be even easier? Or cereal? Pancakes seem like such an unnecessarily complicated (and messy) thing to make for breakfast every day.
The pancakes this morning were pretty good, as far as pancakes go, which isn't very far, because American-style pancakes suck ass. The highlight was getting homemade marmalades to top them with - one passionfruit and papaya, and the other passionfruit and pineapple. Oh, and the fresh pineapple, banana and papaya slices. There's something weird and wonderful about being served a delicate, pretty breakfast by a jacked ex-kickboxer.
After enjoying the serenity for a bit, i walked up to the highway and waited for a bus. I encountered what i think was my first scam artist - a guy who arrived trying to sell me a ticket to Santiago while i was at the bus stop. A half dozen locals were there too, but they didn't say anything to stop him. He kept going on and on (in Spanish) about how it's necessary to get this ticket, it's the same everywhere in Panama, it helps fund the local "agency", and he's doing me a service by crossing the highway from the "agency" office to sell me a ticket so i don't need to go over there myself, and actually the bus won't stop unless i buy the ticket, this will guarantee me a spot, and a whole bunch more crap that i didn't understand. I was almost completely certain that i could pay when i was on the bus, so i kept saying no in as many ways as i could. Eventually he gave up, then tried it on a local, who said no much faster. Sure enough, the minibus rolled up and it was same deal as the one i took Almirante to David and David to Las Lajas - you pay when you get off, based on some mysterious fares that are not published anywhere but everybody somehow knows them by osmosis, and as a newbie you just trust they give you the right change by giving them as little cash as possible (as close to what fellow passengers are giving) and sitting there with your hand out. (I messed that up on my first trip, and ended up paying $9 instead of $8.50, but whatever.)
The bus to Santiago took me through even more green rolling hills. This country is so damn green. I think it's partly because of the high humidity and frequent rainfall, but it could also be because it isn't as heavily developed as other places i've visited. I feel like there's a ton of wilderness here. Coming along the Pan-American, i've really started to think this would've been a good country to cycle through. There are hardly any cyclists going between towns on the highway, but there is a nice wide shoulder and the grades aren't too bad. Even though the cars drive pretty wildly, i reckon it'd be a relatively comfortable ride. It'd be a blast to stop off at all the little fruit stands and kiosks along the way, the places where the minibus stops to take on and let off locals traveling from village to village, or from the village into town.
Santiago is a big town. I was intending to spend the day there, but when i was walking around the bus station to scout out how to leave tomorrow, i saw a minibus to Aguadulce just about to leave, so i jumped on. Why not, right? Aguadulce is a small country town further along the highway in the direction of Panama, and it has a nice name and at least a couple of hotels. There is nothing in particular here for tourists to see, but there probably wasn't anything in particular at Santiago either, and this place seemed smaller and more chill.
I got out and wandered around to the main plaza and church, stopping off at a cafeteria for a quick lunch. The vibe on the streets was laid-back. I went to the town museum, where a very eager employee took me on a guided tour and spent an hour or more talking to me in English about not just the town's local history (of which there isn't all that much), but also indigenous cultures in the Americas, the history of Panama as a nation, and other random science and history topics he was clearly passionate about. I think he was happy to be able to practice his English - he said he'd never left Panama, and the way he talked made it sound like he'd been at this small-town museum for years. I feel like i perhaps should have tipped him (entrance to the museum was free), but i still don't understand tipping here, and i feel like i'm being degrading if i tip when it's not supposed to happen, or if i tip too little. Tipping too little is worse than tipping nothing at all. God, i wish all countries would just be no fucking tips anywhere, anytime, for anything, and either you put the correct amount into the original price, or put a donation box at the exit so people can quietly and without embarrassment put whatever money they feel it was worth.
Admittedly i also didn't tip because i had a bit of an upset stomach, so the moment the tour finished i booked it to a place i had seen online, and buddy it's weird. It's like an American-style motel where each room has a parking spot in front, but the motel itself is inside a gated compound. It seems odd to put this level of security in a pretty damn rural town where the nearby houses don't have fences, but it might be to make drivers along the Pan-American feel secure in parking their cars here overnight?
Something i've noticed about traveling in so-called middle income countries (of which Panama is no longer one) is that the relatively wealthy folks are way more paranoid about their shit than they are in high income countries. I get the sense that they are deathly afraid of the poor. To the point they would rather wall themselves off and live their lives in a prison camp than try improve the situation for everyone. I mean, that's how i see it through my "first world" eyes, but locals would say (and have said) i just don't understand how dangerous this place really is. The thing is, it's hard to try to disconnect their words from the same hand-wringing that goes on in the US or Canada, where rural people are convinced that cities in their own country are warzones, and urban people are convinced that rural areas are full of nutjobs who will gun you down just for looking a bit gay, or for being black, or whatever.
I'm not totally head in the clouds. I know that poor people who don't see any other options sometimes turn to petty crime to get out of the hole. I know organized criminals take advantage of desperate people, and many poor people are desperate. And it is true that certain areas are objectively more "dangerous" (crime-wise) than others. But i also feel like it doesn't help anything to ghettoize the poor, or for wealthy people to completely dissociate from people they see as being of a lower class. Like, do self-proclaimed "middle class" people really want to turn themselves into the same snobby "elites" they like to rail against? Because it sure seems like they do.
But, again, this is me looking at it through "first world" eyes. I've had colleagues and friends from China, India, South Africa and so on explain me over and over again that it's not so simple, that they really do need their gated compounds and security guards with machine guns patrolling everywhere, and that low class areas are filthy and crime-ridden and really not ever worth visiting as a higher class person. But these are mostly also "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" white collar types, so it's hard for me not to just hear it as the same old conservative tropes.
This is all a big tangent to say that i obviously am not stupid enough to walk down a lonely alleyway in Panama at night, but also i think well-to-do people often overestimate the danger of poor areas to make themselves feel better about the fact that they don't want to go there and face the actual inequality that their lifestyles might be exacerbating. Which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because when only poor people visit poor areas, and rich people fence off their own areas, now you have two ghettos, and the people only grow further apart in values and mutual respect. Now, to get back to the far more important original topic, because i know y'all are on the edge of your seats, once i got into my hotel room my upset stomach fixed itself without even going to the bathroom. So i've successfully ducked Montezuma's Revenge, this time.
Tomorrow i was thinking of going the whole way back to Panama, but the guy running the language school i signed up for gave a few suggestions of places that might be interesting to stop along the way, so i might try one of those depending on which bus i get. Tonight i see there's a Peruvian restaurant close enough to my gated compound that i hopefully won't get stabbed to death along the way. (Please picture me rolling my eyes. Also picture me touching wood since it would be poetic justice if i got mugged now after this whole screed.)
-o-
I did not get mugged. I did have the best meal i have had in Panama. More on that in a future food post.
I think i would enjoy working on a ferry, perhaps more than a sailboat. They feel like real work. Which of course would mean i'd need a real work visa, so that ain't happening. Still, every time i sit on a ferry i idly consider it. Same way i idly consider working in an airport every time i sit round in one, waiting for something to happen. I love these in-between spaces, the places where people travel through without noticing. There is a sense that everything is transitory, nobody ever sticks around. It's comforting for me.
-o-
From ferry to minibus. I didn't have enough time to grab a bite to eat, after walking to the bus terminal, then being told the buses to David go from the other terminal. I walked through Almirante, which was once a company town for United Fruit Company, and there is still a massive Chiquita freight terminal there. It already felt less oppressively touristy than Bocas, with local people going about their own business, playing music for themselves, making food for themselves. Walking through a town like that makes me feel like i'm visiting a real, functional town and not just a theme park or something. Although there were a few random people calling out in English trying to help me find a bus, which i hate that i don't trust them, but i don't. I don't tend to trust anyone whose first attempt at communication is English, and even less if they pull out a "hello" in three different foreign languages. It's that seeing-me-as-an-ATM thing.
Once i got to the terminal the conductor called me onto the David minibus (in Spanish). It was one of those buses where they might dangle around off-schedule for a while to try to make a certain number of people before leaving, and i was one of the last on. That meant i got the seat with the least legroom, which sucks as a tall person, but what you gonna do? We idled our way out of town, picking up people from all over the sides of the roads, dropping them off just a half mile later for some of them. The conductor did a great job of remembering who got on when and how much they owed (it's pay when you get off). We were sardines, but it was okay.
The road was steep, mountainous terrain for 3 hours straight. Zigging, zagging, straining up the hills and barreling back down. Did i mention no seatbelts? No seatbelts, although they probably wouldn't save us if we went flying off the edge. Houses and huts perched right up on the side of the cliff, you wonder why the people live there and how they earn a living. I never really understand these mountain areas. I've taken buses through them all over the world, and it always seems like such a weird lifestyle to me. Stuck on a precipice, dark for at least half the day because the mountain blocks the sun... And in this part of the world, raining most of the year and landslides wiping out the road over and over again. (The evidence was everywhere, in the gravelly, rubble-strewn and potholed sections.)
I kept thinking about if i would like to cycle it. On one hand, it'd be cool to stop at some of those mountain settlements, get some food from a random kiosk (if it's even open). On the other hand, this landscape is exactly what i dislike, whether on bike or in a bus - thick jungle on both sides, rarely an opening for a view... And the steepness of the hills could make getting to the next place with accommodation a tall order. Not sure i could string my hammock up between two trees on that sheer of a drop-off. Nice waterfalls to look at, though.
-o-
I was typing that last snippet when we pulled into the David terminal. David is a strange little town. It appears to be fairly middle class, in the sense that there is no extreme poverty visible on the streets. Little-to-no beggars. No real slum-like areas, that i came across (and i spent about 6 hours walking around town today, so i feel like i would've seen it if there was). But it does have the sense it is a middle class town in a poorer country, because a lot of houses have tall fences around them, and some even have razor wire on the top of the fence. Last time i saw a lot of that was in Namibia, and it really creeped me out. Especially in Windhoek (the capital) it felt like all the wealthy people lived in prisons. But David is more like Walvis Bay, which was the most comfortable town i visited in Namibia (albeit only for a few hours, so i didn't get the full picture). David is a comfortable town. It feels like the kind of place anyone who lived in a country town before would be happy to live in. All the houses are bungalows. There are only a handful of buildings over one storey, and they're in the downtown commercial area near the bus station. Once you leave that small area, everyone has a garden and a big porch. In the evenings people play music and grill outside, and you can hear the chatter from all your neighbors. Yesterday was Mother's Day, so there were a bunch of families having get-togethers.
If this is sounding like i am in a residential area, it's because i am. I am in a hostel where i got a private room, no windows, shared bathroom. It's right next door to people's houses. And so are the restaurants. In fact, the entire town seems to have no zoning restrictions, so you will be walking past houses, then suddenly there is a restaurant, then houses again, then a warehouse, then a convenience store, then houses again. It feels a little disorganized, but also it makes walking more comfortable than in towns with endless residential suburbs, because as a pedestrian you know in the next block or two you are always going to find a business where there will be some people to help you out if you are being chased by an aggressive dog or a followed by a shady character. Despite that, very few people walk. Everybody catches a taxi, or walks to the nearest main road and gets a bus. Sidewalks are an afterthought. There are no parks.
Dude, there are no parks. It's so fucking weird. There is almost no greenspace at all in town, as if everyone just hides out in their own garden (or the restaurants with the massive al fresco dining areas). Every little green spot i walked to on the map was barely a block big, and most of them were just abandoned bits of land filled with trash. Some had picnic tables or benches that obviously hadn't been used in years. I walked up to el Cerro San Cristobál, which was a small hill i saw off in the distance... and there was no way to climb it. I tried three different access points that i could see on my map - one was a gravel road with a big gate across it saying no entry - private property. One was just an eroded landslide-like thing that i would need proper hiking shoes to climb (i was wearing flip-flops), and even then it'd be near-vertical climbing/scrambling to get up there. And the third one, after heading back behind some houses, i saw a guy sitting on the side of the hill and asked him how to get up. He grabbed his huge machete and said he'd show me. Fortunately i had seen a bunch of guys with machetes earlier "mowing" lawns, so i knew he was a laborer and not a dude about to chop my head off. He bushwhacked me a bit of the way through a barely-trafficked path in the knee-deep grass, then said it'd be a scramble up through a shoulder-deep patch to get to a clearer path. I told him my shoes weren't good enough to get up there, and he agreed. He offered to exchange numbers if i wanted to switch my shoes and come back, but i was reluctant - mainly due to not wanting to depend on someone with a fucking machete just to go for a walk in the middle of town. He suggested i go to Boca Chica or Volcán next, which are two of the more touristy areas in Chiriquí province (although perhaps less touristy than Boquete, where all the Bocas del Toro backpackers had been before and/or were going next). Apparently there are hikes there that i would enjoy.
Amazingly, we had this whole conversation in Spanish. And, i think, this is the reason i wanted to walk around in a place like David and not in a place like Bocas del Toro. This guy wasn't trying to sell me anything, he wasn't speaking English to me, he was just a local guy trying to be helpful to a weird gringa trying to climb a hill that almost nobody - not even the locals - bother climbing. That helps me learn Spanish, and it helps me get an idea of the culture of the people who live here, and perhaps it gives them a fun story to tell down at the bar tonight.
In the end i failed to climb the hill. I'll get you next time, San Cristobál! I also visited el Parque Metropolitano, which actually isn't a park at all just yet. There is one big chunk of greenspace, right on the edge of town, which OpenStreetMaps shows as a park, but Google Maps just shows as blank space. The truth is somewhere in between. There is clearly a project to build a park in that space, but according to the signs the project started in 2018, and there doesn't appear to have been any work done on it in quite some time. I saw four kids jumping the fence ("unauthorized entry prohibited") and asked them if it was open. They said it's not open but you can still go there. So i did. And it was very odd. There are some children's playground things, and a locked toilet block, and fully-paved roads and bridges... but then - randomly - a bridge that's just girders that drop straight into the water. The water is that grody weird greenish-blue that i saw a lot in China, obviously polluted as fuck and not the kind of clean mountain spring you'd hope to have running through the first and only goddamn park in town. It was really bizarre. There were some squatters camped out along the edges, or possibly just very poor people in the only shacks they could afford. I avoided them to respect their privacy. One section had an off-leash dog that looked a lot meaner than the multiple dogs i passed in the poorer districts around el Cerro San Cristobál, so i turned on my heel and headed back out of the park.
Very weird. There is obviously plenty of money in Panama to build all manner of ridiculous skyscrapers over in the national capital, but it doesn't seem to trickle down to this provincial capital. I wonder if there is some corruption or other local political stuff going on that i don't understand. This is kinda how things were when i visited China too, where sometimes municipal projects seemed abandoned halfway, and it wasn't clear why. But in China i could spend all day searching the internet for the reason and i would never find anything, because China's politics are deliberately opaque, and not even the citizens who live there know the reasoning behind why stuff does or doesn't get done. I would hope that Panama would be a little more open, but my Spanish isn't good enough to know the right search terms to figure it out (or ask a local who lives in the area), and that is a block for me right now. I need better Spanish.
So, i will head back to Panama City to do 2-3 weeks of intensive courses and see how far that gets me. It's expensive, but i think it will be a worthwhile investment. I had a much better experience of China after i learned enough Chinese to be able to have a conversation that went slightly deeper than just asking directions or ordering food. I don't know if i will be able to reach that level in Spanish so quickly, but it is an easier language than Chinese so we'll see.
-o-
(I subsequently googled the park thing and apparently this year the government announced the "third phase" which involves building an ampitheater. Supposedly the park will officially open when the "second phase" is done, but no timeline on that, and no indication of why on a workday like today there was nobody working there...)
-o-
I am sitting in a little slice of paradise.
Leaving David on the way back to Panama, i decided to look for an interesting stop-off instead of charging back on a single 6+ hour bus journey. I basically picked it by searching for hotels all along the Pan-American Highway and picking one of the towns in between David and Santiago (the middle-point for David-to-Panama express buses). This morning i headed to the David bus terminal and jumped on a minibus to Las Lajas, which seemed to have a little cluster of B&Bs. There is a beachfront about 10km out of town with resort-like accommodations, but i thought it'd be more fun to get dropped off near the highway and stay at a B&B-ish hostel.
One of them had a special last-minute deal, since i guess nobody had booked, so i scored a private room with private bathroom for under $20. I got off the bus and walked around the sleepy village and then headed up to the hostel where i was greeted by the host, a ripped German expat who runs a gym in the front and a hostel in the back. We spoke Spanish most of the time, with me occasionally switching to German when i didn't have the vocabulary. He's set up a delightful spot. I am typing this sitting at a picnic table on the balcony looking out at rolling hills with banana trees and other tropical vegetation, bushes with salmon and fuchsia flowers, bright yellow butterflies, listening to the tweeting birds and crowing roosters. I think there's a cow somewhere out there too. On my way up here i passed a local riding a horse. "Muy tranquilo, aquí," said the host. He's right. This is like the ultimate rural retreat. Super peaceful. No twentysomethings planning a rager every night. This is the kind of place i could relax for a few days and catch up on email. So much better than Bocas. Maybe i'll make this a little reward spot to return to after i spend a few weeks doing a Spanish course.
Tomorrow i would like to continue on to Santiago, which this time will involve sitting on the Pan-American and just waiting around for a long distance bus to pass by so i can flag it down. I'm not sure how successful that will be, but worst case i give up and go back to David.
-o-
I wish i knew why pancakes are The Thing for serving to foreigners here. Last night at dinner someone recommended me a place to go where i could get "the best pancakes in Panama". And this morning i got pancakes at the hostel. But who actually eats pancakes in their normal life? I know in America it's one of the half dozen different accompaniments that you might get with eggs at a traditional diner, but i never really saw it as a regular thing. I suppose it's convenient to just keep a huge box of pancake mix floating around so you can just add water (i think?), fry and go. But surely toast would be even easier? Or cereal? Pancakes seem like such an unnecessarily complicated (and messy) thing to make for breakfast every day.
The pancakes this morning were pretty good, as far as pancakes go, which isn't very far, because American-style pancakes suck ass. The highlight was getting homemade marmalades to top them with - one passionfruit and papaya, and the other passionfruit and pineapple. Oh, and the fresh pineapple, banana and papaya slices. There's something weird and wonderful about being served a delicate, pretty breakfast by a jacked ex-kickboxer.
After enjoying the serenity for a bit, i walked up to the highway and waited for a bus. I encountered what i think was my first scam artist - a guy who arrived trying to sell me a ticket to Santiago while i was at the bus stop. A half dozen locals were there too, but they didn't say anything to stop him. He kept going on and on (in Spanish) about how it's necessary to get this ticket, it's the same everywhere in Panama, it helps fund the local "agency", and he's doing me a service by crossing the highway from the "agency" office to sell me a ticket so i don't need to go over there myself, and actually the bus won't stop unless i buy the ticket, this will guarantee me a spot, and a whole bunch more crap that i didn't understand. I was almost completely certain that i could pay when i was on the bus, so i kept saying no in as many ways as i could. Eventually he gave up, then tried it on a local, who said no much faster. Sure enough, the minibus rolled up and it was same deal as the one i took Almirante to David and David to Las Lajas - you pay when you get off, based on some mysterious fares that are not published anywhere but everybody somehow knows them by osmosis, and as a newbie you just trust they give you the right change by giving them as little cash as possible (as close to what fellow passengers are giving) and sitting there with your hand out. (I messed that up on my first trip, and ended up paying $9 instead of $8.50, but whatever.)
The bus to Santiago took me through even more green rolling hills. This country is so damn green. I think it's partly because of the high humidity and frequent rainfall, but it could also be because it isn't as heavily developed as other places i've visited. I feel like there's a ton of wilderness here. Coming along the Pan-American, i've really started to think this would've been a good country to cycle through. There are hardly any cyclists going between towns on the highway, but there is a nice wide shoulder and the grades aren't too bad. Even though the cars drive pretty wildly, i reckon it'd be a relatively comfortable ride. It'd be a blast to stop off at all the little fruit stands and kiosks along the way, the places where the minibus stops to take on and let off locals traveling from village to village, or from the village into town.
Santiago is a big town. I was intending to spend the day there, but when i was walking around the bus station to scout out how to leave tomorrow, i saw a minibus to Aguadulce just about to leave, so i jumped on. Why not, right? Aguadulce is a small country town further along the highway in the direction of Panama, and it has a nice name and at least a couple of hotels. There is nothing in particular here for tourists to see, but there probably wasn't anything in particular at Santiago either, and this place seemed smaller and more chill.
I got out and wandered around to the main plaza and church, stopping off at a cafeteria for a quick lunch. The vibe on the streets was laid-back. I went to the town museum, where a very eager employee took me on a guided tour and spent an hour or more talking to me in English about not just the town's local history (of which there isn't all that much), but also indigenous cultures in the Americas, the history of Panama as a nation, and other random science and history topics he was clearly passionate about. I think he was happy to be able to practice his English - he said he'd never left Panama, and the way he talked made it sound like he'd been at this small-town museum for years. I feel like i perhaps should have tipped him (entrance to the museum was free), but i still don't understand tipping here, and i feel like i'm being degrading if i tip when it's not supposed to happen, or if i tip too little. Tipping too little is worse than tipping nothing at all. God, i wish all countries would just be no fucking tips anywhere, anytime, for anything, and either you put the correct amount into the original price, or put a donation box at the exit so people can quietly and without embarrassment put whatever money they feel it was worth.
Admittedly i also didn't tip because i had a bit of an upset stomach, so the moment the tour finished i booked it to a place i had seen online, and buddy it's weird. It's like an American-style motel where each room has a parking spot in front, but the motel itself is inside a gated compound. It seems odd to put this level of security in a pretty damn rural town where the nearby houses don't have fences, but it might be to make drivers along the Pan-American feel secure in parking their cars here overnight?
Something i've noticed about traveling in so-called middle income countries (of which Panama is no longer one) is that the relatively wealthy folks are way more paranoid about their shit than they are in high income countries. I get the sense that they are deathly afraid of the poor. To the point they would rather wall themselves off and live their lives in a prison camp than try improve the situation for everyone. I mean, that's how i see it through my "first world" eyes, but locals would say (and have said) i just don't understand how dangerous this place really is. The thing is, it's hard to try to disconnect their words from the same hand-wringing that goes on in the US or Canada, where rural people are convinced that cities in their own country are warzones, and urban people are convinced that rural areas are full of nutjobs who will gun you down just for looking a bit gay, or for being black, or whatever.
I'm not totally head in the clouds. I know that poor people who don't see any other options sometimes turn to petty crime to get out of the hole. I know organized criminals take advantage of desperate people, and many poor people are desperate. And it is true that certain areas are objectively more "dangerous" (crime-wise) than others. But i also feel like it doesn't help anything to ghettoize the poor, or for wealthy people to completely dissociate from people they see as being of a lower class. Like, do self-proclaimed "middle class" people really want to turn themselves into the same snobby "elites" they like to rail against? Because it sure seems like they do.
But, again, this is me looking at it through "first world" eyes. I've had colleagues and friends from China, India, South Africa and so on explain me over and over again that it's not so simple, that they really do need their gated compounds and security guards with machine guns patrolling everywhere, and that low class areas are filthy and crime-ridden and really not ever worth visiting as a higher class person. But these are mostly also "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" white collar types, so it's hard for me not to just hear it as the same old conservative tropes.
This is all a big tangent to say that i obviously am not stupid enough to walk down a lonely alleyway in Panama at night, but also i think well-to-do people often overestimate the danger of poor areas to make themselves feel better about the fact that they don't want to go there and face the actual inequality that their lifestyles might be exacerbating. Which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because when only poor people visit poor areas, and rich people fence off their own areas, now you have two ghettos, and the people only grow further apart in values and mutual respect. Now, to get back to the far more important original topic, because i know y'all are on the edge of your seats, once i got into my hotel room my upset stomach fixed itself without even going to the bathroom. So i've successfully ducked Montezuma's Revenge, this time.
Tomorrow i was thinking of going the whole way back to Panama, but the guy running the language school i signed up for gave a few suggestions of places that might be interesting to stop along the way, so i might try one of those depending on which bus i get. Tonight i see there's a Peruvian restaurant close enough to my gated compound that i hopefully won't get stabbed to death along the way. (Please picture me rolling my eyes. Also picture me touching wood since it would be poetic justice if i got mugged now after this whole screed.)
-o-
I did not get mugged. I did have the best meal i have had in Panama. More on that in a future food post.