boosters, bucket lists, politics and mysterious cities of gold
Well, folks, i am boosted. After waiting about three weeks for a formal vaccination card from the Panamanian ministry of health to arrive at my hotel, i gave up and decided to try my luck at a walk-in. I walked in. I got vaxxed. That was easy. It was nice having the feeling like i am doing my bit for global health by coming in to get vaxxed even when i am traveling in a different country from where i got the first ones. Amusingly, i am now carrying vaccination records from three different countries with my passport. They're all colors of the rainbow!
In other news, nothing. My annoying sickness has been sort of persisting on and off and only this week it got better (hence going to get vaxxed). Several teachers at school have been hit with whatever it is too and tested negative for COVID, so it's probably just a bad cold. But it sure has been miserable. Just to piss me off, it seems to get worse every weekend. Last weekend i had such a bad headache and nausea i could barely leave the hotel to get some fruit. This week i almost entirely gave up on Panamanian food and ate mostly vegan out of my Ursack. I think it helped.
The food here is so fucking heavy and depressing, especially after two months of it. Everything has meat, usually with bones, and so much stuff is deep-fried. It's so lacking in clean flavors or spice that it's getting emotionally challenging for me to stand it.
More broadly i am questioning my plans for traveling in Latin America, especially considering the dismal food situation. Eating well when i travel is so important to me, and there just isn't a culture of cooking fresh, cheap, delicious food here. What's cheap is unhealthy, bland, unsustainable trash. Very similar to my culinary woes in the Midwest, but worse because i am not cycling every day to offset the tedium.
The thing is, while i have always wanted to learn Spanish, i have never had any interest in traveling Latin America outside of Mexico. It's nothing personal. I've read a bit about the other countries in the region, but nothing hooks me, nothing grabs me, there is nothing that i have the slightest bit of interest in visiting. The northern part of Venezuela/Colombia, perhaps, and very specifically only the section with an arid/desert climate, but other than that i just don't care.
It's gotten me thinking about why i am interested in the places i'm interested in. My Spanish has now improved to the level where i am able to discuss political and philosophical issues with relative confidence in my classes, and i have had a lot to say about China and urbanization and authoritarianism and the global economy. Bouncing off this, one of my teachers asked me what i thought about the situation developing between Russia and Ukraine, and... i had nothing to say. I have no opinion. I just don't have enough (or, in fact, any) knowledge on that topic. I don't care, not interested, it's two countries that were never on my bucket list, haven't much cared about that part of the world since it was the USSR. It's not personal. I'm not going out of my way to be ignorant. It's just that there are only so many things in the world that you can spend enough time learning about to form an educated opinion, and former Soviet states are very low on my list of things i care to learn about. They're right up/down there with Latin America and South Asia for me. I'm quite okay to leave the pontificating over those subjects to people who have taken the time to learn more about them.
Meanwhile, i have still learned more than i ever wanted to know about Panama, for example. I now really understand how central the canal is to the national identity. It's more than just the primary income for the country, arguably it's also the reason why the country has its independence (from Colombia) in the first place. Hence, in every museum you visit, in every tourist site, there is some mention of the canal, even when it doesn't appear to have any link to the topic or site at hand.
But what interests me more about Panama than the canal or its complicated history with the US is the history of the indigenous people and the bizarre situation we have in the Darién Gap. Why is that jungle in particular so impenetrable? Why did the Guna people never really get conquered? Why is almost the entire Caribbean coast of Panama undeveloped, to the point many communities can only be accessed by boat or plane? (And now the whole coast is a haven for drug smugglers.)
When i ask about these things, i encounter what i now understand to be a developing country mindset. People in developing countries don't look at their wilderness from an ecological point of view, but an economic one. Underdeveloped regions aren't seen as environments to be preserved and studied, they're problems to be fixed. Some of my teachers think centralization is a problem, and specifically spending all the canal money in the capital city instead of spreading it to outlying communities. But even in the capital there are lots of areas lacking basic urban features like traffic lights and parks. Everyone agrees corruption and greed is a major problem. And yet, Panamanians - a lot like Canadians - look at their neighbors and say "well at least we aren't that bad". In some ways perhaps that prevents them from doing better.
Anyway, i'm sure if i traveled to another Latin American country i would now be able to talk to the people there and learn about the politics and history of that country too, and i'd be able to gather different opinions on the hemisphere and the world. I think everyone knows the stereotype that Latin Americans hate the US for its meddling in their politics, and that they rightfully blame the US for creating the illegal drug trade that has devastated the whole continent. But it's different when you speak to them about it in their own language. It's sort of a love/hate relationship, in Panama at least. I feel like i'm getting a deeper insight than i did sitting around online rolling my eyes at all the Latin American keyboard warriors that spend their days caping for brutally authoritarian regimes as some kind of antidote to US hegemony. It's nice to see that in real life people can still hold some anger and resentment toward the US without blindly tossing democratic ideals in the trash.
But, fuck, traveling is more than just talking politics, it's food, and dear lord i really need to find a place that has fresh, delicious food. I am currently in talks with one of my teachers to see if i can do a week or two stint helping out at a restaurant of one of her friends up in the mountains of Panama. This particular teacher is a published writer with lots of friends and acquaintances in the arts community of Panama, and she knows several folks who work with indigenous communities around the place. She seems like a good person to hook me up with a place to visit that's a little bit off the beaten path. I don't really like organizing things through "fixers" or using a social network to find a place to go because it means i lose the freedom of independent travel, but in countries like this one where it's basically the tourist circuit or nothing, it seems like there's no other way to experience certain parts of the country. If i do wangle a trip up to the mountains, it'll be interesting to see if the food is very different.
By March, though, i have to leave Panama. My visa will run out, so what then? I was thinking of taking a boat to Colombia, and then perhaps exploring the Caribbean coast over there. There is a several day long hike that you can do over there, to a ruined city in the middle of the jungle. I don't like the idea of hiking with other people, but i figure if you're going to be in South America, one of the things you should do is go on a hike to a lost city in the middle of the jungle. I mean, what even is the point if you don't find a mysterious city of gold, right?
Mysterious Cities of Gold Theme Song (HQ)
The only other appropriate thing to do in South America would be to land on top of a plateau and find dinosaurs or something.
Mysterious cities of gold and lost worlds aren't really bucket list items for me, but they are some kind of random goals that might be a little safer to shoot for as a tourist than charging head-long into the narco-riddled shitshow that is pretty much every country north of Costa Rica on the way back to the US. There is a chance i might surprise myself and find something enjoyable that i never expected.
I mean, i suppose anything is better than going back to work. I don't even want to think about it. I don't want anything to do with it. Work. Ugh. No. Rather eat patacones for the rest of my life.
In other news, nothing. My annoying sickness has been sort of persisting on and off and only this week it got better (hence going to get vaxxed). Several teachers at school have been hit with whatever it is too and tested negative for COVID, so it's probably just a bad cold. But it sure has been miserable. Just to piss me off, it seems to get worse every weekend. Last weekend i had such a bad headache and nausea i could barely leave the hotel to get some fruit. This week i almost entirely gave up on Panamanian food and ate mostly vegan out of my Ursack. I think it helped.
The food here is so fucking heavy and depressing, especially after two months of it. Everything has meat, usually with bones, and so much stuff is deep-fried. It's so lacking in clean flavors or spice that it's getting emotionally challenging for me to stand it.
More broadly i am questioning my plans for traveling in Latin America, especially considering the dismal food situation. Eating well when i travel is so important to me, and there just isn't a culture of cooking fresh, cheap, delicious food here. What's cheap is unhealthy, bland, unsustainable trash. Very similar to my culinary woes in the Midwest, but worse because i am not cycling every day to offset the tedium.
The thing is, while i have always wanted to learn Spanish, i have never had any interest in traveling Latin America outside of Mexico. It's nothing personal. I've read a bit about the other countries in the region, but nothing hooks me, nothing grabs me, there is nothing that i have the slightest bit of interest in visiting. The northern part of Venezuela/Colombia, perhaps, and very specifically only the section with an arid/desert climate, but other than that i just don't care.
It's gotten me thinking about why i am interested in the places i'm interested in. My Spanish has now improved to the level where i am able to discuss political and philosophical issues with relative confidence in my classes, and i have had a lot to say about China and urbanization and authoritarianism and the global economy. Bouncing off this, one of my teachers asked me what i thought about the situation developing between Russia and Ukraine, and... i had nothing to say. I have no opinion. I just don't have enough (or, in fact, any) knowledge on that topic. I don't care, not interested, it's two countries that were never on my bucket list, haven't much cared about that part of the world since it was the USSR. It's not personal. I'm not going out of my way to be ignorant. It's just that there are only so many things in the world that you can spend enough time learning about to form an educated opinion, and former Soviet states are very low on my list of things i care to learn about. They're right up/down there with Latin America and South Asia for me. I'm quite okay to leave the pontificating over those subjects to people who have taken the time to learn more about them.
Meanwhile, i have still learned more than i ever wanted to know about Panama, for example. I now really understand how central the canal is to the national identity. It's more than just the primary income for the country, arguably it's also the reason why the country has its independence (from Colombia) in the first place. Hence, in every museum you visit, in every tourist site, there is some mention of the canal, even when it doesn't appear to have any link to the topic or site at hand.
But what interests me more about Panama than the canal or its complicated history with the US is the history of the indigenous people and the bizarre situation we have in the Darién Gap. Why is that jungle in particular so impenetrable? Why did the Guna people never really get conquered? Why is almost the entire Caribbean coast of Panama undeveloped, to the point many communities can only be accessed by boat or plane? (And now the whole coast is a haven for drug smugglers.)
When i ask about these things, i encounter what i now understand to be a developing country mindset. People in developing countries don't look at their wilderness from an ecological point of view, but an economic one. Underdeveloped regions aren't seen as environments to be preserved and studied, they're problems to be fixed. Some of my teachers think centralization is a problem, and specifically spending all the canal money in the capital city instead of spreading it to outlying communities. But even in the capital there are lots of areas lacking basic urban features like traffic lights and parks. Everyone agrees corruption and greed is a major problem. And yet, Panamanians - a lot like Canadians - look at their neighbors and say "well at least we aren't that bad". In some ways perhaps that prevents them from doing better.
Anyway, i'm sure if i traveled to another Latin American country i would now be able to talk to the people there and learn about the politics and history of that country too, and i'd be able to gather different opinions on the hemisphere and the world. I think everyone knows the stereotype that Latin Americans hate the US for its meddling in their politics, and that they rightfully blame the US for creating the illegal drug trade that has devastated the whole continent. But it's different when you speak to them about it in their own language. It's sort of a love/hate relationship, in Panama at least. I feel like i'm getting a deeper insight than i did sitting around online rolling my eyes at all the Latin American keyboard warriors that spend their days caping for brutally authoritarian regimes as some kind of antidote to US hegemony. It's nice to see that in real life people can still hold some anger and resentment toward the US without blindly tossing democratic ideals in the trash.
But, fuck, traveling is more than just talking politics, it's food, and dear lord i really need to find a place that has fresh, delicious food. I am currently in talks with one of my teachers to see if i can do a week or two stint helping out at a restaurant of one of her friends up in the mountains of Panama. This particular teacher is a published writer with lots of friends and acquaintances in the arts community of Panama, and she knows several folks who work with indigenous communities around the place. She seems like a good person to hook me up with a place to visit that's a little bit off the beaten path. I don't really like organizing things through "fixers" or using a social network to find a place to go because it means i lose the freedom of independent travel, but in countries like this one where it's basically the tourist circuit or nothing, it seems like there's no other way to experience certain parts of the country. If i do wangle a trip up to the mountains, it'll be interesting to see if the food is very different.
By March, though, i have to leave Panama. My visa will run out, so what then? I was thinking of taking a boat to Colombia, and then perhaps exploring the Caribbean coast over there. There is a several day long hike that you can do over there, to a ruined city in the middle of the jungle. I don't like the idea of hiking with other people, but i figure if you're going to be in South America, one of the things you should do is go on a hike to a lost city in the middle of the jungle. I mean, what even is the point if you don't find a mysterious city of gold, right?
Click to viewMysterious Cities of Gold Theme Song (HQ)
The only other appropriate thing to do in South America would be to land on top of a plateau and find dinosaurs or something.
Mysterious cities of gold and lost worlds aren't really bucket list items for me, but they are some kind of random goals that might be a little safer to shoot for as a tourist than charging head-long into the narco-riddled shitshow that is pretty much every country north of Costa Rica on the way back to the US. There is a chance i might surprise myself and find something enjoyable that i never expected.
I mean, i suppose anything is better than going back to work. I don't even want to think about it. I don't want anything to do with it. Work. Ugh. No. Rather eat patacones for the rest of my life.