If at first you don't succeed...get a massage.

I typed up a full account of my misadventure but it was remarkably boring, so I’ll give you the highlights.

-I tried to head for a national park which the guide book doesn’t quite specify the location of.
-Bus confusion (80% their part!) drove me in a complete circle before heading in the right direction, as far as I knew. Confirmed three separate times with the ticket-handler kid where I wanted to go.
-Found out an hour and a half later that we’d left my target far far behind.
-Made my way back to the starting point, wasting nearly four hours, which accounted for most of the day’s sunshine (it rains in the afternoon) and emptying my food battery (i.e. stomach).
-Spent first half of ride back standing in a minibus too small for me, enjoying the feeling of being tall (I love indigenous populations!) for first 2%, then spending the second half of the trip next to a large woman whose breath literally smelled like the little garbage cans they put in all the bathrooms for your used toilet paper. I am not exaggerating.

I tried to be all Zen about it, but it sure was hard at the time. I reminded myself not to be put off and generalize about all the people, since there were far more helpful ones than dipshit unapologetic bus guys with goldfish memories and punch-worthy smirks, and even that one, I tried valiantly to remember, is used to locals who know every bend of the road; he’s not used to helping clueless tourists, and was probably embarrassed.

Then I found some good food in an authentic backstreet 1-room eatery with a blend of Spanish and Ngöbe-Buglé, laughter, and a WC in the front corner of the dining room, and the day picked up considerably.

Singing a song, went for a walk up to the other park, through which one can walk to another good town, spending 6ish hours in the cloud forest instead of a slightly longer amount of time on buses. Saw a sign saying passage on the trail is forbidden for security reasons. Spent the rest of the evening debating course of action until an actual guide told me it is in fact not safe. Le bummer.

Consoled myself with an after-dinner massage in the hostel’s spa and slept better than I have in months.

Yesterday I tried for the park again, hitching a ride up with other hostel guests who were taking a tour. We drove up a rocky road in 4-wheel drive, then switched to ultra-4-wheel drive when it went from a road to more of just a strip of rocks through the forest, enjoying the bouncing immensely.

Moon boots.

In he goes...

and out he comes.

Found out we were not actually in the park, but sort of between the two. Took a walk with the guide and a Panamanian family (father and 3 sons, all of us in borrowed white galoshes) along a gorgeous creek with waterfalls, took a plunge into the icy water and took pictures of the absolutely gorgeous area, none of which turned out any good; it’s just one of those beautiful places for the mind’s camera to remember.

The guide was the one who put the final nix on the walk to Boquete, so today I’ll be back on a bus, just not the same on as before. Although…I have time to leave my bag in reception and try for the park one more time…

Third time’s the charm, right?

Cerro Punta, the Chiriqui Highlands, Panama

Leaving David, I took a bus to the Chiriqui highlands and the town of Cerro Punta.

Another chilly mini-bus ride, but I enjoyed listening to the women chattering behind me, and not in Spanish. This area has a significant indigenous population of two groups, the Guaymi (or Ngöbe) and the Bokota (or Buglé) who are politically united (as the Ngöbe-Buglé), dress differently (loose dresses of beautiful strong colors, though the men dress like westerners) and have their own languages. And they make me feel tall.

As usual I drifted off to sleep, and woke to a deeper green countryside and pouring rain, great sheets of water kicked up from our unrepentantly speedy passage around sharp turns. Actually, people seem to drive faster when it’s raining than when it’s dry.

I ended up in the town of Guadalupe, staying in the nicest place yet, a bit above budget, but with cloud forested hills, two national parks, good meals made by friendly locals, and a climate too chilly for mosquitoes,  it’s well worth the price. And, I remind myself, it’s about 1/6th of the price of the dingy room in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. (I periodically sit back and enjoy the lack of mosquitoes. Time for another contented sigh...)

For my meals I walk into "town,” which is a T-intersection with a dozen buildings, of which two are restaurants, although one is usually closed. There is one item available: rice & beans, potato in some form, and a piece of meat. This would be a great place indecisive people to vacation.

The food is good, staff chatty, and the bill about $2. Maybe $2.50 if you get a glass of fresh squeezed passion-fruit or pineapple juice (or better yet, combine the two). (Did you know Panama uses the US dollar? They also mint their own coins to go with ours, called "Balboa's" with pictures of the explorer on them.)

My largest companion in the dorm.

The sign says “hostel” but my accommodation is more of a mountain lodge. Think Aspen, only Latin American. Chunky wood furniture, even in the dorms, not a single IKEA tag to be found, and big-ass insects clinging to the ceiling. There’s a common room and restaurant upstairs, both with large brick fireplaces for warmth (Warmth! When was the last time I needed that?!?) though the fireplaces fill the rooms with a haze of smoke, and it took the kitchen over an hour to make my hot chocolate, even though I was the only one there. Just details, not complaints, I am way too happy of a camper to bitch about my hot chocolate!

The Chiriqui highlands are luscious with cloud forests, which drape like cobwebs on the steep slopes around town, although farms are metastasizing their way up the slopes, felling trees as they go. I fear that in a few years they'll put 'em in a tree museum, and charge the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em.

There are bright flowers erupting everywhere, including giant heaps of trumpet flowers drooping over fences and walkways. In the forest it is always dripping and cool, epiphytes abounding, and bromeliads growing on every surface. The soundtrack of bird song and running creek water are exactly what people pay $24.95 for.

You should come here.

After a hearty plate of the dinner option I stroll back to my hotel through the reliable evening downpour, stopping along the way to buy a container of fresh local strawberries and cream. And did I mention the "hostel" has a spa too? Last night I got an hour massage for $35 and slept better than I have in months.

Seriously, screw Costa Rica, come here.

My first Panamanian town, David.

Walking away from the Panama/Costa Rica border with a sigh of relief, I found a bus for the closest city in Panama, David. (That’s the name of the city, I didn’t forget who I am talking to.)

In the Middle East I observed a phenomenon where people in a hot country exert/demonstrate their power and wealth by turning the air conditioner up to freezing. This is apparently true in Panama as well. I shivered my way into David (now that was an odd sentence) and stepped back out into the muggy heat with a sigh of relief. I did a lot of sighing on my first day in Panama.

It was raining as I walked through the streets of my first Panamanian town. Looked a lot like Mexico. My guide book is four years old, so most restaurants in it don’t exist, and if the hostels do, there is no guarantee they have been maintained. Such was the case with the first one I tried, from which I saw cockroaches fleeing, wiping their many hands in disgust. I went looking for the second on the list, but they’ve increased in price rather dramatically, and are upstairs from a large flashing casino, so I went looking for the third.

En route to the third I found a new one, with a pair of tourists leaving in a car at the moment. Aha! Instant Trip Advisor! I asked them in Spanish if it was a good hostel. They indicated that they don’t speak Spanish.

Me: “English””
Them: “Non. Francais?”
Me: “Non, je ne parle pas francais. Italiano?”
Them: “Ah! Italiano, si!”
They confirmed for me that the place was clean and good (I’ve forgotten too much Italian to ask about bed bugs specifically, but I’ll take them as assumed under the first two adjectives.)

The place was run by a tiny grandmother creature, who stood well back from the gate while I inquired about a room. The private rooms were way too expensive (I’m going back to the casino!) but a dorm room was $11. I talked her down to $10. Am I going to hell for bargaining with a Panamanian grandmother? Lo siento, abuelita.

I was the only person in the dorm, but  there was no fan or mosquito net and a few of those little bastards got there before me, so I wasn’t lonely. “Hey guys, where you from? Did you just fly in today? Ow, stop that.”

(Did I tell you that a mosquito in Dominical bit me right through my shirt? That sucked, then when I swatted it, it left a big blood stain on my shoulder. And it was a clean shirt, too.)

I went prowling for an early dinner, but nearly everything was closed; it was 5:30. Wild town. I found a place that served fettuccine with more butter and cheese than I have ever seen in a dish before, and that includes the butter tray. Hell, it was more butter than I’ve ever seen in a grocery store. I found myself thinking about the hippo(s) on the bus. Someone needs to come tell this part of the world about calories, and that is very much not like me to say.

I came back to the hostel to find that Abuelita didn’t tell me about the guard dogs prowling the property. And, perhaps more importantly, she didn’t tell them about me either.

Luckily my room is at the end, close to the second gate, and with the rain they didn’t hear me come in. I know they have access to this area though, as the smell quickly made clear. So it was a night with no fan, no net, and periodic wafts of fresh dog doodoo.

How long will I stay, abuelita? I think one night will do. Gracias.

Tomorrow onward to the highlands. Sounds promising...

Dominical to the border

My hostel's balcony-thing, Costa Ricans
(and I) love the "Pura vida" thing.

The schedule said 10:30, but the bus out of Dominical showed up at 10:00. I had a bus leave early before on this trip, and didn’t want to miss this one, so I went running out of the hostel, shirtless, bag bouncing on my back, for the second time this trip. I gotta stop doing that.

I got to the bus to find the driver behind it, legs splayed wide, taking a gigantic piss. Oops, sorry, I’ll wait. After finishing he sorta peered at me shyly from behind the bus, then told me he didn’t leave until 10:45.

It was already about 213 degrees, so I went back upstairs to the hostel loft to wait. Mr. Driver got back on the bus and took off a fair percentage of his clothing. About 10:55 he honked, I walked sedately down and we left (he was dressed again).

Another long hot bus ride, so crowded it was almost Nicaraguan, with the back of my shirt absolutely soaked with sweat, which made me a tad self conscious when I stood up to give that old lady my seat. Then of course the other old lady who’d been sitting on the aisle next to me wouldn’t move over, so the standing lady couldn’t sit anyway, and we all just stood stupidly in the aisle, even more crushed than before.

Shopping area in Dominical. The Costa Rican flag, the
pride flag, and Bob Marley? My kinda place.

Finally a young mother passed one of her kids over to the seat, though the lass immediately started sobbing “mommie!” and I got to see the irritation bordering on fury of a young mother, looks the same in Spanish as in English. The daughter sat down, sideways, not quite in the seat, and went to sleep,

I stood for an hour or so, pinned between (forgive me my insensitivity, but it’s merely descriptive) a hippo of a woman and the incredibly knotty arm of the ancient spider who wouldn’t move over. I felt crushed between a rock and a squishy place.

Finally a bunch of folks got off and I sat again, now next to a solid young fella with a sort of Costa Rican skater thing going on. A vendor climbed on selling fried somethings out of a bucket and since I was getting mighty hungry I asked how much they were. Surprisingly they were a tad much, and I wanted to save my last bill for the border, so I had to say no.

A second later the skater boy is handing me one, then nodding when I said “oh, thank you, but I don’t have enough.” He bought me one! Oh, skater boy, you beefy sweetheart! Costa Ricans are awesome.

My last Costa Rican beach. Basically unrelated to the
post, but hey, why not?

Just as I couldn’t stay awake anymore we got to Neily, the jumping off point for the Panamanian border, despite its utterly non-Spanish name. From there it was another short busride to Paso Canoas and I found myself walking around the inexplicable chaos of a third world border.

I genuinely do not understand these borders. I am increasingly convinced they are extremely clever, because there is no logical reason why they should be so disorganized. A very clever and experienced mind has designed an arcane system that will maximize opportunity for tourist extortion and enable just the right amount of smuggling. I really think I could have just walked through without talking to anybody if I’d really tried, but that is bound to be a problem later on.

Finally I had my exit stamp from Costa Rica from the little shack well behind where it should be, then walked through the shifting semi trucks to the Panamanian immigration, where the guy told me at impressively inaudible volume that I needed proof of onward travel.

Forgive my French, but I fucking hate this.

A few years ago there was a change in international travel. Some utter dimwit who has never traveled and/or has relatives who work for the airlines, decided that requiring travelers to have a ticket out of the country will stop illegal immigration.

This of course makes no sense whatsoever. If someone wants to stay in a country illegally, ignoring a return ticket will not be much of a challenge. I am not a vengeful or sadistic person, but whatever mid-level bureaucrat came up with this requirement (and you know it was an American) should be taken onstage in a city square and publicly electrocuted.

Not to death, I’m not crazy. Just until my sense of justice is satisfied.

Luckily I printed my ticket from Ecuador to Curacao for later this year (did I tell you I’m going to Curacao?) but unluckily this did not satisfy the expressionless fellow in immigration. He informed me that I had to go buy a return ticket to San Jose, Costa Rica.

I explained that I am not going back to Costa Rica, and that they cannot require proof of onward travel when one cannot travel onward through Panama by normal means. The eastern half of the country belongs to the guerrilla armies and drug traffickers, and cannot be crossed by outsiders. Instead, one must either fly from Panama City to Colombia, or, as I intend to try, go to the coast and try to find a boat sailing for Cartagena and finagle your way onboard.

The success and details of said boat trip are of course dependent on what boats happen to be in the harbor, which precludes advance purchase, which precludes satisfaction of aforementioned ridiculous requirement. I tried to respectfully explain this to the border guy. His logical response “You need to buy a ticket to San Jose.”

For the second time this trip (the first was in Germany) I was tearing my hair out and wanting to punch someone in the jaw over this requirement. Again, whoever made up this requirement was clearly NOT a traveler. The bastard has made vagabonding much more difficult, and deserves a public spanking before the electrocution commences.

We finally found the alternative possibility, proving my financial independence. Apparently they are worried I am going to stay in Panama and take advantage of the luxurious social care network. Apparently they know the state of America’s healthcare system, so realize this is in fact not such a bad idea.

Luckily, a friend warned me in advance of this possibility, and advised me to bring $1000 in traveler’s checks, which I promptly produced and counted for him. “Next time buy a return ticket” and I was through.

Thank fucking god.

(While buying the traveler’s checks the guy at the bank said it was the last month they were selling them. I may have to hold onto these things for the rest of my life…)

Well hello Panama, how you doin'?

Onward to Dominical.

Yup, it got better.

I wasn't quite ready to leave Manuel Antonio, but decided to keep moving south, so I took a bus to Dominical of unknown duration, since I spent nearly the entire ride falling asleep in my seat. I can't seem to stay awake on a bus ride here, although I don't know if it's the smothering warmth or because I was the last person to bed in the hostel last night and first up, and spent a fair amount of the night alternating between airing out my sweaty torso and covering it back up again after scratching the new mosquito bites.

Dominical is one of those peculiar surfer/expatriate enclaves that spring up around the world and confuse the locals terribly. Where do all these young white men come from? How do they spend their entire lives surfing and (apparently) doing abdominal exercises?

There are two streets, one inland a stone's throw where elderly tourists sip fruit smoothies and look bored while waiting for tomorrow's bus onward, while the other street runs along the beach and is where the people move about more often. White street vendors with dreadlocks and board shorts sit at their folding tables and make jewelry out of beads and coconut shell pieces, not deigning to pitch anything to the conformist tourists. Down from them the local vendors add a basketball jersey to the uniform and sell the same T-shirts in every town, and cry out to passersby (especially if you're wearing a backpack) "Hello! Where you from?" They are not nearly as aggressive as some places (looking at you Marrakech) and seem to enjoy my responses in Spanish, and we actually end up chatting fairly often.

The menus of the restaurants in town are surfer themed, not much rice and beans in evidence. For dinner I very much enjoyed my "Off the lip" sandwich. So much in fact that I didn't share any with the beach dogs who took turns staring at me from next to the table. Good dog. Sorry. Nice balls by the way. (I wonder if after so long in Latin America it will look odd when I get back to the States for dogs not to have big pairs of balls swinging around...)

There is a series of hostels, who seem to differ only on the volume at which they are playing Bob Marley. All are hosting populations of young surfer boys, none of whom packed a shirt. It must be a unique experience to be a reasonably attractive female in a town like this. Like being the cute bartender at fire fighter camp.

I will probably cross the border into Panama tomorrow.

The day is going to get even better.

I woke up this morning drenched in sweat, shiny sides and the sheet grossly damp. I had to hide under there to attempt to evade the mosquitoes, the itchy marks of whose raids pepper my ankles, feet, and anywhere else they felt like biting. New definition of impunity: mosquitoes. I made a few of them pay the price this morning, but I figure the hostel staff won't appreciate the new polka dots on the walls.

I was getting scruffy again, so headed to the bathroom with my shaver thingy in hand. I've used it twice before, and both times it wasn't so much cutting hair as ripping it out. I stopped the first time once someone told me I was bleeding. I set to, taking breaks from the plucking to slap at the mosquitoes dancing around my apparently delicious ankles.

The buzzer was plucking away as usual, then suddenly got louder and the ripping got even worse, if that's possible. I turned it off and could feel that something had come loose inside. The thing broke on it's third use. I know I shouldn't expect much from the Walgreens $8 shaver, but that was the worst machine I have ever dealt with. It is now resting peacefully in the garbage bin outside my door, on top of the two expensive apples I bought yesterday that turned into ant-infested brown mush within a few hours.

Did I mention the shaver crapped out halfway through? So I got to walk across town, face half shorn, clumps of ragged face fuzz scattered across abused skin. I found it hard to look up from my feet for some reason. That was fun.

I bought some plastic thingy whose advertising wants to convince me it's a jet engine, stumped back to the hostel and straight into the bathroom where I returned to babyfaced smoothness with delightful speed. Feels kinda weird though, this is the first time I've been completely clean shaven in...I dunno. Years? What did I do in Nepal? Can't remember.

But it's been long enough that I am pretty sure my chin is a fish belly white under my Central American sun-grilled cheeks. Not so much a tan line as a tan zone.

But now I'm sitting down to breakfast and the day is going to get better. Oscar, the friendly majordomo fella who runs the hostel just set my plate on the table and peered at my face, but maybe it wasn't so much perplexed as...um...admiring. Yeah, let's go with that.

Travel day, Montezuma to Quepos.

I sat down at the table, looked up at the ceiling fan overhead and told it "I love you." Out loud. It was about 7:30 AM.

Sweat was my companion throughout the travel day when I left Montezuma. First was the soporific bus, where I chatted with an elderly Cuban lady, understanding about 30% of what she said, between the noise of the grinding engine and the Cuban accent (where'd the "s" go?)

The bus took two hours, then it was a two hour wait until the ferry left. That's 4 hours, and the guy in Montezuma had told me it would take about 5 to get all the way to Quepos. I was skeptical to begin with, but I quickly realized he had assumed I would take the expensive tourist boat-shuttle across the bay. No way! (By the time I arrived I was questioning my dedication to public transport.)

The ferry took an hour, during which my vocabulary was melted down to words like "sweltering, oven, breathless, roasted, drowning in one's own sweat without a breath of air." Good people watching. (Including 4 leathery expat Americans who discussed fishing at length, dogs, and then the various personal firearms they were buying, selling, and throwing into the mangrove swamp.)

Then a shared taxi with a Slovenian couple on their honeymoon and a Canadian (and all our bags) across Puntarenas, where an old man pushing an ice cream cart looked astonished and offended that cars would transgress so far as to drive down the street that he had set up shop in the middle of. The taxi driver on the other hand, was not at all surprised at his presence in the lanes.

Then a hurried meal at the shack across from the bus station, where all the wind I'd been missing on the boat showed up to blow the shredded cabbage off my plate, but I didn't mind because it excused me hunkering right down with my face practically in the rice, which tasted great, and the pineapple & maracuya smoothie was divine. (And in googling it to check the spelling I finally just learned that a maracuya is a passion fruit.)

Then it was the bus to Jaco, and onward to Quepos, estimated length: 3 hours. On my first bus down from the Nicaraguan border last week I sat in front of a guy making odd sucking sounds, as if he was trying to vacuum some morsel of food out of his teeth. This may be a Costa Rican thing, since on my 4 hours to Quepos both my neighbor AND the guy on the other side of the aisle were doing it. Nearly continuously. Surround sound spit sucking. Tssk. Psssth. Sssssssst!

Costa Rica is purportedly a remarkably safe country, except for the rampant petty theft, so I sat with my bag overhead in clear sight and reassured myself that it was okay to arrive after dark, which I normally try not to do. About two hours after sunset it started raining. Hard.

I looked out the window in bemusement in Jaco at seeing a massive glass-fronted complex that housed gigantic installments of Pizza Hut, Quiznos, and KFC. The Pizza Hut looked like the sort of place one goes with one's family to celebrate graduation. A hallucination out of the rainy night.

I checked in my guide book for hostels in Quepos and realized someone mixed up east and west somewhere along the way between the map and the words. Then the taxi rank that I was going to orient off wasn't there either, so I walked and peered a bit into the rain until I realized I may have just accidentally checked out a bus station prostitute (I hate it when that happens) so I bowed out and asked for recommendations.

First I tried a tourist couple, but they were oddly clueless...I suspect they thought I was a con man. Next try: Subway. Another hallucination from another continent. The giant talking squirrel making sandwiches directed me two blocks down then one block up. There I found a continued lack of hostels, but an adorable elderly fellow pointed me towards an economical hotel called La Malinche. (If my memory serves, La Malinche, which may translate into something like "that cursed nasty lady", refers to the indigenous woman who translated for Cortes, vastly facilitating his genocidal conquest of the Aztec Empire. She makes a nice hotel though.)

It was above budget, but with the dark and rain outside, I decided to splurge. Private bathroom! A delight, even without a toilet seat. Wall-mounted fan! Which sounded quite literally like a propeller plane, even on its lowest setting. I dreamed all night of the Red Baron and strafing trenches in 1916.

My definition of splurging.

Tomorrow 7 km onward to Manuel Antonio, with a beach and a famous national park.