One night I am burrowing down into my bed under kilograms of weight in blankets, just trying to stay warm, and then the next night I am tossing and turning on a bed that has no blankets at all, trying to cool off beneath the roaring cieling fans of my hospedaje in Panama City. Once again it is hot as a bastard and the chill of the Andes doesn't seem so bad at all. (Or the fact that this hostel has showers with only cold water nobs!!)
I left Bogotá at 6 in the morning and enjoyed a very early morning cabride with the talker of all talkers. This cabbie was not just a talker either...he sang for me and played his dashboard as though it was a set of congos!! Talk about a bon vivant, this guy takes the cake. He talked with a raspy smoker's voice and had obviously weathered many years of fiestas and being completelemente borracho...sin duda! But it was the perfect way to exit Colombia. He drove very slowly down the highway that leads to the airport so that he could show me all the things that I 'probably missed' in my time in the central part of the city. (We got passed by everybody!!) These were things like newspaper offices, malls, movie cinemas and used car stores. I acted fascinated though, as he seemed to be showing them to me. He was so nationalistic how could I not want to go back! Colombia has the best weather, the best countryside and por supuesto; the best women!!! He assured me of that. He said that I needed a wife from either Bogotá or Cartagena because they are very hogarista...that's to say that the do a good job taking care of the home. Oh, and they make good mothers. Can you tell that the Women's Liberation Movement has yet to take ground in Colombia? Well, why was I leaving without my Colombian wife? I didn't have an answer for him on that one.
I flew across the border into Panamá and landed in late morning. A wave of hot, wet air hit me as I walked off the plane and into the tunnel. They use the dollar here so I stepped right into a cab and was in Casco Viejo with no delay. That is the old neighborhood of the city and it is a charming, if very run down, affair on the water just outside of the city center. It is again, a dangerous sort of place with all sorts of riff raff roaming here and there. But as usual, all good. To me it feels and smells a lot like the Quarter in New Orleans.
I rolled in on a sunday afternoon and I was starving. I negotiated my way through a number of shady characters to a 'restaurant' on a little side street. It was more or less a buffet. You tell the lady what you want and they plate it up for you. No one needs to eat in this place. I had some sort of pasta dish with vegetables and sliced ham. The flavah was just not there, and it tasted pretty weathered. Worse was the coke I ordered, I poured it into the stainless steel cup I was presented with and after the bubbles settled a clearish-white skim of grease formed across my black milk of capitalism. Ucky!! I don't want white skim!! I tried to dab it off with the one paper napkin they had given me and it proved not to be up to the task of removing the gnar. Luckily the cup was so small, I still had half the coke left in the bottle. Interesting meal, but it only cost 75 cents, so Mateo can't really complain. If Jake was here he would say that we got what we payed for!!
I caught a cab a little while later to go to buy my onward ticket to Costa Rica at the bus terminal. I had a really cool cab driver there too. Here they often drive two fares at once, which outside of being pretty sketchy, is pretty cool. You get to see other parts of the city and meet new and local people. I ended up really liking that driver and when he dropped me off we were friends and I was bummed that I would never see him again...but...as fate would have it, again I had a wierd coincidence moment when he swung through that same parking lot hours later and picked me up again!!! Can you believe that? Paranoid people would think that was a 'coincidence? I think not...' moment. That was pretty interesting, but nothing compared to this...
After I bought my ticket, I went to do email in this mall nearby. While I was there, the email place closed just as it was starting to deluge down the warm and huge summer rain. I was not tempted to go out into it, so I strolled the mall and found a movie theater. Should I catch a movie or not? This is what I was thinking while I looked at the options. Before I could decide, a small latina woman walked up to me and asked me if I was looking for someone.
"No." I said.
"Oh, well I was waiting for my friends but it seems as though they are not coming..." she said, partly in english.
"Umm..." said Mateo.
"I think they are not coming because of the rain." She said.
"Oh." Said Mateo.
"What are you doing right now?" She asked.
"Ummm..." Said Mateo.
"Do you want to see a movie with me?" She asked.
"Uh, ok..." Mateo replied.
She was a woman of about 43 and she said that she was from Costa Rica. She had lived in the USA for eight years. Married and divorced. We walked to the ticket booth and waited in line while exchanging strange smalltalk. When we got to the teller and went to pay for the movie, I looked at her to get her contribution and she just smiled. I looked at the teller and she gave me the 'well are you gonna pay or not?' eyes. So I handed her a ten and got the change and we went in. Sitting there waiting for the previews to start she told me about her past and where she lived in the US. Then, as the lights went dim she pulled out a photo and told me that it was her daughter and that her daughter was now a model in Los Angeles. I was like, "Umm..."
And that is the moment that I realized that I had taken some random person's mother to the movies!!! Ha ha ha! I was thinking over all the angles she could be taking. See, when I say that I said 'umm' a lot, it isn't that I am scared to talk to latinas...it's that as a gringo traveler you are always on the lookout for being conned. Often the South and Central American scams involve a good looking latina woman seducing an unsuspecting and lucky feeling whiteboy. Well, that wasn't gonna be Mateo. She tried to cuddle up during the movie and I moved everything out of my pants pocket that was on her side. I put the kabosh on her moves early and she seemed to be pouting in the dark. We watched a shite movie called Jumper, (if you have a job that pays money, don't waste it on this movie...) and at every tense point she would shriek and jump and grab my arm. After a while she asked where my wife was. When the movie finally ended she asked if I wanted to take her to dinner. I did not, and I left. She wanted money for herself to have dinner. What did I say to that? "Ummm..." No.
Later that night I rearranged the pack and then drank a bunch of Balboa beers with some homies in the hostel. Outside in the street the sounds of violent riff raff ebbed and flowed. Fireworks erupted at one point and the heat resided to the point of faint relief. I crashed late in my blanketless bed with a smile of amusement on my face...welcome to Panama baby!!
The next day I woke up and took my laundry to get washed. Here, they will wash and dry your clothes for a little more than just one dollar. I like that. I returned to the hostel and took off for the Canal of Panama with a hilarious personality I had met in the hostel the night before; a fiesty ex- New Yorker named DiDi. DiDi lives in Oakland now and is a complete riot. She met the Dali Lama in Tibet many years ago during the protests against the Chinese. She was busted in a hashish deal in North Africa in the late seventies. She is a regular at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. She is a well adjusted hippy with a self admitted lack of brain cells and a sense of self depricating humor that is completely enchanting...you can't help but love the lady. She has recently had surgery on her mouth up in Costa Rica and enjoys her daily ration of pain medication...in other words, she makes a hilarious travel buddy!
We cabbed up to Miraflores to check out the Canal. It really is a cool place. We watched a number of boats pass into the locks, then elevate, and then sail out the other side. We watched the video about the digging of the canal. We toured the museum of the canal. Then we cabbed out to a trail head and spent the next while roaming around the rainforest, chasing animals and butterflies. I climbed a couple trees and roared with laughter at DiDi's stories of travel and debauchery. It was hilarious. After making the circuit of the trails there, we sat on the side of the highway for the better part of an hour while waiting for a bus. A chicken bus as it were. It took many minutes for it to arrive, and when it did, we got shipped all over the damn place before making it back to the city.
Later that night, a guitar appeared and I jammed for a couple hours with a Panamanian named Rafa...that was a lot of fun. Then a group of us went out for the night and then came back and drank 70 cent beers until the wee hours again. I will continue the story soon...I am on the move right now...
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