Last days in Panama-Return to the USA

Ferry to Tabago Island

Cristo Negro

2nd oldest church in the Western Hemisphere

Little Havana, Miami

Domino Park (Members Only-that's because they are scared of my skill)

 

Sunday, April 29 2012
We woke up early, had our daily huevos y pan from the lady at Hostel Amador and caught a taxi to the causeway ferry in Panama to take a boat over to Isla Taboga.   The ferry was supposed to leave at 10:30 so Jon wanted us to leave at 9:30 to catch it on time.  This being Sunday, it took us about 15 minutes to get a taxi.  After we did, the taxi driver then picked up another passenger which is very common but he dropped this guy off first and then was blocked by traffic cones and had to go the long way back out and this added another 15 minutes to our travel time.  We arrive to a very long line for the ferry so I jumped in line while Jon went to buy tickets.  While we waited and waited in the sun a guy behind us thought it was ok to let his overweight, overbred, jacketed, poor excuse for a dog to continue to brush up against our legs.  He would just say, "He's ok, he doesn't do much but eat and sleep," as if this was an explanation of why it's ok for it to it touch us.

They loaded the boat and when the couple in front of us got to the ticket taker they were stopped and the gate was closed.  No one said anything but we assumed the boat was full.  After waiting about 10 minutes Jon went and asked when the next boat would be. We waited for a total of about 30 min in the hot sun after the ferry left before a second boat arrived for the remaining passengers.  The ferry ride took about an hour, so we didn't get there until noon.  We had return tickets for 3pm so that didn't leave us very much time on the island.  Jon wanted to hike but I was only interested in a little jaunt and swimming since it was blazing hot out.  I told him he could go but he didn't think it wise to leave me I guess and we just went for a little walk up the road into the jungle until we came to someones plantation then turned around and went swimming at the beach.  There were tons of people at the beach and some Latinas were having a salsa dance party in knee-deep water while wearing their thong bikinis.  Everyone wears thongs down here...I felt a little over dressed in my one piece. We then walked a little more through the town looking for a place to grab a quick snack and drink before we had to catch the ferry.

 We couldn't find a great place to eat so we just got some ice cream bars and waters at the local tienda.  After the oversell of the ferry at 10:30 we learned our lesson and got on our 3pm boat at 2:30.  Even at 2:30 the boat was almost full and left at 2:45. So, when they said 3pm they really meant 15min earlier.  We returned to Hostel Amador, finished our Funky Mark movie Contraband, made dinner and spent our last night in Panama.

* I just wanted to give you a quick history lesson on Taboga Island because it is pretty interesting.  The island was discovered in the 16th century and was originally named Isla de San Pedro by the Spanish explorer,Vasco Nunez de Balboa Its current name derives from an Indian word, aboga ("many fish"). The island's first settlers were Indian slaves from Venezuela and Nicaragua. The small town of San Pedro was founded in 1524 by Hernando de Luque. The town church of the same name is claimed to be the second oldest church in the hemisphere
~Marcie


 Monday, April 30 2012

Last day in Panama!  Also, last day in Central America before we fly to Miami later in the nite.  Our flite was at 2 am so we had a lot of time to kill.  I arranged a late check out with our hotel in Amador, outside of Panama City and went for a walk by myself because I’d go stir crazy sitting in the hotel room until 2 pm with nothing to do.  Marcie on the other hand is more tranquillo and has no problem idling away the hours. 

So out I walked in the hot Panamanian sun with no destination in mind.  I ended up walking down by the old canal, a little confused, I remember well.  I had just left my cheap hotel where there’s no neon burning brite. 

The banks of the Panama Canal near the city are an industrial zone where all the business of boats goes down.  When the way I was walking ended in a shanty town of shacks I continued on down a dirt path that looked to lead south down the canal’s east bank and under the Bridge of the Americas that spans the waterway.  I was a little uneasy because usually unregulated, overgrown areas like these on the outskirts of town are a prime petri dish of homeless lawlessness.  But I didn’t see a single soul as I walked under the bridge.  It was a really nice way to have some thinking time and bring some mental closure to this leg of our journey. 

All along the bank grow mango trees with branches heavy with fruit.  Most of the low hanging ripe ones have been picked by locals so you’ve got to work a little if you want some fresh free fruit.  I’m not a pro picker yet and I proved that by knocking one out of the tree and having fall and hit me in the face.  Both the mango and myself were a little bruised from the blow to my brain but I got to eat the unblemished half of the fruit.

Back at the shack Marcie and I checked out and put our backpacks into a storage area so we could get a cab to the Albrook Mall.  When we got there we were wondering how come there were so many Panamanians there at 2:30 pm on a Monday afternoon.  We later found out that everyone had off from work and school for the May Day holiday that is celebrated in Latin America but not the US and Canada.  The place was packed and we had to wait in line for over an hour to buy tickets to the movie The Avengers.  Marcie says the movie was good but I wouldn’t noh because I fell asleep about an hour into it and I remained resting thru all of the loud special effects and fite scenes til Marcie woke me up as the credits rolled.

We still had lots of time before our flite at 2 am so we took a cab out to a restaurant called El Trapiche.  This place supposedly serves the best tipico (local Panamanian) food around.  But we wouldn’t noh because it was closed.  So we walked next door and ate at a place that specializes in holy grail of all Latin American food: The Churro.  I also drank a whole lot of sangria because we ordered a pitcher and when it arrived Marcie said it was too strong and she wouldn’t drink any.

Finally we made it out to the airport and after doing all the details required by the airline and by security I passed out laying down across 3 seats at our departure gate.  Monday turned into Tuesday and pretty soon we were in the air leaving Central America after about 120 strait days of adventure.  3 hours later we touched down in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida at 5:50 am est. 

Tuesday, May 1 2012

We’re back in the USA (mentally insert your own emoticon here).  Marcie and I talked about the future of the blog and wayed our options, what’da’ya say?  To blog or not to blog?  Are we going to keep on writing a blog every day for the rest of our lives?  Of course not.  Then why write a blog while we’re in the USA?  We decided to keep on bloggin our noggins until we return home in a couple of weeks and then take a hiatus until we fly back down to South America to continue our travels (and blogs) on or around June 11^th. 

If you the reader, whomever you are, out there in the world wide womb staring at your screen in some backwater of Bulgaria don’t want to continue reading that's fine.  I noh at least Marcie’s mom still will.

So we continue on in life as it takes us thru the groggy early morning line at US customs at the Ft Lauderdale airport.  Some guy working there thot it was alrite to let a couple of people in wheelchairs and their families cut us in line.  I’m not ok with this.  Why should someone get to cut in line just because they get around in a wheelchair?  Maybe some of our readers can help me out here but I don’t see what the connection is between waiting in line and whether or not you can walk.  At least these people get to sit down while they wait, as the rest of us stand.  Of course I have sympathy for the disabled but we all have problems and just because all of ours’ aren't as obvious as theirs’ does that mean that they should get to cut in line?  I’m deaf in my left ear.  Do you see me going around cutting in line?

Anyway, we jumped thru all of their hoops and were on our way.  We caut the Tri Rail from the Ft. Lauderdale airport to the Miami airport because we had a hotel booked in Miami and we had to pretend that we flew into the airport there so that we could have their free airport shuttle pick us up, saving the expensive American cab fare.  On the tri rail I was painfully reminded of how aggravating this country can be.  There was this young late 20’s early 30’s woman sitting in our rail car talking way too loud to her who friend sitting rite next to her.  The friend was speaking at an appropriate level so that I could not hear what she was saying, but this other bimbo was bellowing belligerently about her face book something or other and about a whole bunch of other trivial bullshit that no one else cared about but we now knew all about because of how loud she was talking.  I was already wishing I was back in Mexico and we had only been in the US for about 2 hours.

At the hotel we were conveniently able to check into our room at 9am.  It’s the first time that I’ve been able to eat the continental breakfast at a hotel on the day that I checked in.  After a nap we headed out on foot to explore a little of Miami.  Neither of us had ever spent a significant amount of time here before and we had a few days until New Beige arrives at the port.  The city is set up on a compass quadrant grid so it’s pretty easy to navigate.  Our destination for the afternoon was Little Havana. 

We boarded a city bus, paid the $2 fare and asked the driver for the transfer stub.  We don’t do transfer tickets, she informed me.  Like being cut in line, this is another thing that I’m not ok with.  I’m sure that many of our 6 readers have taken city buses before and noh that very often you need to take more than one bus to get where you’re going.  The subsequent buses are usually included in the price of the original fare.  Not in Miami.  We rode the #36 bus east for about 15 blocks and then had to pay another $2 each to ride the #27 bus south to Little Havana.  I think that’s a shitty way to run a bus system. 

You probably guessed or already new that Little Havana is the Cuban section of the city.  For us it was like a halfway house to ease us back into the English speaking world of America because here almost everything is in Spanish but with a familiar American setting.  We walked around for a while down Calle Ocho past lots of cigar lounges and salsa clubs to the famous Domino Park and then had a dinner/lunch at nice Cuban café.  I had a really tasty Cuban style ale that surprisingly was not brewed in Cuba but by Thomas Creek Brewery of Greenville, SC, the same people that make the famous Pig Swig beers.  We thot we ordered tamales to eat but when the plate arrived it was mostly filled with rolled up slices of ham, other pieces of pork and pickles.  One thing that we were looking forward to when coming to America was the clarity with which we would be able to communicate with the waitstaff at restaurants and the lack of surprise when our food came.  Maybe next time. 

~Jon

Back to the Spanish 'loin.

Is this what guys really look like in Panama?

From the Causeway

Who would win in a fight- Caribbean Lobster or Maine Lobsta?

Lion fish

Unfinished museum that we wanted to go to and had read it was to be finished in 2011-no such luck.

 

Friday, April 27 2012

Today it was sunny when we woke up and the sun continued to shine for our boat ride with El Presidente and the Caba’dup Crew back from the San Blas Island of Narranjo Chico to mainland Panama.  Before we left I dutifully had to report to the main man at Caba’dup about the state of the ladies’ bathroom.  Yesterday some Israeli girls who were staying at Robinson’s, not Caba’dup, walked over and used the bathrooms here.  Not cool.  Even less cool was the fact that these two dirty cows took big nasty dumps and then they even put the toilet paper in the toilet bowl clogging the flow.  In Central America you never, unless it’s a really nice western style hotel, put the paper in the bowl, always in the trash.  I know this is gross and I don’t really like to do it, but I like clogged toilets even less.  I didn’t want the proprietor to think it was us so I had to let him noh it was the inconsiderate Israelis.  Altho I had no opinion of Israelis when I started this trip I’m starting to form one based on a lot of accumulating negative experiences. 

Once we were back on the Panamanian mainland we got picked up by the Land Cruiser taxi for the 2.5 hour ride thru the jungle and then back to Panama City.  We got dropped off at Luna’s Castle in Casco Viejo again.  Marcie went in to check if they had a private room available but unfortunately they only had dorm beds.  The prospect of sharing a dorm with a bunch of rude Israelis did not appeal to us so we walked back thru Casco into the down and out area on the fringes of the old town and back to our Colombian hotel that we stayed at last week.  As soon as we approached the building thru the steaming stinking streets we spotted the religious nut who sells homemade rice pudding.  I decided to buy one not because I wanted some of his pudding, altho it is good, but to see him do his Jesus freakout that he does after he makes a sale.  This time he got even crazier then the first time that he prayed for us in the Chinese laundry.  He grabbed my hand and started bowing repeatedly to touch his forehead to my hand while he bestowed a bevy of blessings on Marcie and I.  He was speaking really fast but I cot the words Sangre and Fuego (Blood and Fire) so I guess it was a pretty good blessing. 

Soon however we were above the craziness of the streets taking care of some business on the computer in our air conditioned room.  Later we walked back down to Casco and had dinner at a very nice tapas place.  First we had a drink on the rooftop bar overlooking the harbor and the city skyline behind it.  It’s seems strange that a classy restaurant like this is rite next to some of the dirtiest slums that I have ever seen, but like I mentioned a few blogs ago this area is a reclamation work in progress for Panama City. 

Saturday, April 28 2012

I got up early this morning and while Marcie got her beauty rest I went for a walk out of the beat up barrio where our hotel is and across the hi-way to Cerro Ancon.  This is an urban national park on a hill on the outskirts of the city that used to be used as a US military base.  Now abandoned by the US it’s protected from development as a park with a road that winds around it on it’s way up to the summit.  It is not a huge mountain but the climb to the top in the humid early morning heat is a good workout and views from the peak of Panama City to the east, Casco to the south, the Amador Causway to the west and the Panama Canal to the north are really comprehensive.

On my way back down I decided to take a different street back to our hotel room and wake Marcie up for breakfast.  As I headed that way a Hispanic lady stopped me and said No camino alli (don’t walk there).  I replied Por que no (Why not)?  Es pelegroso (It’s dangerous).  Esta Bien, no problemo, I said and kept on walking.  This nay-borhood was particularly decrepit and a couple blocks later two military officers armed to the teeth motioned for me to come over to talk with them.   They told me that I was not allow to walk in El Chorillo because I’m a gringo and it’s too dangerous.  They asked me if I had any money and I lied and said no because I thot it was potentially a shake down.  One of them then pulled 25 cents out of his pocket, gave it to me, hailed a cab and told me to get in.  I obeyed and got a really cheap cab ride back to my hotel.  It was only 9 am at this point and I didn’t think that I was in any danger but I didn’t seem to have any choice in the matter so I just went with the flow.  I’ve never got a cab ride less then $2 in this city but I don’t carry around a big shotgun either.

We went out to breakfast at this French crepe place in Casco that was waaaay too expensive so I only got a juice.  They must think that they’re in Paris or something because there is no way that a crepe with apples, walnuts and cheese is worth $10 US in Panama City. 

Later we took a cab to the Balboa section of town and checked into a private room at the same Amador Hostel that we stayed in last week.  We have to kill a couple of days until our flite to Miami and this hotel is cheaper, has free breakfast, laundry and a kitchen where we can cook our own meals. 

In the afternoon we got a cab out to the Amador causeway where we rented 2 bicycles.  The 2 kilometer causeway starts on the mainland at the mouth of the Panama Canal’s Pacific entrance and connects with a few off shore islands.  We rode bikes around here for the afternoon, visited a nice nature center run by the US’s Smithsonian Institute and had some gelato. 

Back in Balboa at our hotel we cooked a scrumptious dinner (I figured out the secret for how to get hash browns nice and crispy) and watched “Contraband” starring Mark Walberg, on my brother Will’s recommendation because it has a lot of smuggling scenes set in Panama City.  The movie actually shows a realistic version of the city and the port.  You can tell the Panama scenes were shot on location and not just on a set in LA.

~Jon

Isla Naranjo Chico, Kuna Culture and a wonderful place to stay!

Kuna Ladies

The Lizards!

Lizard loves the Pirate

Kuna Boat

Our room at Cabana Narasgandup

 

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Last night has become the worst night of sleep that I’ve ever had surpassing the really hot night we spent in Granada, Nicaragua.  I decided to sleep in our hammock in the main house because I couldn't stand the smell in our cabana and it was flooded anyway.  My super powerful sniffer can be a burden sometimes. Jon put up the hammock for me and it was pretty comfortable.  He couldn’t smell anything in our cabana so he slept in our bed.  Sometime in the middle of the night I started to feel water dripping on my head inside the hammock under the roof.  The roof wasn’t leaking in this spot but it was pouring rain and the wind was blowing the water in the side of the house and getting it on me. Eventually, it became too wet for me to stay there.  I tried to move the hammock to another more interior pole but the hammock was too wet to sleep in at that point.  The rain slowed down a little so I trudged through the pond to ask Jon if it was dry in our room.  He was sleeping peacefully so I decided to come back to the room even though it smelled very musty.  We slept through the rest of the night without any problems. 

I awoke to something weird moving around by my feet.  This turned out to be a cat that wanted to make its bed on my bed.  I gave it a little shove onto the floor but it came back again and again.  Apparently, we were sleeping in his bed, but because humans take precedence over other animals we won the battle for the bed.  Jon had done a little scouting yesterday around the island and found another place for us to stay.  They had wood floors! So, after breakfast at Ina’s we quickly carried our bags over to our new accommodations before it started raining.  Cabanas Narasgandup was a big upgrade.  They have wood floors, clean sheets & pillows, and a light in our room.  Their bathrooms were also quite nice as they actually have a toilet with a seat and all you have to do to flush is push the handle.  (Back at Ina’s the toilets were seatless and if you wanted to flush you had to fill up a bucket of water, dump it in the upper deck, and then use your hand to pull the plug)-UGH!!!  I was much happier at Cabana Narasgandup.  That's a really long name so I’ll just call it Caba’dup now.

The rain held out for a bit and we were even able to go snorkeling for a little while before lunch.  The snorkeling in the area was, like Portobello, very nice for non-fish life.  We saw a couple schools of fish swimming around but mainly it was really interesting little anemones and corals. Lunch was really good with a local pescado called Bonita, platacones (plantains), enselada (salad), and pina (pineapple).  It was a huge lunch and I had to give my leftover fish to Jon and we couldn’t eat all the plantains.  We thought that the fish might have been caught just earlier today because when we were snorkeling Jon saw a native Kuna zoom by him underneath the water with a 2-pronged spear, flippers and a snorkel.  He gave Jon the thumbs up and went after a school of fish.  After lunch we walked around the island, which is very small.

After returning from our walk, Jon bought a couple cans of coke for us.  We played dominoes (I beat him twice - I’m on a roll) and drank our cokes. While sitting there playing dominoes in our cabana lizards just started showing up left and right.  Before this, we had commented that it seemed like there weren’t many animals on this island except birds.  So, for these guys to show up in such multitudes right then it was a little weird.  They were probably about an inch to two inches long and seemed to be some sort of gecko.  There were six or so of them and they weren’t scared of us at all.  They seemed to be admiring our stuff, which I thought was a little weird.  They even let us pick them up.  Several of them had tried to climb into my coke but since I was still drinking it I shooed them away.  After I finished I let them have it just to see what would happen and they went crazy.  They swarmed the can of coke and started licking the residual sweetness off of the outside of the can.  Then a brave soul hooked his tail to the lip of the can and dangled himself in to get the pot of gold still left in the can.  After this it was kind of like King of the Hill (the altitude supremacy game not the tv show) because only the largest of the lizards was allowed to stay on the top of the can.  If another smaller one would try to steal a lick the largest one would run him off with a couple displays of dominance that included tail whacking and putting his head on the other one's head.  All in all it was not very aggressive but each one seemed to know who was in charge.  At one time I had 3 lizards on my coke can!  (See pics)

For dinner we asked the guy to give us smaller portions because lunch was so big and we aren’t use to eating so much but something got lost in translation because we received a very good but very large dinner of rice, fish, lentils and salad.  Jon shared his rum with the guys who work at the cabanas and we had a nice conversation with the jefe (boss) in Spanish which is neither of ours' native language.   I also bought a Mola (Kuna quilted fabric squares depicting wildlife) for mi madre and hope to make it into a pillow when I get home because they only sell the fabric squares.  I guess some people might frame them as well.  We’ll probably spend the evening reading and playing dominoes.  Muy tranquillo.

~Marcie

* Marcie’s Ponderings

Lately, during our travels we have been meeting and hearing a lot about Israelis.  We met one the other night at Luna’s who has family in Moncks Corner, SC, which is very close to Charleston.  We also met a nice couple that is also staying at Ina’s.  Several times though we have heard from other travelers (including other Israelis) that we might not want to go or stay someplace because there are lots of Israelis there.  We became curious as to why we should avoid them.  Some folks mentioned that they could be a little defensive and aggressive when it came to conversations and that big groups of them together could be very overwhelming.  After talking to the nice couple at Ina’s last night I found out that all Israelis (men and women) have to go through the Army when they graduate high school.  This sounds horrible.  I would never want to be forced to do something like that.  I can’t even imagine going through a process or organization that controls what you do every minute.  I can see why a lot of the Israeli travelers who are only recently released from the Army when they begin their traveling seem so defensive when you speak with them that they become offensive. 

 Thursday, April 26 2012

After a day and night at Caba’dup, I was very glad we switched accommodations.  Our room was breezy and dry, with a wooden floor (piso madera), table and chairs and even a solar powered light that is activated from 6-11pm.  We switched places around 10am yesterday and I was a little concerned that maybe we hurt Ina’s feelings.  Jon mentioned though that it was completely rain related and had nothing to do with whether we liked Ina or not and he was a nice guy and his wife cooked us great meals.  So I thought we would give him a nice review, but recently I have changed my mind.  Ina is quite childish.

Let me recap.  Getting to the islands is a little difficult.  We had to book Ina’s Cabanas through Luna’s Castle hostel in Panama City.  Most cabanas in the San Blas were booked so they kind of steered us to Ina’s through Lam Tours, the company arranging the 4x4 jeep ride out there.  Our current lodgings here at Caba’dup are not part of the Lam Tour deal I suppose because they are one price step up from budget.  The next morning Lam took us out to the port to meet the boat.  Then the boat, which is Kuna owned and lodging affiliated brings us to the island.  It's also the boat we're supposed to take back to the mainland when we leave.  We're supposed to tell guys at our cabana the day before we want to go so they can call the boat guy who brings us back to the mainland where we meet the 4 x 4 jeep guy from Lam who brings us back to Panama City.  We're currently on an island that is off the grid and we don’t have any access to phones or internet to take care of this ourselves.  We've already paid for the 4 x4 ride but have to pay for the boat when it happens.  No big deal.  However, since our new lodging is not affiliated with the budget Lam Tour deal (Ina and his cousin Robinson, the only other places to stay on the island, are) they also aren’t part of the boat deal so our guy at Caba’dup said we should go ask Robinson (Ina’s cousin) to call the boat for us. 

We went to do this today and were coldly told by Robinson that we had to talk to Ina.  At this point I started to smell something fishy (figuratively).  We then walked to Ina and let him know we needed a ride back tomorrow.  A guy from the boat ride over was also standing next to Ina.  Ina then proceeds to tell us that it’s not his problem because we don’t stay with him anymore.  So, I said to the other guy, “What about you?”  He just shrugs.  Jon told Ina that we didn’t have any problem with him and we only wanted a room with a wooden floor because it had been raining so much.  He then says he doesn’t have any minutes on his phone.  Very childish.  I’m shooting them both dirty looks by now.

So we walk back and tell our guy at Caba'dup.  He says “no problemo” and calls the tour company for us.  Apparently everything is worked out and we are going to leave tomorrow at 9am.  We hope.  Ina doesn’t know who he is messing with though because when I get back to the mainland I’m going to blow up the backpacker websites with bad reviews about Ina’s Cabanas on Isla Naranjo Chico. 

After lunch we paid our guys at Caba’dup to take us by boat to Isla Perro, which is about 30 minutes from our island and is great for snorkeling.  The snorkeling was nice because there’s a shipwreck from 1959 and we were able to snorkel around that but the current was really strong and made it a little difficult.  We had about a half an hour of some really nice sunshine over on Isla Perro and it's easy to see why the San Blas islands are considered to be so beautiful. 

A few of days ago we had asked a couple from Robinson’s Cabanas who rode over with us on the boat from the mainland if they wanted to go on this snorkel trip and they accepted.  They're a nice couple from Ireland (Nick) and Sweden (Malin) and now I’m a little concerned that they might get blacklisted from Robinson’s and Ina’s now that they came to our side of the island. 

Our side of the island seems to have an issue with the other side of the island.  It must be some long-standing tribal dispute but when we decided to switch to a room with a floor we were put smack dab in the middle of that Kuna Indian feud.  Our side of the island is very clean and as I’ve said already it’s considered a step up from budget.  But for the differences in quality I'll gladly pay the extra $15/person.  It was mainly because of all the rain we’ve had that we moved but after the move I am very impressed with the way Caba’dup’s place is run.  It’s a business and not just someone’s house.  I enjoy staying with families but you need to have a bit of professionalism when you have people staying at your place and Ina’s does not have that.  Ok, I think I’ve done enough ranting about Ina.

After our trip out to Isla Perro we returned back to Caba’dup on Isla Naranjo Chico and enjoyed some of the only sunny weather we’ve seen in the last week or so.  We read books in the hammock that we strung up between two palm trees and had a nice dinner prepared by the Caba’dup Crew including El Presidente, of fried bonita fish, french fries, cole slaw and baked beans.  We also finalized our boat transportation back to mainland Panama for tomorrow morning.  Since we're blacklisted from the Ina/Robinson boat that we were originally supposed to take we're now going with the Caba’dup Crew for only $5 per person (Ina charges $10). Watch out INA!!!!

~Marcie