Days with New Beige are becoming fewer and fewer...

Hostel Amador

Fun with Snorkel gear and pineapples

Our Dutch buddy Susan

The bridge to Gamboa?

New Beige got a washing by Marcie and Susan

Erik from Belgium

Friday 4-20-12

Today we tried to take care of a lot of business.  By my American standards we didn’t get enuff done but here in Central America things are different so I’m satisfied.  Our day started off in the Amador Familiar Hostel in Balboa, Panama.  We had a nice breakfast of eggs and toast and then drove out to find the main police headquarters to get our truck inspected.  This is the first step in the multi-step process of exiting your vehicle from Panama.  Altho the police station is only about a 10 minute drive from our hostel it took us about 45 minutes to get there with all of the road construction, unnamed streets and our lack of local noh how impeding us.  When we finally did get there there was a tussle going on between a few of the Panamanian police.  One officer was holding another Full-Nelson style while another officer dumped a bucket, Super Bowl Gatorade style, on the guy being held.  This was explained to us as a birthday (feliz cumpleanos) tradition.  Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday.  Someone needs to dump some water on him!

After our truck inspection at 9:30 am we thot that we were going to go over to the office next door to pickup our paperwork but the inspecting officer told us that we couldn’t go there until 2:30 pm.  So we went back to our (Rocky) Balboa, Panama hotel room and bot some plane tickets.  $139 each one-way from Panama City to Miami, leaving 11 days from now.  We then bot $55 each one-way tickets from Pittsburgh to Boston.  At prices like those who can afford not to travel?

Unsurprisingly we got a little lost on our way to our 2:30 pm police meeting.  Soon tho, we found our spot and after getting all of our stamps stamped New Beige, Joey, Marcie and I were driving back over the Panama Canal to Barwil Shipping’s Panama Pacifico office.  We paid them $1,000 US cash for the Panama to Miami New Beige shipment and then we headed back to our hotel where we met up with Christian and Susan from New Mexico and Holland respectively.  Both of them are very compatible companions and we exchanged travel tips for a few hours before, during and after dinner.  After that Marcie and I retired to our room and watched the new Bob Marley documentary that just came out today.  It was really good.  Sorry I couldn’t come up with a better adjective than “good”. 

The film showed some authentic looking clips of rural (9 Mile where Bob was born) and urban (Trench Town where Bob moved as a teenager and started his music career) Jamaica.  I hi-ly recommend this film to anyone who has an interest in things that are interesting.

Saturday April 21, 2012

We got up early this morning and checked out of our hotel.  Then Marcie, Susan (our new Dutch friend) and I drove New Beige out to the town of Gamboa and the Parque National Soberania about a half hour outside of Panama City.  The park is at the end of the road heading up into the rainforest bordered by the Panama Canal.  In addition to being one of the iconic logistical shipping lanes in the world the Panama Canal also cuts thru some of the most pristine rainforest on earth.  So the railroad tracks, canal side carrateras, and jungle service roads provide some great opportunities to get out into the middle of this lush green landscape.  We started out 4-wheel driving the first 2 kilometers down the Pipeline Trial and then we parked New Beige and headed out on foot about 6 kilometers into the jungle and then those same 6 back to our ride.  This trail is one of the premier bird watching sites in todo el mundo.  None of us are really that into birds besides a basic “that's neat” kind of observation and we started out too late in the day (on the trail at 10 am) to see many birds but we did get a great look at an anteater climbing slowly up and down a nearby tree, some kind of non-venomous (Marcie thinks) snake, a poison dart frog (my own amateur identification), and a lot of monkeys.  We started to see a lot more animals on the trail as soon as Marcie and Susan stopped talking so much.  They had been pretty much going on and on like long lost sisters since we started the hike.

The original idea was to stay in Gamboa for two nights and explore the rainforest more thoroly over the next couple of days but there wasn’t really any place decent in the area to spend the night so Marcie, Susan, New Beige, Joey and I all rolled back into Panama City for what seems like the 20^th nite in a row but is actually only the 6^th, and we stayed at the same hotel in the Amador section of town. 

Marcie and Susan cooked me a radical dinner of penne pasta, mini zucchini, mushrooms, basil and cheese sauce and then my stellar wife even went out and washed New Beige by hand and hose in the humid Panamanian nite.  I had the stirs and could not be contained in the hotel room so I went out for a walk.  This “walk” just meant going out and around the corner until I came to the nearest local bar.  I ordered a Panama brand cerveza and sat by myself watching a soccer match (the standard tele fare of any Latin American booze joint) for about 20 minutes until some Colombian guys invited me to drink with them.  This is exactly the kind of offer I’d been waiting for so of course I accepted and before you nu it I was taking pictures and dancing with their girlfriends and exchanging email addresses before we headed out in a taxi back to the Casco Viejo (Tenderloin) part of town. 

When the taxi dropped us off my new Colombian friend got out and opened an unmarked metal door on the side of some unsigned building which opened into a speakeasy like Colombian brothel.  It seemed to me like all of the women there were really skimpily dressed but I’m the outsider here so I didn’t want to say anything less I mite offend someone.  I can’t give too many more details about this place except to confirm that yes it was a brothel. 

Altho this was clearly a happening good time joint, as soon as my Colombian friend went to the bathroom I was out of there.  I walked back up to my old neighborhood in Casco Viejo near Calle 16 and Avenuda Central where I was propositioned by more hookers before I hopped in a cab back to my hotel where my lovely wife lay sleeping in bed.