Don't Stay at Ina's Cabanas in San Blas!!!!!

River where we got the boat to San Blas

Our 4x4 ride from Panama City with Francisco

Very wet ride to San Blas

Our room at Ina's

Can you see that our Cabana is in a pond?

It was hard to find things to do in the rain...

Jon's buddy

Coco

Ina's boat

The main house is in a foot of water

 

Tuesday, April 24 2012

Marcie and I awoke at 5:00 am in the dorm, grabbed our packs and headed downstairs to meet our ride out to the jungle dock to catch our boat.  We were heading out to the San Blas Islands in the waters of the far southern Caribbean Sea off of the north east coast of Panama.  The San Blas archipelago is made up of about 370 small sandy coconut palm covered islands, about 40 of them inhabited by the Kuna Indians.  The Kuna are one of the only indigenous groups in the America’s that autonomously and successfully manage their own government and affairs.  There is little interference from the mainland Panamanian government.  Linguists claim that the Kuna language is descended from other indigenous tribes from mainland Panama and other groups from more northeast in Central America.  But the Kuna oral tradition claims that they come from Colombia as refugees from either a famine or a war (I can’t remember which).  The Kuna women still dress in their traditional style with pierced gold nose bull rings, extremely colorful blouses and skirts, and intricately beaded forearm and calf bands.  The men wear western style t-shirts and shorts. 

The first stop was at the tour company office to pay the $50 each (it's a 2.5 hour ride thru the jungle by 4x4 to the dock) and then to the grocery store for supplies.  Then it was a long bumpy ride thru the pouring rain in the jungle for the next few hours.  We arrived at the boat ramp and waited with the other travelers there under a tin roof bamboo walled lean-to while the rain turned the jungle dirt to mud all around us.  After a little while our boat came to pick us up.  We hopped in to the 8 seater and headed down the rain swollen river out to it’s mouth where it meets the sea.  Our boat was not fortunate enough to have a roof like some of the others going to other islands did so the guys working on it gave me a piece of plastic sheeting to hold over myself while we motored out over the Caribbean to the island of Narranjo Chico. 

Rite when we hopped out of the boat on the shore of this tropical island inhabited by the Kuna Indians it really started to rain hard.  So hard that you had to yell to be heard over the roar of the drops hitting the palm fronds overhead.  We checked into Ina’s Cabanas in a bamboo walled thatch roof sand floor room that Ina told us was brand new.  It may have been brand new but nobody told the rain that because pretty soon we had a small river running thru the sand under both the north and east walls and a small ankle deep pond developing on the west side.  

The food that Ina’s family made us was really good.  We had Caribbean lobster for lunch.  It was the first time that Marcie and I have eaten meat in over a month.  Here it’s not a restaurant.  You just eat the only one thing that is cooked, but it is usually pretty good. 

After lunch as we were leaving the big house where there is wood instead of sand floors and a tin instead of thatch roof I saw a girl from Holland who was staying in another of Ina’s cabanas running across the property to get somewhere out of the rain.  She did not see the rope tied between two palm trees in front of her and she was clotheslined by a clothesline.  She never saw it coming but when she hit it she snapped her head back and ripped the glasses from her face.  She groped around on the ground at her feet searching visually impaired for her glasses, but I could see that they were still hanging from the clothesline!  I felt fortunate to be able to witness such an action packed moment.  Like when you see a bird fly into a window or someone step on the end of a rake. 

We spent the rest of the nite playing dominoes, reading and trying in vain to stay dry.

~Jon

Adios New Beige. Panama Canal Railway

Taking the Railway from Colon to Panama City

Susan-our Dutch friend in the snack car

Rain, rain, rain

Classy cars

New Beige is over there somewhere

 

Monday, April 23 2012

Today we bid adieu to New Beige and Joey.  God seemed to also be sad that we were parting ways because he cried rain drops on us all day.  It seemed like the rainy season started all of a sudden.  It had rained a little yesterday while we were snorkeling but today it rained a tropical downpour on us all day.  First we drove from Portobelo back to Colon to go to the Barwil Shipping Co’s office.  Luckily for us after we met with them they assigned a young guy from their office to accompany us to the other places that we needed to go (customs for paperwork and the port for inspections and loading) and he guided us thru the process.  I don’t know how we would have done it with out him.  There were at least three inspections, dozens of forms, and meetings with three different officials, all in Spanish and all during a deluge.  Finally we got it done and had the Barwil rep drop us (Marcie, our friend Susan from Holland and I) off at this tourist strip mall called Colon 2000 that services cruise ships that come to port.  The place was definitely cheesy, with 2 casinos and a Radisson Hotel (where Marcie talked them into letting us leave our backpacks) but we found a sushi joint to kill the four hours until our train so at least we were not out in the dirty deluge of Colon. 

We got a surly cab ride over to the train station and boarded the Panama Pacific Railroad to Panama City.  The train was a “luxury” class (only one available) and had really nice seating, canal viewing with glass ceilings, and a bar car.  It was also $25 US a ticket for the 1 hour ride.  It downpoured the whole ride so it was tuff to see any wildlife with water streaming down the windows but it was still relaxing and a very fine way to travel.  We are going to have to get used to traveling without the convenience of New Beige, but the train seemed like a good way to go. 

Later in the evening we arrived at the station on the outskirts of Panama City and tried to get a taxi back down to Casco Viejo, this time to Luna’s Castle Hostel.  The cab driver was so fat that he had to have his seat really far back in order to fit his belly behind the steering wheel.  This left Susan who was sitting behind him with the predicament of where to put her legs. 

A cramped half hour later we were back in Casco and the three of us checked into dorm beds in a shared sleeping area with 3 or four other bunk beds.  Luna’s is a very popular place with backpackers.  They do a good job of providing everything that a young traveler needs with out a lot of luxury.  They have wifi and computers for you to use, a laundry service, included pancake breakfast, a kitchen for guest to cook their own meals, a convenient location in Casco and a great bar called Relic in the basement/courtyard of the building.  Marcie and I booked a ride out to and a room in the San Blas islands for the next day then joined Susan at a restaurant next door for a healthy dinner of salad and patacones.  The three of us walked around down by the waterfront afterwards before coming back to Luna’s Castle.   I went downstairs to the Relic Bar and then to read my book in a hammock.  When I came back Marcie and Susan where chatting away again in a room full of people trying to sleep.  People kept shooting over dirty looks and finally one French guy had to ask them to be quiet.  It was a little like the hike we took in Gamboa when a guy from Belgium wouldn’t hike with us anymore because Marcie and Susan were talking so much that they were scaring away the wildlife. 

~Jon

Portobelo the town, not the mushroom.

Our cabinas  at Scuba Portobelo

Last day with New Beige

Old forts

New Beige in Portobelo, Panama

 

Sunday, April 22 2012

I treated myself to a chow down at breakfast today; 2 fried eggs, 2 pieces of toast with butter and a bowl of imitation fruit loops.  Dang what a way to start off the day!  And how better to follow up a man’s meal then to go out for a walk around the mall?  None better.  So we went to the Albrook Mall in Panama City, me, Marcie, Susan, Joey and New Beige.  We bot a 16 ft length of chain to secure the back gate of our truck.  We will be emptying out everything in the cab and locking it in the back in preparation for handing over the keys to the guys loading it on the boat.   

After having a pleasant American type experience at the mall we drove north to the Caribbean town of Colon, almost running out of gas on the way.  Everyone who I’ve talked to about Colon says that it’s a dangerous dump.  So we didn’t stop.  Instead we turned right and heading east along the north coast of Panama for another 30 kilos or so we arrived at the old Spanish colonial fortress city of Portobelo. 

Marcie, Susan and I split a cabana at the Portobelo Scuba Hotel, or something like that.  Susan went out for a scuba while Marcie and I stayed near shore for a snorkel.  The snorkeling was, as usual, a lot of fun.  There were all kinds of fish swimming in and out of living coral formations, spider web like sea anemones that will quickly suck themselves down to nothing when something comes too close to them.  We both noticed that while we have snorkeled in places where we’ve seen more tropical fish, and where the water was clearer, here we saw more coral formations and other kinds of things that were half plant half rock with colorful organic patterns. 

Since New Beige is shipping out tomorrow for Miami and Marcie and I are continuing on with backpacks, we had a lot of downsizing to do.  Before it got dark we took a break from repacking our packs and drove down into the old town (I think it dates from the 1500’s and was named by Christopher Columbus himself) of Portobello to check out the crumbling ruins of the old Spanish forts built to defend the gold rich city from British pirates.  The forts failed to keep Henry Morgan from looting the city in the 1600’s.  It seems like just about every old port town that we have visited in Latin America was sacked by Captain Morgan at sometime or other. 

The three of us seem to be the only ones staying on this oceanside property. I took a nap in the hammock while the girls cooked us up a vegetarian dinner of spinach, eggs, potatoes, peppers and onions.  We ate out on a concrete patio on cement stilts on top of rocks out on the ocean.  When you look down thru a grate in the floor of the patio you can see a bunch of tropical fish swimming around.