RovingMind: Passage To Panama, Part II

First look at Puerto Obladia, Panama

The second boat trip was nothing like the previous one. The craft itself was smaller and sleeker, and when we motored out into the open Caribbean it was obvious from the first that it was in expert hands.

When the green ridges of water came sweeping in again, I grasped the seat in near panic, harking back to a few days earlier. But a rhythm under way was soon established. As a wave loomed in on us our coxswain would gun the engine, taking us up, up, up, up...through a burst of spray at the crest, then he´d ease us down, down, down.....

Hey, I lightened after a while, this is the way it´s supposed to be -- kind of fun.

Eventually the spray worked within the neck of my poncho and trickled down my shirt, but even that wasn´t bad -- nice, warm water and with the salt pleasant tasting on the lips.

When we swung in toward Puerto Obladia after an hour-and-a-half, I was grinning ear-to-ear and feeling like a sailor again. But this was soon tempered as we idled down and tossed in toward the ramshackle dock -- a Panamanian soldier in camo fatigues, automatic weapon on the slung, sauntered out as a sort of greeting committee.

Disembarking at Puerto Obladia -- Santiago and Juan Pablo gather up their packs

Which leads me to another of my mistakes, of which there had already been several this week -- not realizing how serious the situation was there.

En route we had crossed the international border into Panama. Puerto Obladia and other small ports along this coast border the infamous Darien jungles, lair of guerrillas, terrorists, smugglers, drug traffickers and hordes and hordes of mosquitoes. Where we were about to land then, was somewhat of an armed camp, an outpost on the edge of this dangerous wilderness. The Army keeps bunkers, manned and ready, at each end of town and on the hill overlooking it.

Furthermore, Colombia and Panama don´t get along well as the Panamanian government blames a lot of the insurrection in the Darien on forces within its southern neighbor. And here we were, coming in wet, dumb and happy from that very direction.

At the little customs station, the officials were all frowns and made me take everything out of my duffel and lay it out. "Everything? I asked to make sure. "Todo," came the stern reply...Yes everything, in other words.

We finally cleared that hurdle, got our passports stamped and stepped lively toward the center of the little town. It was about 0830 and the first flight out to Panama City was about 1000. We wanted to ticket up and be at the airstrip in plenty of time for this one.

However, the best laid plans of mice and backpackers...One flight already had been canceled and the other was sold out, fully boo-ked, as they say here. The next possible flight out was Sunday, four days hence. We looked around with our mouths open, then back at each other -- four days, in this place?

The Darien essentially isolates these pockets of people along the coast and makes them accessible only by boat or airplane. Unless one wants to risk a long hike through that jungle with the risk of kidnapping and malaria only too prevalent, that is.

As an alternative, we would be in sort of a house or town arrest, confined to this dull and scrungy "safe zone" by the military. But what choice did we have, return to Colombia? The boat back had already left. Eventually we succumbed to our fate and sought out the only hotel in town -- Pension Cande.

Your humble correspondent in front of Pension Cande

The place reminded me of a large chicken coop we had at one time back on the farm. In some rooms, you could see daylight between boards in the walls. Electricity was only available six hours a day, 1800 to midnight, more or less. Water was available, often brownish-colored, much of the time anyhow.

We took a room with three bunks and an interior of concrete, more of a cell really, thinking that the solid walls would limit mosquitoes. How naive we were.

Its owner was an old lady with no teeth, at least half crazed, with one knee blown out and wrapped around with duct tape. The joint actually bent inward when she walked. We found out later that she locked herself away when her tv was powered up, so there was no help or services available after dark.

No mosquito nets were set up in our cell, so the first night we did without, thinking that we could cover ourselves with sheets and thus fend them off. Yet one more mistake. I didn´t realize it in the dim lighting, but my sheets were so thin that you could read a book through them.

I woke up in the morning with two dozen or so welts on my back and sides where they had bitten right through. Santiago and Juan Pablo didn´t suffer nearly so much as their sheets were thicker.

The second night we were sitting in the courtyard and heard a tremendous racket up on the tin roofing. As we stood, peering toward the source, we were startled to make out a pack of rats racing back and forth. And I mean racing, as if they were trying to determine the swiftest of the lot for some kind of prize. These were not your typical urban rats of the U.S., you understand, but their larger cousins, the jungle rats.

Cola sipping gecko -- one of our few amusements

I had just hung some out when three huge buzzards swooped in to a tremendous AGGGGHHHHing racket, sending laundry flying and tearing at each other with great hooked beaks.

What a spectacle, with the feathers flying and wings flapping and all of them making that blood-curdling cry only a few meters away. They reminded me of turkey buzzards back in Penna., only much more vile and awful-looking, with the blackish heads and beaks. Eventually one of them dominated and it ascended to perch atop a nearby roof while the others were sent packing.

While this provided some entertainment, the reality was that we were still marooned along the Darien coast, and it was getting to us after only one day. I couldn´t even fall back on my old stand-by, hiking, with the military restricting us so. Of all the things in travel, boredom is one of the worst, I have found. Perhaps it wouldn´t have been so bad if I could´ve trekked the jungle and seen the bird-life and such.

Nonetheless, I was determined to turn the whole thing into something productive and worthwhile, and I proceeded to do just that.

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