Disclaimer: please excuse the conspicuous lack of pictures. I explain that part later.
I learned today that you don’t actually need to understand the words to get the plot of any kung fu chop saki movie. I watched several in Spanish on the ride to Panama City today, nearly 6 hours, and I fully understood everything going on, even though the audio was in Spanish and the volume was indiscernibly low.
Panama City started out pretty weird. I went through several cabs by process of elimination. I walked up and asked them if they knew where Luna’s Castle was and if I got a half a second of hesitation, I simply said, “nope” and walked away. Finally, a guy knew where it was and offered $4. I counter offered and we arrived at $3.
This is where the magic happened. As soon as we were in motion, he asked me if I believed in Dios; God. The entire 15 minute ride was either questions about God, religion, church, Jesus, or exclamations about God, Jesus, the driver’s wife, or his 7 children and how much they loved Dios also. Uncomfortable.
Luna’s Castle is in Casko Viejo; the old part of Panama City that is being restored. It is busy, to say the least, there are people everywhere doing all manner of things. The staff is less than inclined to be nice or helpful, but at least they are honest. The guy at the front desk informs me that even though I reserved a private room online this morning, they gave it to someone else and there is no chance of me getting a private room for at least a week. The dorm room he shows me is an exercise in controlled chaos. I need a break so I walk over to a nearby place whose name I cannot pronounce and check in to a private room there before taking off to look around.
There is a cool café offering sangria on a corner nearby so I wander in and have a glass and some clams in some form of marvelous sauce. The owner, a Peruvian, and his assistant are both fair English speakers and do their best to help me with Spanish tidbits over dinner. They confirm what I heard earlier in the day; one does not walk past 13th street in Casco Viejo. You won’t like what happens next.
So, I leave and head back up to Luna’s to see what the night life is like. They have their own theater, such as it is, and are showing Tropic Thunder; in English! It’s a little slice of heaven. I am turned away from the restaurant downstairs because they don’t open for 15 more minutes, then when I wait the requisite minutes, I am turned away because I have my bag with me. Screw this; I’m heading back to my hostel.
There is a great little courtyard in the middle of the building that aerates both levels of the building. The only problem with that is that there is a skanky old European guy chain smoking in there waiting for unsuspecting young peoples to come in and absorb his wisdom and smoke. The lobby downstairs is choked with his stench.
The airline that books flights to Colombia has a relatively cheap flight leaving Saturday night nonstop. It also has an alarming number of flights that have 2 stops on what should be a less than 90 minute flight. Aires is the cheapest airline if you should ever need to do this.
I catch a little sleep over the night and get up at a reasonable enough time to start my day.
- Eat
- Print “onward” ticket for Colombia.
- Go to airport to purchase flight to Cartagena
- Go to Panama Canal
- Look for any Americanized goods that I might need after I get to South America.
Eating is easy. Café coca cola serves questionable steak and ommelettes that are actually fried potato cakes.
The printing part is difficult. I have to go round and round with the website and the guy at the internet café to finally get the part printed out that I want.
I cannot stress to you how wary one must be to negotiate the public transit in Panama City. This place is mean and nasty and everyone wants as much of your money as they can possibly get. You must, here as elsewhere, pester the hell out of your bus drivers both before you get on the bus and after you are aboard. Make sure they know exactly where you aare going and tht they absolutely must tell you where to get off. They want your money, so they will help you to get on, but after that, they simply don’t care. You must make them want you to get off too. Just not so much that they tell you to get off early. A safer bet is to ask your fellow travelers, middle aged women seem to be the most reliable, to instruct you as to when you need to get off. It took me 2 busses, a taxi, and about 2.5 hours to get to the airport today; a 25 minute drive.
The Panamanian accent seems to be the hardest for me to grasp. Everyone speaks very quickly and does not enunciate anything. It’s like a 60 mile per hour slur/whisper.
Aires ticket sales are not at a counter. No matter what the information booth tells you. They, along with several other less prominent airlines are all stuck in nearly unmarked offices down a hallway rife with fumes behind the main ticket counters. The staff is relatively helpful, though the ticket comes out to be something around $100 more than it was online. The paperthin excuse I am given is that the price I saw was an online special. The only problem there is that those tickets cannot be sold online because they require special paperwork. It is aggravating, but when I try to discuss it, suddenly none of them understand English. This is a common shield, so get accustomed to it. Often, a smile and some kind words can help, but I’m apparently not smiling enough for these people.
I purchase my ticket with little event and leave. I am told numerous lies by staff and drivers as I leave as to the availability of collectivos and busses before I finally get a collective ride into town for about half his initial offer price. Little did I realize this means that it would be a near hour long ride playing brickbreaker on my blackberry while he dropped everyone else off first; a team of relatively wealthy Mexican businessmen in town for something or other. When he was quoting me prices, I said I would just take the bus for a dollar and he tried to tell me that there were no busses at the airport. I asked him if he felt that it was ok to lie to someone like that as I had just got off the bus to come here. He came up with several more lies to cover his initial fallacy and finally I just told him to forget about it. Well, he didn’t.
After he dropped all the other people off, he started getting angry about being called a liar; then he turned off the A/C to the rear of the bus. I reminded him that he did, very purposefully, lie to me in an attempt to get me to pay an exorbitant price for a ride. The farther we rode, the angrier he got. Soon he was cursing at me and calling me names between telling me that I should respect others. Finally, we got back to the bus terminal and I tried to get out. The door was broken or child locked and I could not get out. He told me I needed to wait for him to come around and open the door.
I wait. He opens the door, I get out with the agreed upon fare in my hand. I turn around to grab my bag off the seat and bid him good day while walking in to the bus terminal. About 50 feet later, I realize one of my pockets is empty; my left front pocket that holds my blackberry.
Fuck. Doublefuckingshanghaisallyfuck!
I run back out to the parking lot and ask the attendant if he found anything on the ground. His bored face tells me he did not.
A little backstory. My blackberry clips on to my packet with a remarkably strong clip. In a month of tromping around central America, running for busses, climbing stairs, and all manner, it has never fallen off; not once.
Recap.
- I get out of the collective minivan with my phone clipped, partially exposed, inside my left front pocket.
- I pay the angry driver who has just opened the sliding side door.
- I turn around, exposing my left side to said driver.
- I reach for bag inside the shuttle… the bag that is on the seat… where I have been sitting… for an hour.
- I turn around and leave.
Somewhere between steps 4 and 5 of this story, our lovely Jamaican friend, Rogelio Brown, decided he would take the phone he had been watching me play with for the last hour. Not only is our lovely shuttle driving friend a liar, he is a thief. Not my best day.
Fine. Fate dealt me a shit hand. I can call it later and offer the blackguard money to return it as a reward for “finding” my phone. Time to go to the Panama Canal.
This is relatively easy, and costs about 40 cents. The entrance fee for students like myself is $5. The place is truly an engineering marvel; especially considering that it came in 6 ahead of schedule and under budget. For anyone keeping track, 1914 is the last time the US Government was involved in ANYTHING that did either of those two things.
Being the picture hound that I am, I set up my new mini tripod and set the timer to take a pic of me with the ship now coming through the canal.
I walk away. The tripod tips. The camera smashes.
Yup. 1-2-3. Now my filter, my lens glass, and the lens tube are all smashed into pieces. Not a good day for me. Despite this, I loved the canal. It’s a marvel and one of the last great works that the US was involved in IMHO. Also the French failed miserably at their attempt, so that’s funny.
I’m going to the store to buy a StylusTough tomorrow. It is a shockproof camera that I have seen three times on this trip. Each time the camera is ugly as hell from being dropped, banged, scratched, driven over, submerged, etc and the damn thing still works. I think this is the camera I need.
Multiple phone calls and text messages have been met with my phone simply being turned off. I’m going to the airport tomorrow to wait for him to come and try to pick people up. We’ll see if he wants to cooperate when I am telling all his passengers that he stole my phone and asking him to talk to the police. Maybe it won’t get my phone back, but it sure will make me laugh. I’m going out for some Sangria.
Keep your head up, Motherfucker.
Love,
Tyler