Tag Archives: Panama

Thank you, we’ll take three!

8 Jul

Last weekend we were given a day off from work (for a complicated mess of miscommunication reasons that don’t really need to be delved into at this time)! And, as a general rule of thumb, we have decided that when your “boss” for your volunteer job tells you to take a day off and go to the beach (most likely so he can nurse his hangovers in peace rather than be pestered with things like buying paint or busy volunteers) you go ahead and just tell him “thank you, we’ll take three!”

And we did indeed head straight to the beach the next day, which was a Sunday (we now know first hand that it is indeed bad luck to start a trip on a Sunday). Turns out, transport in Panama, which is unreliable to begin with, becomes more of a guessing game on Sundays compared to the rest of the week. If the guy who drives the route feels like it (which is often heavily influenced by how close the fiestas happened to be to his home that weekend) there will be a bus which passes by. If not, well you may get somewhere at some point and by some means of transportation.

Lucky for us, we did happen to get all the way to our destination; it only took a ridiculously hot and long wait, a bus transfer which dropped us off at the wrong bus station, missing the only bus that day to our destination because Panamanian Spanish is like trying to understand someone underwater and the “son las doce menos veinte” came to be understood as simply “doce, veinte” (which caught us quite off guard when the bus we were waiting for passed by at 11:40 as we were enjoying a banana smoothie in Pedasi), and then some fancy hitchhiking that earned us pity points with a local.

Things we learned from this little Sunday trip: I am not allowed to gather information on my own, because I’m really no good with details; expect to walk 30 km and someone will likely give you a ride at some point; Pedasi is one of the cutest little towns we’ve seen; and Panama is really too hot for it’s own good, even in the “rainy season”.

We ended up riding with this awesome guy from Alabama, and he even showed us around “town” (you must use this term loosely when talking of Playa Venao), and even took us straight to the least expensive lodging around (excluding camping directly on the beach, which is free and legal anywhere in Panama, but since they cut down all their trees it’s also unbearably hot during the day time). Gordy became our unofficial guide, we ate dinner with him each night, he talked us into a few future tiling jobs in the area, and he even loaned H his surf board!

We stayed at Eco Venao, a hip little hostel-compound that starts at the beach and winds up the hill into their forest. Camping was reasonably inexpensive (comparable to Costa Rican standards), and they have a little Cascada and a lot of hiking to enjoy. There is really not a lot in town, so learning things like how to wait for the weekly veggie truck at the bar/hotel and how to wait until after the weekend to buy anything (after everyone goes back to Panama City to work) was really helpful!

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We camped for two nights, enjoyed the cooler ocean breezes and the great company. The waves were good, a nice beach break for H, and we have some work lined up for this coming week. I know, people are actually going to pay us to come and tile, let us camp on their property and cook meals in their kitchen, take us on surfing breaks during the day, provide us with beer and groceries, and did I mention PAY us?!? Madness! Turns out it’s fantastic F taught us how to tile all those years ago!

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When God strikes…

3 Jul

Our family has all migrated back north and left the two of us here, alone in Central America. It’s funny how used to traveling in a larger group we had become, we almost didn’t remember just how much time we need to spend in grocery stores or what the world is like down here without air conditioning (it’s hot… Really, really, really melt-your-eyeballs hot). But we’re adjusting, a little bit at a time (and trying to spend anytime between 11am and 2pm in the shade, preferably in front of a fan).

We put G in a cab headed for the airport (with the price already negotiated; it’s so nice to be able to know these things in advance!) and then wrangled up some of our newly-made friends at Panama by Luis to all go get lunch before we headed to our next work/volunteer adventure.

We didn’t quite make it in time for the bus we had hoped to catch, and instead of rolling into Chitre in the evening we arrived at around 11pm, in a flurry of fireworks. As it turns out Chitre, and actually the Azuero Peninsula in general, is the fiesta center of Panama. You see, Panama likes to party. A lot. And the Azuero Peninsula seems to have decided that if one is going to work Monday through Friday than every weekend should probably have a giant fiesta somewhere on the peninsula complete with street parades, cowboys racing full speed on horseback, salsa dancing in the middle of the street, fireworks shot out of hand-held tin cans, devils scaring children, competitions to see whose modified car sound system can play the loudest, live bands, bouncy houses, and lots and lots and lots of beer. And rum. And contraband.

And it’s just as much slightly-terrifying fun as it sounds! We had arrived (as planned, H had done her research) in time for Chitre’s official saint’s (San Juan Bautista) celebration. Saturday night was the pre-festivities warm up, or really just an excuse to be drunk and in public with fireworks. On Sunday, we started our job at Miami Mike’s Backpackers Hostel by watching the festivities take place right below the balcony! It rained and put a bit of a damper on the end of the night’s revelry, but it was an epic party none-the-less.

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In fact, it was so epic that first thing in the morning on Monday there was a huge lightening storm. Now, it doesn’t rain very often here, even in the rainy season. And especially not in the morning. But the day after this huge festival there was literally a river running down the main street, full up to the sidewalk and lightening hovering over town, deafening all those poor souls with a bit of a hangover. And then a large bolt lit up against the sky, and one of the bell towers of San Juan Bautista’s church caught the end of the fork. The more-than-a-century old tower crumbled to the ground and the storm immediately calmed. Very impressive. Someone had to be rushed to the hospital, the police had to close down the street due to all the rubble, and the townspeople began to murmur about wether God was punishing the drunk Catholics, or if it was because the fiesta had been sponsored and changed to support a local politician this year (it may have been also that the fireworks and general mayhem put a lot of particulates into the air, and the tower had a lightening rod, and it was really old… But these things are not as interesting). In any case, we witnessed history! People will talk about this for YEARS!

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Last week we stayed at Miami Mike’s to give it some of our TLC. We feel like we were fairly productive: cleaning, painting a guest room in Rastafarian theme, taking a trip to the nearby beach to organize and find contacts for clean-up and snorkeling trips, cleaning, pricing and buying fabric to make a flag and curtains, making necessary runs to pick the boss up some beer, cleaning, painting a closet in the Che room black, organizing the bookshelves, cleaning, planning and pricing tile (to put new floors in the bathrooms), fishing for tourists at the bus stop, cleaning, guerrilla-glueing fans back together, oh! and more cleaning.

Things got a bit dicey as H and I both got hormonal (I may or may not have flipped out at more than one point…) in this unbearable heat. Our “shifts” are meant to run back to back from 11-3 and then from 3-7, but since neither of us are willing to subject ourselves alone to the constant honks, whistles, pssts, “hey baby, come here!”, and such that seem to accompany the male ego here in Latin America once the temperature gets out of control, we have both been at it for the full time, every day. We have been able to get a lot of things done, which is nice.

Also, we earned the weekend (Sunday and Monday) off, which is awesome (more about that trip to come shortly)! But this week is all about our adventures in Latin American tiling. Let’s just say that H and I are both terrified of the “tile cutter”, and will be wielding a huge hammer and nail to score the existing tile, which was deemed too much work to remove first. Epic. Terrifying. Good times! Stay tuned!

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