If you ask me to describe Panama in two words, I’d tell you Humphrey Bogart.

Thursday at 10:10am, March 4th 2010 and I’m on a small island off the coast of Panama called Bocas Del Toro and the rain has come. According to all the guidebooks, Bocas is generally a wet place. Yesterday, we caught a few hours of dry and rode our bikes along the beach. A Brontosaurus was going to poke it’s head out and nip a palm frond from one of the trees, either that or John Locke would be waiting with a 2ft machete around the end of a muddy bend.

Even though it’s a tourist destination for westerners like us, it’s a far cry from the port towns I’ve sailed into for 5-hour clips on cruise holiday with my parents. They would hate this.

We started our trip at 5:30am on Tuesday in Clinton Hill, calling a car, shoving our one suitcase into the trunk and hoping that my ankle wouldn’t set off any alarms. We went to two different e-kiosks to check in before I took over the technology, fully aware that when we touched down in Central America, Cindra would be in her developing world element. There were no concrete plans, two bumpy hours into Miami and quick transfer, some bi-lingual pilot announcements, another two hours and Panama City. City being the operative word and yet we landed in what looked like an expansive network of rainforest with my unfortunate cranial iPod tuning to Fortunate Son.

We made our way through the PTY terminal toward immigration, breezed through customs and hit up a tourism desk. My initial inclination to get over to Allbrook and get our next connecting tickets was right; we hopped into a cab and drove across the city. Ah! Now I saw city, 20 some-odd towers reaching high into the sky 20 stories and some higher, with giant cranes accenting the skyline like New York water towers. No but seriously, Panama City is on the high rise… American retirees have been priced out of Costa Rica I guess.  The price of contemporary modernity is slum adjacent.  Two small children climbed into a gondola on the banks of a rusty tin village in the foreground of futuristic high rises and even though there is a local currency the USD is the most commonly used.

Panamanians gained their sovereignty from the US a little over 11 years ago; they even have a beer commemorating December 31, 1999. Soberana! (Or Sovereignty) is a local

beer along with Panama, Atlas, Balboa & Crystal. Cindra wouldn’t drink Soberana because it sounded like a non-alchie brew and after further inspection we found that Soberana had less alcohol than its local counterparts. Our influence here exhibited by Cosco shipping tanks stacked high awaiting transport through the canal, golden arches, they even had a Dunkin Robbins (or Baskin’ Doughnuts).  I’ve been through the Canal, on a ship with Grandma Ruth. My graduation present was a cruise from Mexico to Aruba, I watched the Panamanian coast and I was hung over and slept under the Bridge of The Americas and ½ the way through the canal. Youth.

Albrook Airport. Think the last scene of Casablanca and you’ve got a pretty clear picture of what Albrook Airport looks like, named after General Albrook during the American occupation, the airport sits on what used to be a US army base. The last flight to Bocas departed 30 minutes before we arrived; we bought our tickets for the 6:45am flight ($160 RT $$$?!?!?). I’d asked the woman at the tourism counter where the gay section of town was (READ: I asked her where all the artists lived) and used Cindra’s blackberry to search: gay district Panama City. There were a few message board postings referring to the Hotel Las Vegas, we looked at the website from the Air Panama terminal and the itty bitty jpeg looked good enough for us, so we and we hailed another cab toward Via Espana and the Hotel Las Vegas.

It was booked, as was the following hotel, and the hotel after that. A conference. The Hotel Parador (think Moon Over Parador, an 80s movie starring Raul Julia and nasal Jewish what’s-his-name-not-dustin-hoffman-but…) with the $65 matrimonial room would be home for the night. We were starved at this point and walked back up to the Hotel Las Vegas for some food. Italian food, which is not hard to come by down here, now that we’re on the island and there is another Italian restaurant I’m finding the cuisine of Italy is cheap to produce and wildly accessible. I’m still looking for a perfect cup of chivehe. (I found it, and then it found me the following morning. Sticking with pasta next time)

Cindra has some junior high Spanish under her belt and I lived in Los Angeles long enough to know hello, goodbye, thank you and how much? I’m utterly American, instead of trying the language and failing, we just speak to everyone in English and expect them to understand, no wonder Canadians go so out of their way to let you know they are Canadian when they travel. We see it, it’s a maple leaf pin… patch… whoa you just wrapped yourself in a flag didn’tcha eh?

My alarm went off at 5am the following morning, but I barely needed it, the birds woke me five minutes before the alarm did. Even in the center of the city we weren’t far from the green.

If there is one thing I’ve noticed from travelling here, the lack of paranoia is catching. And that’s a good thing. Yes there was a pre-bag screen before the bag scan, but I never felt like a target. Something that frequently crosses my mind while travelling between New York and Los Angeles. The flight from PTY to Bocas Del Toro was around 45 minutes, we flew over the water that changed from emerald green to light blue the closer we came. Approaching over water you don’t see the tiny runway and then once you touch down you realize that you’re not even in Oz anymore Toto.

It was raining, which I mentioned happens a lot here. The airline handed us umbrellas as we exited the aircraft and handed them back when we reached the airport that was even more makeshift than Albrook. The immigration inspector checked our Panama stamps and a cute little boy helped us into a cab toward Big Creek. I’d only seen the house in pictures but it wasn’t hard to find, fifteen minutes up the major road on the island which is barely paved with rocks, the ocean to our right and jungle to our left. It was 8am on Wednesday and our near 24 hours of travelling was finally over.

Heather was already awake; she and Jill had arrived at the house the day before. Heather coming up from Salvador and Jill from Buenos Aries. They are the lawyers who were working for Skadden who one year ago were given the opportunity to take a leave. Instead of laying off employees, they gave them the option of taking 30% of their salary to “take off” for 9th months. The New York Times did an article on Heather and in addition to the hate mail, she was also given the opportunity to write a book, lonely planet sent them guide books and organizations around the globe looking for pro bono legal help started e-mailing. They started in Africa and worked their way through South East Asia, landing in South America for the past three months and now Panama, the last stop before returning to the states. The house will first be inhabited by C and I and the rest of the BKLYN gang will be filtering in and out until early April.

We had some coffee, caught up with my long lost friends and made our way back into town to gather some supplies. Carol, one of the neighbors in big creek, a retiree from Oregon offered us a ride into town on her dune buggy. Interesting choice, as Oregon happens to be one of the rainiest sections of North America; Bocas Del Toro is one of the rainiest districts in Panama. Maybe Edward and Bella can honeymoon here.

(Something has totally died in the house and the smell of rot is about 12 hours from becoming unbearable)

The main strip is hostel after hostel, a surf shop, a few vegetable shops, a language school, yoga studio and an Internet café. There is the requisite town square where the bus stop is. There are new constructions everywhere. It’s “Boho” now but if I came back in a few years I’ll probably remark that much of the local flavor has been lost. English is widely spoken, and whitey is HERE. The small strip of bars/restaurants are literally right over the water expensive beers are $1.50.

We stopped at the Barracuda bar for a round of Balboa’s and every small boat that docked unloaded a pack of curly haired, surfer body boys coming to stock up. From our perch, we could see the other houses on the adjacent islands. I can’t imagine it’s cheap running a place down here, while the real estate is cheap enough, getting supplies to and fro must run up operations. The mail is unreliable and there are only TWO ATMs on the island. And in a place where losing power is the norm, over stocking is key for ones survival. Speaking of survival, in my Panama guide book it says that Bocas Del Toro has been the site for several countries Survivor series, because of the islands rich wildlife which includes caiman’s (mini alligators), poisonous snakes and frogs many of which reside right here in Big Creek, which explains the man with the foot long machete who walked by the house about five minutes ago.

(Side Note: We went into the newish shopping center/ hotel and there was a live band playing Someone Like You upstairs. I’m convinced it was Kings Of Leon practicing down here. So if it turns out that I’m right. I told you fucking so)

We put on our swimsuits and grabbed the bikes; we rode for two miles in the opposite direction of town where the road ended, through half a mile of beach with a brief stop to bathe in salt water. Ever cautious that I’m going to be poisoned I didn’t go much further than my kneecaps. Thanks to the Travel Channel I knew that without nerdy aquasocks I wasn’t pressing further.  We got back on our bikes and rode further through some seriously muddy terrain out to the bluffs where we found beach that resembled something out of the show LOST. It was only us, the waves crashing into the beach and the humidity casting a mist over everything. Every beach in Bocas looks like the postcard suggests.

On the way back we stopped into La Coralina, a snazzy looking hotel/bar set 200 ft above the road. We could see the colorful hanging glass lights from below and started up the path. Oasis would be a fair word to describe this place. A covered wooden deck with tables, chairs, trivial pursuit decks and molding clay along with $3 giant margaritas and two friendly dogs would provide a much-needed respite for my sore bike ass. Our bartender was from California. She made her way down here via Costa Rica and was the bar manager for Stacey the owner of the inn which had a Middle Eastern/Caribbean feel. With rooms starting at $65 dollars I almost wanted to check-in for a night to check it out. The menu looked delicious and our soundtrack finally put all my French touch playlists into context. A Rusted Root song confirmed my suspicion that our bartender was exactly what happened to every travelling hippy once the H.O.R.D.E tour ended and Phish stopped touring.

Now it was dark. The ride back was pitch black except for around ten streetlights on the beach, but none actually on the roads. We stuck to the middle to avoid the two drainage ditches on either side of us, I tried to remember all the ditches because I kept thinking of falling head over the handlebars and breaking something else.

We made it back to the house in the dark around 7:30, the neighbor was over talking about snakes. Heather had seen a rather large brown guy on the driveway and was concerned. Larry, the neighbor suggested that we walk with sticks around these parts as there are various poisonous snakes that use the roads as pathways into the jungle and that bike riding at night is probably as dangerous as walking without a flashlight.

Tuna and red cabbage slaw tacos for dinner three beers later and the first official day of our vacation was a kamikaze success.

Humphrey Bogart.

March 6, 2010

It hasn’t stopped raining. At this point I almost hope that it doesn’t stop. Why break tradition. Our snorkeling trip was cancelled yesterday and will likely be cancelled today. Chris the tour guide from Virginia says that we should go to the Smithsonian Research Institute because there is probably a sloth we can pet, though at this point we resemble the three-toed mammals.

I have about seven different horror story scenarios, someone tell Eli Roth to call me.

March 7, 2010

Huge hang over. I cannot, do not and should not drink shots anymore. I’m ending this vacation hanging my head over a toilet bowl in the Panama City Airport waiting for a flight to Miami to wait for a flight to New York where I know how to tell the taxi driver to bring me home.