JJ's Travelogue

Traveling certainly has it’s ups and downs. Lately I’ve been down. I don’t know if it’s the heat, lack of exercise (due to the heat), not eating well or what, but I’ve been in a funk. Listless, lonely, bored.

I’ve always had full confidence in my self and my own abilities, but pay far too much attention to other people’s moods and how they relate to me. I’m getting pretty tired of the typical reaction from locals. For example, I walk into a restaurant and say “Good morning!” This is met by silence, accompanied by a glare. I ask for a menu. With great effort, as if I’ve interrupted some fantastic movie they were watching, they dain to bring me said menu. This goes on. No “thank you’s” or even smiles like we do in the States after a purchase is made. No “you’re welcome’s” after I say thank you, like politeness calls for. The guidebooks make a big deal of the importance of manners in these countries, but I see scant evidence of it. I have the most manners these towns have seen in years.

Intellectually, I know I shouldn’t take it personally, for I surmise I’m completely projecting all that hostility, and it probably has very little to do with me. That’s just the way they are. It’s like when the dancers used to glare at me and I would take it personally until it was explained to me that they weren’t glaring at me, they were upset because they had just been given a correction or some such thing completely unrelated to me. In fact, it’s incredibly egotistical to take it to heart. But that’s easier said than done.

Marissa came up with a great line that I’ve been musing over: what if the glass, rather than being half full or half empty, is exactly the right amount? I interpret this to mean that life is what it is, independent of how we interpret it. “Life is empty and meaningless”, therefore it’s up to us to impart meaning into events that are by nature completely neutral. There is no “bad” traffic, traffic simply is. We can interpret traffic to be an aggravating mess, or as a useful hour to catch up on listening to our favorite podcasts. This is what I am struggling with at the moment. It has to be done in the moment, to catch my thoughts before they turn negative. This morning at the grocery I was ranting to myself why I have to stand in two lines, one to weigh the fruit, then one to pay – why can’t they do it all in one line, like in the States? But negative thoughts like this are useless – I need to embrace the differences, and find positivity in them. After all, that’s the point of traveling.

So just when I’m feeling morose about the locals, a few key experiences happen that reinforce my faith in humanity.
First, to tell you where I am geographically. I spent a couple of nights in Santiago, an uneventful small city on the Pan-American Highway. From there, I day-tripped up to Santa Fé, a wholly uneventful town that I toured in about 10 minutes, only to spend another 2 hours back on the bus.
Panama is much longer than any other Central American country – I’m still closer to the capital of Costa Rica than I am to the capital of Panama, and both capitals are roughly in the middle of their respective countries.
After Santiago I based myself in Chitré, the largest town on the Azuero Peninsula that sticks out south into the Pacific. Chitré has a pretty church, and in a tree between the church and the market I heard these crazy birds:

The peninsula is very hot, dry, and flat. One day I took buses to several small towns along the peninsula that are supposed to be pretty. [By the way, I wish guidebooks would be more opinionated - instead of just the facts ("preserved colonial town with nice church"), couldn't they just say, "if you've seen colonial towns in Guatemala or Nicaragua, skip these, they can't compare". Particularly the Central American guidebooks, whose customers are probably indeed trying to decide which are the most important places to see! But I digress..]

So after walking for ages, I ask a guy where I can catch a bus for Los Santos. Right here, he says. He gets on the same bus as me, and gets off just before I do. I’m trying to pay the driver, who keeps refusing to take my money, and I finally figure out that the kind stranger had paid for me. We hadn’t said five words to each other.

In the next town (Las Tablas), I’m wandering around the park in front of the church, and some old guy asks me where I’m from. “United States, really? That man’s son is a U.S. Marine”, and proceeds to drag me over to introduce me. After chatting for a few minutes, I ask him where I can catch the next bus. He says he’ll give me a lift to the bus stop, since it’s some distance. OK, fine. But as we’re headed there, he wants to point out his house. [Some of you who watched too many horror flicks are getting nervous at this point. Too bad I didn't get a photo of him, or you'd understand. Picture a kind old grandfather.] He asks if I’d like to come in. Clearly, he wants to show off his house to me. We have a grand old time for the next hour or so touring the house and all his memorabilia. Then we sat and had a beer with his wife. He was some muckedy-muck agriculture person (which is why he speaks English), and retired with a handsome income to build this large, beautiful house. It has a small pool, separate guest house, separate grill/party plaza, outdoor bar, all surrounded by lots of land. I saw his beer can and baseball hat collections, his American products from the 70′s that took me back, and even started up his Vespa to admire the engine. Then he gave me a lift to the bus stop. The kindness of strangers can really lift one’s day.

The trick is avoiding the emotional roller-coaster. Not getting down in the dumps when having a bad day, nor shooting up with sky high when things are going well. Roz learned this while rowing the Atlantic, and it’s a message I think we can all take to heart.

The last town I checked out on the peninsula was Pedasi, which unlike everywhere else I’ve been recently, had plenty of tourists about. I couldn’t figure out why, since it looks just as desolate as the other small towns, until I remembered that the surf here is legendary. That’s all it takes to attract the gringos and their accompanying developments. You can buy a house in the rest of central Panama for $15k, but not here.

So despite Marissa’s wonderful research telling me about singing whales and iguana islands and other such things in the area, I just can’t take any more. I think it would be more interesting if I had my own wheels and someone to pal around with. But instead it’s been a struggle. So tomorrow I’m hitting the road for Panama City…

A word about that goofy photo above: a lot of the men wear woven hats, although not exactly what we think of as Panama hats, since they wear them with the brim turned up at the front – Benny Hill style. It looks ridiculous to me, but hey, they would probably laugh if they saw me in my Gaultier skirt, so who am I to judge.