Central America 2026: Part Four - San Jose to Panama City
Thursday 14th May (Day 35)
Plan today is not to go into the centre of San Jose under any circumstances
whatsoever. Over inclusive breakfast, the remaining Quakers agree.
So, we view a very poor mall and cross a six-lane highway into the park which
used to be the airport. It’s like a poor man’s Hyde Park, the sound of traffic
inescapable, a few trees here and there, boring selection of birdz. We look for
the lake which is on Google maps. Oh… they’ve drained it. A policeman inspects
Claire’s tobacco. The only place for coffee is a chain called Rosti. The huge
gift shop on the map is actually a very small part of the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
We drop our laundry off in the supermarket - £10, or £25 if they have to touch
it, so we load it ourselves. Then Claire decides she wants us to go to the
market in the centre of San Jose. Unfortunately, we’re in the temporal zone 24
hours either side of her birthday when I have to do what she says.
So, despite attempting a tranquil back-street route as far as is possible,
we’re soon in the great yuk, disappointment around every corner at best,
hideousness and revolting smells otherwise. Three miles there and back, legs
feeling like lead.
Despite the scuzz that surrounds it, the covered Central Market is rather nice.
Thin alleys, mildly air-conditioned, exotic vegetables, good-looking places to
eat, mainly fish, interesting fish. The purpose of our visit being to procure a
soft toy of a Bradypus Pygmaean nature, I get the end of a slightly fractious
discussion about how many Colones should be given as change for a $50 note. The
mystery is solved when, five of us together, we figure out that Claire thought
the price was $16 rather than 16,000 Colones, which is easily done if you can’t
tell the difference between a C and an S. Result: no sloth bought. When I
refuse to walk another six blocks to the cantina, the only beer emporium for
miles, she accuses me of sulking, which to be fair I was.
Pick up laundry from ‘Lava, House of
Wash’ which they’ve put in a nice free acrylic bag. We bump into Peter and Annie
and, based on their review, decide not to go to the nearby free Art Museum of
Costa Rica because we don’t want to be disappointed in San Jose.
The challenge is then how to get through the afternoon sober because Leg 4 is
starting at six. I can hear you all screaming ‘Stop! Stop now! Go home!’ but
‘fraid not as we go to these places so you don’t have to.
We make it until 4:30 with only a couple of snifters of travel rum. Happy hour
begins at five with epic two-for-one G&Ts.
The new tour leader is Abby, a rotund half-American Panamanian in his early
forties who gives us a PowerPoint presentation which includes every detail,
including how much we should tip the tour leader. In addition to Ann, Peter, Annie
and us there are eight newbies - two unrelated Swiss women, a Belgian, an
American/Ecuadorian, two English sisters, a Scotsman allegedly and a trainee
Intrepid employee from Costa Rica. We don’t join them for dinner because...
The chef at the Park Cafe is Richard Neat, an Englishman who had two Michelin
stars at Pied-a-Terre in the nineties. He moved to San Jose in 2006 where he
opened a restaurant in his girlfriend’s antique shop (incidentally, Michelin
doesn’t cover Costa Rica). I thought the menu looked nice and this might be a
nice place for Claire’s birthday. Then, in Antigua, I received a WhatsApp from
the great man himself asking if I mind moving the booking as the 13th is his
60th birthday and he wants to go surfing. I refrained from mentioning that he
could have perhaps thought of that in March when I made the booking, and here
we are.
There’s a security guard outside to let us in with a key. The restaurant is set
in a lovely courtyard that’s full of Buddhas, hopefully not real antiques, and
other pieces of East Asian art. A man with long-flowing hair dressed in
immaculate jeans and a shirt saunters over. “Good evening, you must be Steve,”
he smiles in a public-school accent, delivering a bone-crushing handshake.
We’re seated and offered the menu. “I do hate ice in cocktails,” says Richard.
Instead, he freezes fruits and herbs to create ‘flavour bombs.’ I ask about the
difference between mezcal and mezcalito. Richard pauses. “Actually, I don’t
normally make the cocktails, but I can probably manage most of them.” Turns out
the restaurant isn’t really open tonight and he’s given the staff the night
off. There’s a small birthday party, but he’s allowed us to be part of it
because we’re going tomorrow. My huge mint and cucumber G&T is awesome, as
is Claire’s negroni which she declares the best she’s ever had.
The wine list isn’t cheap, but we have a bottle of Albariño at the lower end
that keeps getting better as the evening progresses. The menu is small plates,
but he adapts them so that the meat is omitted for Claire. Richard casually
sways into the kitchen whenever it suits him and us.
First up some sushi, but not just any sushi, it’s the best I’ve ever had,
crispy shrimp surrounded by rice topped with marinated tuna. Even the
ubiquitous wasabi and pickled ginger are homemade and delicious. The portion
size is generous.
A deeply-flavoured red wine risotto caged
with shaved courgette and topped with a perfectly cooked scallop follows, mine
ringed with pancetta. I forgot to take a picture. I tell Richard it’s
sensational, but he knows that.
His wife Lou, a gregarious lady who talks as if she’s familiar with Bolivian
soldiers, takes over the service. Their friends arrive - one of whom is,
conveniently, a wine merchant, another the British Trade Consul. They bring birthday
gifts of comestibles for Richard. We have octopus with asparagus in a
citrus-based sauce. Then there’s langoustine atop a bed of Provençal vegetables
and a fiery red pepper purée.
Claire wants a cigarette and makes to go
outside. No, no, says Lou, have it in the courtyard. She fetches a comfy chair,
an ashtray and our wine and we sit watching the Buddhas with broad smiles on
our face, because we have a private Michelin-starred chef.
Both Richard and Lou say that the rabbit is sensational, and she’s a
vegetarian, and they’re not wrong. I’m too stuffed to even think about a
pudding, but Claire has a passion fruit crème brûlée with happy birthday piped
on the plate in chocolate, the poshos on the other table singing along. Small
blot on the evening - he’s spelt her name wrong.
Including tax and service it cost £100 a head, but was worth five times that.
If I’ve had a more enjoyable meal in my life then I can’t remember it.
Friday 15th May (Day 36)
it’s 8:20 and we’re with the new group. Somebody at Intrepid had the brilliant
idea of us using public transport today. I ask Abby why and get the reply that
they’ve always done this leg this way and it helps with the carbon footprint,
although this doesn’t explain why this is the first public bus of the trip so
far unless you count the chicken bus, or bus, which I’m not, or why there’s a
shuttle to the bus station and another from the other end. Nor, Abby admits, is
it any cheaper. It just means Abby has more suitcases to lift through windows,
including my incredibly heavy rum suppository, that we piss off the locals by
jumping the queue and make them stand for two and a half hours. Also, there’s
no baños stop and poor Scottish Alan, who I correctly identified as a Scouser,
is desperate for a wazz.
The bus station is thankfully not the one in Central San Jose, but still not
nice. We wait on the bus without air conditioning for 55 minutes before it leaves.
We could have had two more hours sleep if we’d had private transport.
We climb to the ridge that goes down Central America where the Pacific and
Caribbean weather systems meet in a cloud. Road works everywhere. Down from the
hills it’s hot and humid again and about to rain. Our destination is a lodge
near Sarapiqui called Tirimbina. It takes 15 minutes to walk 100m from the car
park to reception because there’s so much wildlife, like toucans, Michael
Jackson moonwalk birds, big iguanas etc… Outside our room, standing on one of
the seats is this huge bird that looks like a cassowary but is in fact a
bare-faced curassow. It seems tame and we assume it’s a pet of the lodge, but Abby
later tells us the bird is incredibly rare and the eco-warriors at the lodge
would never feed it. He’s only ever seen one in the Darien Gap.
At 3pm it’s the inclusive rainforest
walk. The highlight of this, or not if you’re Claire, is the 650m crossing of
the Sarapiqui River, high over a hanging bridge – the second longest in Costa
Rica. She is quite terrified, but good for her, manages it without internal
bleeding or long-term psycho trauma. I walk behind, trying to steady the
rocking caused by three inconsiderate French women, but I can’t say I’m
entirely comfortable either.
The guide Melba is lovely, but can
only work with what she has, and this is our fourth jungle walk in Costa Rica
so far and perhaps has the least loot. Sure, there’s a couple of sloth-smloths
as you start walking across the bridge, but there’s only so many tiny insects
you want to see in the rainforest. The main thing I learn is you don’t want to
get bitten by a bullet ant, which are legion.
I heard this before from a guide in Monteverde. There was this researcher,
probably from the US, who got himself bitten over a thousand times by different
species of insects to determine which was the most painful. Number two was this
passive wasp in the cloud forest he had to force to sting him. Number one is
the bullet ant. Later on, Abby tells us he once got bitten by one, his leg
swelling up to the size of a tree trunk and he was hospitalised for four days.
Anyway, the wildlife and the birdz in particular are much better on our side of
the bridge, which Claire has to walk across a second time. At dusk I’m having a
cigarette in the car park, come back for a shower and, not looking where I’m
walking on the pavement, my foot hits a rock. Being an honest citizen, I kick
it to the side and this huge thing screeches off into the undergrowth. Abby
later confirms it’s a cane toad.
I’m also attacked by a bat.
Abby reserves a table in the lodge restaurant, because we’re miles from
anywhere, at 5:30. To be fair, this is mainly for the benefit of those going on
a disappointing night walk which turns out to be amazing according to the
Somerset sisters, and probably was, but I am wondering whether the Quakers have
just turned into Quakermass 2. Peter joins us for a few. He’s a beer magnet, in
that other people’s drinks always end up on his tab.
Anyway, I’m writing this outside a perfectly decent room, not being eaten to
death by mosquitoes thanks to super-bats, and finishing the last of the travel
rum I bought yesterday. Things are beeping which aren’t birdz and there’s a
good chance I can catch a few new ones at dawn. Buenas noches.
Saturday 16th May (Day 37)
We’re out of the rainforest by ten and there’s a functional and uninteresting
trip along good roads through a town called Liverpool to the Caribbean coast.
We’re at a nice hotel with a sunken crazy-paved shower in Puerto Viejo de
Talamanca which is not the Puerto Viejo on my BBC app, the latter having much
nicer weather. Here we’re moving from the slightly wetter season to the wet
season.
Abby is the most brilliant tour leader ever. He knows absolutely everything
about Costa Rica and Panama and you remember what he says. On the bus he gives
us a 15-minute talk on pineapple reproduction and it’s fascinating. He has a
larger-than-life personality and you can’t help but like him. Best of all he’s
created a sociable group among strangers in just a couple of days, which I’m
going to name Mis Amigos as that’s what he first called us.
Puerto Viejo is a small tourist village with bars and beaches. There’s nothing
horrible about it. It’s very Caribbean with lots of dreads and I’m offered weed
or coke for the first time since Belize. In the supermarket where I go to buy
cigarettes and travel rum, they play very loud ragga music, but strangely I
don’t mind it.
Abby’s orientation tour is more like a pub crawl. We travel 50 metres for beer
and food, then to the sandy beach where a few people go for a paddle. The bars
have various happy hours, none of which are particularly generous, and people
gather for the sunset, which behaves itself with fewer clouds. The
entertainment is watching four men trying to get a boat out of the water onto a
trailer pulled by a truck, the rope constantly falling off until, very quickly,
they bring the truck into the water and hook it to the trailer.
Then a guy builds some sandcastles about
one metre in front of us, places paraffin lanterns within and lights them and,
hey presto, there’s very dangerous fire juggling.
Abby’s next recommendation is less
successful. There’s a calypso band in the restaurant and, while they’re not
terrible terrible, the sound through the tinny speaker next to me is deafening.
We’ve only just sat down and they serve the Amigos that arrived ten minutes
earlier. The guy takes the orders from the rest but forgets Claire and I and I
have to stand and wave at him. The food’s okay and some of the Amigos manage to
pay and we’ve also asked for the bill. 20 minutes later I’m still waiting – he’s
obviously forgotten, Claire’s outside having a ciggie and they lock us in and
her out. The noise level increases as the place fills up because the Costa
Rican cup final is about to begin.
The pain in my damaged ear, my acute agoraphobia and general frustration cause
a near panic attack and I may have screamed. Abby steps in, sorts it and,
outside, apologises profusely, even though I tell him it’s not his fault. He
may be worried because I told him I have a blog that ten people read.
On the main street I have horrible déjà vu. I’m in Benitses, Corfu, circa 1986.
Luckily our tranquil hotel is only a block away. It’s 9:15 and I’m thinking of
going to bed. It cannot be denied: I’ve become one of them. I too am a Quaker.
Have some new birdz. I’m only cut out for birdz these days.
Black-crowned ANTSHRIKE, Bright-rumped ATTILA, Bat FALCON, Long- billed HERMIT,
Rufous MOTMOT, Olive-throated PARAKEET, Golden-hooded TANAGER, Red-throated
Ant-TANAGER, Cocoa WOODCREEPER, Bay WREN.
You know, I had that Rufous Motmot in the back of my cab the other day.
Awoken at 4:45 by a very inconsiderate Clay-Coloured Thrush, the national bird
of Costa Rica. It’s not even light for another 45 minutes.
The others are paying either $70 or $90 each for either a half or full day tour
of Cahuita National Park, and then probably a tortilla-making workshop or
something. Me, Claire and Ann don’t want to take turns looking into a telescope
to see tiny insects or blobs in the trees, so we get an Uber that costs £15. We
arrive in time for the torrential rain.
15 minutes of this sheltering next to the
gents and we downgrade it to heavy rain and set off. The advantage of this is
we’re the first into the park. The disadvantage is I’m soaked to the skin, my
only protection being a hat. The women have sensible umbrellas. The paths have
turned to rivers.
We work out that there’s less rain on the perfect empty white-sand beach and
walk along it until the sign warning of crocodiles drives us inland.
Then there’s a swamp, mosquitoes biting
our ankles. This leads to raccoon county - loads of them - big buggers of the
crab and coconut eating variety that don’t take no shit from anyone. My wizard’s
staff has found me and this raccoon’s on the path heading in my direction. I
assume he’ll nip into the bush, but he keeps coming. I drive my staff into the
ground, bellowing: ‘You shall not pass!’ but still he comes. I’m walking
backwards. ‘You shall not pass!’ I repeat. I let him pass.
By this time I’ve gone completely Lord of
the Flies.
Then we’re in monkey land. We can hear the howlers in the distance but it’s the
capuchins that come to greet us - maybe a dozen in total, including an adult
pair and their baby who rides on the mother’s back. They’re with us for about
half a km.
We reach the near-half way point at Punta
Cahuita. Here, because of the coral reef, are thousands of mainly-tiny hermit
crabs in ill-fitting dresses, mostly green, having a big orgy. The sun has made
a half appearance, the sea and the beaches are perfect, Ann declares it the
best walk of the trip.
The path has been flat for the most part, but we’re on the beach again
scrambling over boulders and pebbles in direct sunlight. My entry into the wet
T-shirt competition has changed liquid from rain to sweat. We haven’t passed
that many people walking in the other direction, but we reach Puerto Vargas,
seven km from the start, where you’re allowed to swim, not that this has
deterred the Cosricans from bathing elsewhere. There are baños but nobody’s has
the obvious idea of opening a bar.
Then there’s 2.5 km of comfortable
walking on a boardwalk above a swamp which contains many shy amphibians and
very few birdz. At the end of this I forget my hat and a taxi guy offers us a
reasonably-priced lift back to the hotel. The first beer is epic.
At ten to six we’re whisked off to another supposed cooking class, jerk chicken
again. It’s a 20-minute drive to an unassuming house in the middle of nowhere
where, with us in it, the door is padlocked. We get a drink of sugar
cane-ginger juice, later to have cachaca added and, by the time I’m out of the
loo that doesn’t want to flush, all the cooking stations are taken. The chef
gives me a run for my money in terms of curmudgeonliness, it’s inconvenient to
explain the cooking process, so we’re just given plates of food. It’s not bad,
it’s politely-spiced, it’s just not jerk chicken.
Back at eight, most people go to bed.
There’s a tranquil garden at the Cabinas Jacarinda which is full of cats,
plants, brave birds and mosquitos. The owner is lovely and totally forgiving
that Claire lost our keys, and only charges the reasonable sum of $20. And
remember kids, as I write this getting bitten and finishing off the travel rum,
I only do this so you don’t have to.
A few more new birdz today, not so many.
Fasciated ANTSHRIKE, Reddish EGRET, Olive-backed EUPHONIA, Ochre-bellied
FLYCATCHER,
Purple-throated FRUITCROW, Common black HAWK, LIMPKIN, Eastern wood-PEEWEE, Northern
Plain-XENOPS.
Spellcheck originally told me the shrike was fascinated by ants, which wouldn't
have been very practical if it was hungry.
Monday 18th May (Day 39)
We’re off at eight, 40 minutes to the eighth country of our trip, which is one
every 4.75 days. We have to bribe the Cosricans $9 to allow us to leave their
domain, a transaction that takes place in a phone shop, and our passports are
stamped by someone sitting in an office with a window at the height of my
crotch. Then I wheel my luggage which everyone thinks is full of bricks 700m
across an old bridge spanning a huge crocodile-infested river.
If you’re an independent traveller you’d have no idea where immigration is,
because it’s in a garage behind a restaurant, and then you have to bribe two
laughing women $8 in a random shed. They give us colourful tickets which we
have to wave at a police checkpoint ten minutes later. We’re in Panama!
Everywhere there are kids with guns. Abby explains that Panama disbanded its
army in 1990 after Noriega (nickname ‘pineapple face,’ but back then you’d
better only whisper it) was deposed. These are border guards because Panama has
over a million illegal immigrants, mainly Venezuelans, that can’t get back home
because MAGA had no interest in regime change, only in oil and mineral
exploitation.
At a baños stop the difference between Costa Rica and Panama is obvious as a
freshly-ground machine cappuccino, which is not bad, costs just $1.
We get to a port of sorts called Almirante which is channelling shack-chic, the
luggage which has been sellotaped to a roof rack just about surviving. We wait
15 minutes beside a stinking toilet for a 20-seater boat.
For the first time ever I’m not in the top quartile weight-wise, and loading
the precarious raft is perilous. The boat departs very slow then the captain
turns up the speed to kamikaze. The boat takes us directly to the landing pier
of Hotel Paradise, Bocas del Toro.
I’ve just enough time to beat everyone at
scrabble before we take another water taxi, $1 each, to the island of Carenero
which is 100m away. The bar Aqua has a ‘natural’ swimming pool, which is a
ringed-off bit of the sea, an all-day happy hour and evening activities such as
salsa lessons, beerpong and ‘Filthy Friday.’ Behind the bar is a real
Panamanian village where indigenous, black and mestizo kids happily play
baseball in a small clearing strewn with rubbish. I go for a walk around the
edge of the island. It’s mainly construction, but go past the decent beach it’s
deserted and beautiful. There’s not been much rain today but it’s overcast and
ridiculously humid and I return with a soaked t-shirt.
The other Amigos are on an evening
bioluminescence tour or something, so we search for the best cocktail bar.
There's a long street of bars and restaurants, over-eager staff thrusting menus
into your hands. There’s a decent passion fruit mojito at La Buga which Claire
knocks over inexplicably and has to order another. Then we discover that it’s
nine pm and, despite all the competition, everything is closing and the island
is dead. Back to La Buga for some sushi rolls the size of a sumo wrestler’s
arm.
Bocas has no cultural pretensions, although no doubt Intrepid can find an
indigenous women’s cooperative somewhere, and environmentally it’s a bit
suspect, but I’m liking it so far. Can’t wait for Filthy Friday.
Wake up to a deluge. There’s thunder and lightning, sparks spitting off the
power cables and the roads have turned into rivers. The 9:30 day trip has been
delayed, eventually to a trip over two days starting at one pm today.
Eventually it’s safe to go out so we walk a long route, because some roads are
impassable due to puddles, to the bank and then to an artisan chocolate kiosk
where it takes three shakes of a bell to summon the producer. We get samples.
It’s $7 for a 90g bar, but so good. I get five. Then an expensive but very good
cappuccino followed by a real waffle, and I can’t believe I bothered to tell
you any of this. I’m soaked.
The boat speeds us to Starfish Bay via the Punta Caracol Lodge, which used to
be the most exclusive place to stay in Bocas until covid and then they built
better places. Still costs over $1,000 per night apparently.
It’s overcast and the beach is near deserted. As the name suggests, there are
yellow (called orange) and orange (called red) varieties of ‘stars,’ and
hundreds of them close to shore, as if somebody moves them there each morning.
They have five ‘arms’ although we find a suspicious one with six perfect arms
that looks plastic.
By the beach there are several shack-bars
and behind them, where they dump the trash, many committees of white-tipped
vultures. They scare away all of the other birdz except the ubiquitous noisy
grackles.
Claire orders pina coladas. ‘They’re very reasonable,’ I comment, noticing the
$5 price tag. She’s paid $15 each, but that’s because her version is a whole
pineapple scooped out and completely filled with white rum, because they ran
out of coconut milk.
Later on, Abby tries to engender some
synergy into the Amigos by taking us for happy hour cocktails. I spend the whole time fishing out
ice cubes from the G&Ts and chucking them in the sea.
At 7pm we go to the restaurant in the suburbs we’d checked out the night
before. I say the suburbs, but you could walk down every street in less than an
hour. This early start turns out to be a good idea as the attitude to service
is let’s deal with one table at a time and take the order from the second when
the first gets its food.
I’d mainly wanted to go there for the smoked pineapple cocktail, one of the
only two on the menu. They’ve run out of smoked pineapple, the only
waiter/barman says, would I like hibiscus instead? What’s in the Bocas Sunrise,
the only other cocktail? I enquire. Hibiscus. Do you have anything other than
hibiscus? I ask, thinking of the Monty Python spam song. His answer is to
wander off and fetch drinks for someone else, so we have the Sunrise, which is
very good and accurate when you consider that sunrises here are cloudy mixtures
of shades of grey.
The smoked chicken is not cooked on a BBQ as I’d hoped and comes with ‘mash of
the day’. Der der der der de-der de-der-der, de-der-der der-de-der… (geddit?).
The meal is all very nice and reassuringly expensive.
My travel rum is Panamanian Abuelo, the basic stuff a steal at $6.25 a half
bottle. Sitting on the balcony of our second-floor room where the plumbing
sounds like an old man is forcing water upstairs with bellows, while a poo
monster roars for more each time you flush the toilet, Abuelo does the job
alongside some illegal balcony cigarettes, the evidence soon to be flushed away
by the torrential rain. There are water taxis to watch and, looking over to the
Cosmic Crab, which may or may not be on another island and the source of the
reggae cover band I’m hearing, I think life could be worse.
Our day trip part 2 begins at 10am, the worst of the storm during the night.
The rain only re-starts when we’ve loaded the boat.
It’s a long way apparently, because I slept through it with a rain jacket in my
face, and we arrive on Isla Popa, home to the indigenous community of the
Ngabe-Bugle. The humidity is almost 100%. I’m not going to be mean because
these communities need supporting and Abby is very, very passionate about this
one, which only exists on the Intrepid itinerary because of him, but his
explanations are somewhat overlong and my attention can only cope with so much.
The Amigos get to interrupt three different classrooms and, of course, there’s
a women’s craft cooperative. I only listen to the commentary because I’ve
discovered I have a fear of being trapped in rooms where there are people and Abby,
being half-US, can be heard a kilometre away. The kids are cute.
Next stop the promised snorkelling, which
we have to do off the small boat in mildly choppy waters. I haven’t snorkelled
in twenty years and the last time I jumped off a boat, about five weeks ago if
I remember correctly, I got a huge bruise from my armpit to my wrist. Still, I
test the waters, swim half way around the vessel, can’t get my mask on, signal
to Claire not to bother, and manage to climb a dodgy ladder without injuring
myself.
The later underwater photos posted by Lissy who has proper equipment, indicate
a piss-poor dive which everyone is too polite to admit. Fred is the last back
on the boat and everyone holds their breath, particularly Monica who he fell on
a couple of nights ago. Miraculously he manages the ascent without a refusal in
one go, without capsizing the boat, then promptly hops over a seat and slips
onto his arse.
We have lunch at a place on the southern tip of Bastimentos Island with another
dangerous quay. It’s full of tourists paying over the odds for bad pre-cooked
food, but the bars are cute and it’s run by indigenous people, so that’s fine.
Next is a return back via Isla Cristobal
where we’re not going to see any sloths. Only twenty years ago or so
naturalists were amazed that sloths existed on the island because they would
have swam from the mainland to get there. Looking at Google maps later the
channel’s only about 20m wide but still… they’re sloths.
Anyway, all expectations are dumbfounded when Captain Gerry spots a sloth high
in a tree. Abby declares the whole trip a monumental success and texts his
famous naturalist friend the exact coordinates of the sighting.
Then, around the corner, there’s another sloth, except it’s not just one but
three! Abby and his Costa Rican trainee Lou cannot believe this is happening.
Then, in the next bay of mangroves, Belinda spots another! Five sloths so far,
Captain Gerry expertly manoeuvring the boat so we get the best view, Abby
screaming sloth-facts enough to make the poor sleepy mammals break cover and
run for it.
In the next corner or whatever you call it when you move along a mangrove
swamp, Annie spots another and Peter one more- that’s seven sloths, half the
known sloth population of the huge island!!! Abby and Lou cannot contain their
excitement, Ann is almost in tears and Glaswegian Alan with the scouse accent
is having a spiritual moment in which he declares that never before has he
realised the importance of nature and, maybe it’s just me…
Grey squirrels actually move and you get to see their faces. These things just
look like furry coconuts.
Okay, it’s just me.
We arrive back soaked, in time for an
explosive shower, three happy hour cocktails and pizza. On the balcony drinking
medicinal travel rum because I’ve picked up a cold, I notice there’s a $250
fine for smoking out here. You’ve heard of silent discos. Next door is empty
disco, which doesn’t stop them playing ear-splitting ragga until two in the
morning. We wondered what the complimentary earplugs were for. Perhaps a
soundcheck for Filthy Friday, which unfortunately we will be missing.
Thursday 21st May (Day 42)
Boat leaves at 8:30. Of course, the weather is perfect. We speed across to the
mainland, the lush jungle of the archipelago surrounding us.
It used to take nine hours to get to our next destination Boquete, but a few
months ago Intrepid decided not to force its clients onto a series of public
buses and to hire a minibus instead. Abby announces this as if Intrepid are
doing us a favour and not their job which we’ve paid them thousands of pounds
to do. The bus is Chinese, has the lowest ceiling and thinnest seats ever, but
we get two each.
To while away the 3.5 hours of stupendous boredom and spectacular mountain
scenery that we’ve become accustomed to, Abby tells us a story. In the late
19th Century a Usacan planted thousands of acres of bananas as cheap food for
his workers to build a railway from San Jose to the Caribbean to transport
coffee. His financial backer visited, realised the potential, said sod the
coffee and railway, let’s eat the bananas. The United Fruit Company was born.
Over the next fifty or so years it spread across Central America, the West
Indies and Colombia like a virus, swallowing up governments and giving us the
phrase Banana Republics. They used so-called New World slave labour, exploiting
the indigenous population whose land they had stolen. In 1928 the workers in
Colombia went on strike. The US-owned UFC funded right-wing militias to murder 3,000
workers, dump them in a mass grave and plant bananas on top.
I’m writing this on a bus in the mountains without 4G so I can’t check facts,
and Abby may be prone to exaggeration, but there’s something in this. According
to him, it’s still going on today. The UFC received some bad press, de-merged
and renamed itself Chiquita Bananas. This company owns the port we sailed to
Bocas from and back, employs hundreds of thousands of Panamanians and still
pays its agricultural labourers the equivalent sum it paid in 1920. There have
been strikes in the past decade during which the company has simply upped
sticks and moved temporarily to Costa Rica, owing Panama billions in unpaid
taxes. The Panamanian government always gives way, makes a promise to the
workers, because they’re in the employment of CB too. Panama has the 2nd
highest GDP per capita in Central America, yet 99% of the wealth is owned by 1%
of the population, which is almost as bad as pariah right-wing nations such as
the USA.
We stop in the ridge that separates this weird-shaped thin windy snake-like
country, again at the point where the Pacific weather system meets the
Caribbean. It’s windy with a fab view and the ladies, including Fred whose
muscled his way in, hold a Panamanian flag.
Boquete, in the region they call, as they
do, the Panamanian Alps, looks nice. It’s in a valley at 1,200m, the climate is
cool and just a bit wet, and it’s nestled below Volcan Baru, the highest point
in Panama at 3,475m. The hotel has a lovely garden and there’s a terrace
outside our room in which Claire gets a bed big enough for four and I get a
single, because that’s the deal - me being closest to aircon and baños. There’s
a fridge!
The others go to a nearby soup kitchen
for lunch but I need medicine for a cough picked up from dampness and I do my
own orientation tour of the town, which takes five minutes. Abby’s takes
significantly longer and includes a lot of standing in either the sun or rain
as he tends to get enthusiastic and has to deflect questions. He does introduce
us to an interesting orange nut the indigenous people are selling, that tastes
somewhere between a chestnut and coconut. When Claire and I announce we’re
buggering off before the hour-long lecture on tomorrow’s optional day trips, he
looks slightly hurt.
It still feels like I’m standing on a boat.
There are many indigenous people here, too proud to beg so they try to sell you
a plant and there are a lot of plants round here, as well as coffee
specialties, because it’s here that the famous Geisha variety is grown. Also,
perhaps 60,000 retired Usacans live in the region. They’re incentivised to move
here. Simple bungalows start at $250,000.
Abby seems to have forgiven us when we join the Amigos for a cocktail next door
to the hotel. I consider eating there, but I’m boycotting anywhere with
adjectives on the menu. If they tell you the chicken is ‘juicy’ or the steak
‘perfectly grilled,’ it will not be. After a few margaritas too many I skulk
across the bridge at 9pm on my own and order a posh burger from the only place
open in town. The staff watch me eat every mouthful as they want to go home.
It’s at this point I realise. We’ve been travelling too long. Maybe it’s time
to go home.
But then I someone on an adjacent balcony having a crafty illegal smoke and I
think why not go into the lovely insect-free cool garden with my travel rum and
portable responsible ashtray and sit with the ducks and their incubating eggs.
There, I see something I’ve never seen before. A clear almost light-pollution
free sky with stars and flashes of lightning in the distance. Plus, I’m in
Panama and I love it here.
There are worse places to do very little than Boquete (why does Camborne always
spring to mind?). Walks into the hills are options for those who didn’t overdo
the travel rum last night.
Nice hotel breakfast, walk to the park by the river, lovely park, colder here
than in London at the moment, but 90% humidity. Have to come back because
Claire’s forgotten her tobacco which is very remiss of her. Coffee and then a
search for seeds and an artisan craft market that doesn’t exist along the
horrible traffic-ridden main street. I complain and I’m banished to the park.
Which is fine with me as I catch nine new
Pokem… birdz, see terrapins, watch a big digger remove huge rocks from the
river and generally have a lovely time away from people and cars, the ambience
only occasionally spoiled by the geriatric Usacans dogging. I mean, walking
their dogs. I leave when it starts raining and my phone battery is down to 10%.
On the way back I drop into a nice-
looking coffee shop by the river for a dose of espresso. They have the famous
geisha coffee on the menu for $9. Why not?
What they don’t tell you is that this comes with a 25-minute lecture and
ceremony from the owner. It’s fine, he’s a lovely guy and I actually remember
some of his Spanglish.
The name of the coffee bean has nothing to do with Japan, the native name just
sounds like ‘geisha’. A local farmer wanted a variety of blight-resistant
coffee which he found via a British scientist in Costa Rica. It didn’t grow
particularly well there, but in Boquete it found its perfect environment with
the altitude, volcanic soil and conflicting weather systems. Nothing much
happened for forty years and then the farmer’s son entered it into the
Panamanian coffee Olympics where it won first prize. He entered it into the
world competition, same thing. This was twenty years ago maybe. Farming is small
scale with modest yields.
I’m given three bags of bean to sniff: natural, washed and purple, the latter
having the essence of red grapes, champagne, hibiscus, cherry and honey,
according to the tasting notes. I choose the purple, probably because it was
the first I smelt.
He weighs out 18g of beans exactly, which is carefully placed in a hand grinder
and the powder into a filter. The water is heated to exactly 92c. 30ml of water
precisely is added to the filter. We wait a minute. Then another 30ml to allow it
to ‘bloom.’ Wait another minute. Then 120ml of water. Wait three minutes.
Finally, I’m allowed to drink my coffee.
As promised, it doesn’t taste like coffee. It’s a light roast and there’s no
bitterness, almost like herbal tea. The taste changes as it cools - it becomes
slightly sweet. This variety sells here for $200 a kilo of beans. The really
good stuff is $14,000 a kilo.
It’s alright.
The grackles in the square are going mad at dusk as we drink our 2 for 1
margaritas, but otherwise there’s not much happening on Friday night.
Restaurant Ngadri is at the end of an unpromising street across a thin bridge.
It’s empty. The Francis Drake cocktail includes rum, passion fruit, cinnamon
and curry powder and isn’t as weird as it sounds. There’s some sort of free dip
that tastes nice, Claire’s octopus and my jerk chicken are amazing, but the
crème brûlée, which tastes great, is split so I’m not allowed to eat it. They
leave it off the bill.
We find the Boquete youth en masse in the sports bar next door to our hotel.
It’s karaoke night and somebody is murdering Beat It, and now I’m never going
to get that tune out of my head.
Panama birdz…
Black-bellied whistling DUCK, Lesser ELAENIA, Bran-coloured FLYCATCHER, Magnificent
FRIGATEBIRD, Laughing GULL, Ringed KINGFISHER, Southern LAPWING, Common NIGHTHAWK,
Black NODDY, Brown PELICAN, Pale-vented PIGEON, Upland SANDPIPER, Flame-coloured
TANAGER, Royal TERN, Chivi VIREO, Red-eyed VIRIO, Mangrove yellow WARBLER, Red-crowned
WOODPECKER.
Saturday 23rd May (Day 44)
A new bus, taller than the last so you don’t bump your head. There are twelve
double seats and one single, so it’s a game of musical chairs which Alan loses
and gets the naughty seat.
What did we do today? Ah… I don’t know, more travel. The scenery is very lovely
when I wake up to see it. We’re promised the real Panamanian experience - we’re
going to a non-touristy part of the country - and it turns out that what real
Panamanians really want are malls and fast-food chains. Abby promised he’d take
us to a place where we can get cheap geisha coffee, cheap rum and other local
delicacies, but it’s just the supermarket in the mall, so good job I stocked up
in Boquete last night.
We’re in a place called Chitre in the southern central part of the country for
our last inclusive craft activity - a mask workshop. Now, you know how I feel
about group activities, but actually I really like masks. It’s outside an
ordinary suburban house and Signor Jose is an expert craftsman, his masks
featuring in the opening sequence of Quantum of Solace. He used to be a
fisherman but had to adapt to the times. He makes the moulds from clay - each
one can be used for up to forty masks - and then they’re dried, covered in
papier-mâché, dried again and painted. To remove them from the moulds you have
to cut and reassemble. They start at $20 and go up to $150 and, had my suitcase
not been jam-packed with rum, cachaca, hot sauce, coffee and chocolate, I would
have bought one. Claire helps with the moulding demonstration and some of the
Amigos get to paint the little ones he made earlier which are given away, or in
Claire’s case chucked in the hotel bin because she didn’t think she’d done a
good job. We’re at a lower altitude and it’s unbelievably hot and humid or, as Abby
said in his WhatsApp message, ‘dry and humid.’
There’s meant to be an orientation walk
of Chitre according to the Intrepid app, but sensibly there’s not because the
town is as appealing as Luton. The hotel has five Panamanian stars and is being
used by the locals for a very noisy children’s birthday party. There’s a large
pool which we dare not enter. Ordering drinks is a pain but Balboa beers are
only $1.50, or $1.61 with tax, and the food is not terrible. Everyone goes to
bed at eight. Basically, the place is just somewhere to stop before Panama City.
So, while I remember it, here’s a list. I love lists.
Mexico = currency peso (25 roughly = £1). Best beer = Modelo. Best spirit =
mezcal.
Belize = currency Belizean Dollars (2.7 = £1. It’s pegged to the $US 2:1. $US
accepted). Best beer = Belekin, although annoyingly it only comes in half-pint
bottles. Best spirit = Tiburon rum.
Guatemala = currency Quetzal (10 = £1). Best beer = Gallo. Best spirit = mezcal
(it’s imported from Mexico, but cheap and widely available). Avoid the rum.
Honduras = currency Lempira (35 = £1, they also accept Quetzal in Copan). Best
beer = Salva Vida (‘lifesaver’, and it was). Best spirit = maybe should have
tried the local rum but didn’t. The quality of margaritas deteriorates the
further you get from Mexico.
El Salvador = currency $US (1.35 = £1, beware the coins which are not legal
tender, even in Panama. I collected a whole series of quarters with American
Presidents on them, even the terrible ones such as Andrew Johnson and John
Tyler). Best beer = Pilsener (very boring name). Best spirit = chaparro. Our
leader in Guatemala recommended this, a corn-distilled liquor. We had a snifter
in our terrible Pupusa-making evening and I quite liked it. Couldn’t find it
anywhere - it’s basically illegal moonshine of uncertain proof.
Nicaragua = currency Cordoba (50 = £1). Best beer = Tona, although Victoria is
also good. Best spirit = rum. Nicaragua is the place to buy rum. The biggest
brand, but also reputedly one of the best, is Flor de Cana, which you find all
over Central America, but it’s cheapest here. In fact, buy everything here as
next is…
Costa Rica = currency Colon (600 = £1). Best beer = Imperial. Best spirit =
Nicaraguan rum.
Panama = currency €US, but you’ll get your coins back in a mix of US and the
old currency Balboa. Both are incredibly annoying as they don’t announce their
values in anything but tiny letters, if that. The tatty US dollar and its
crappy coins are my least favourite currency. Best beer = Balboa (also named
after the conquistador). Best rum = Abuelo. It’s very nice and very decently
priced, but I’m pushing it rum-wise in my suitcase. Makes good travel rum.
Big day tomorrow, but you can tell I’m winding down as it’s day whatever and
I’m missing something, not sure what, probably red wine, and I should probably
do this when I get home as we’ve not finished yet but here’s my favourites
countries of the trip so far. This is only based on the Intrepid journey and
only reflects the places we went to and our experiences.
8th = Mexico
7th = El Salvador
6th = Costa Rica
5th = Honduras
4th = Belize
3rd = Guatemala
2nd = Panama (with an accent on the last a)
1st = Nicaragua
Weird options for our 6:30 breakfast: stir-fried beef, onions and peppers; deep
fried pork rinds and beef patties. Alan’s last on the bus again, throws a
stroppy fit and gets to sit up front with the driver. Lou is given the naughty
step.
We’re back on the Pan-American Highway, the longest road in the world. We stop
at a service station that has a separate mixed-gender toilet area for children.
Here we’re encouraged to buy lunch and we get a coffee for the journey which is
a bad idea as the next part of the Highway is not the best. We climb into a
National Park where a Panamanian F1 racetrack is located.
Gradually, the mountains shorten and the land becomes flat. You could almost
cut a canal through it. Technically, we’re in South America.
Now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a convoluted and fact-dubious
history of the Panama Canal, whether you like it or not. Vasco de Balboa was
the first to cross the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and he founded the first
incarnation of Panama City, this becoming the launch spot for Pizarro’s
conquest of the Inca Empire. At this point all Spanish loot from the Pacific
Americas had to be transported through the treacherous jungle. Various
explorers proposed a canal either through the Panamanian Isthmus or Nicaragua, and
the need for this increased during the Californian Gold Rush of the 1840’s when
it was more reliable to travel to the West Coast of USA through Central America
than by land. A railway was built across Panama by 1855, about the same time as
William Walker’s Usacan imperialist expedition to Nicaragua.
(By the way, I’m using the word ‘Usacan’ because Central Americans are also
Americans).
The French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, having completed the Suez Canal in
1869 declared the Panama project ‘easy-peasy’ and work began in 1881. He
thought that he could just bulldoze through the continent, but volcanic soil,
rocks and hills proved a different kettle of fish from sand. Lesseps understood
nothing about the terrain, tides, seasons or hazards. By 1889, 22,000 workers
had died from a then unknown malady, later to be called malaria. The undertaking
nearly bankrupted France.
The Usacans favoured the Nicaragua route until a volcano destroyed Managua. The
desperate French offered to sell the lease on the Panama Canal and all their on-site
hardware for a bargain $40 million to Teddy Roosevelt. However, the Colombians,
who possessed Panama at the time, objected, leading the Usacans to send a
warship. Panama became fully independent in 1903 and the Usacans took over the
canal lease.
The new chief engineer John Wallace had the idea of damming the Chagres River,
thus creating Lake Gatun, meaning that ships use the lake for most of the
journey. But locks were required to reach the lake and because of the tides of
the Pacific. All of the water in the canal needs to be fresh for some reason
and a huge amount is required for each of the six lock transitions. Thus, most
of the area around the canal is protected rainforest which feeds the canal.
Tens of thousands also died during the Usacan construction, mostly black West
Indians and Chinese. The first crossing was in 1914, the day WWI started.
Recently, there has been much technological innovation and construction to
protect the canal from natural occurrences such as El Niño which causes drought
and therefore lock water shortage, the effect of which can reduce the number of
daily crossings from over 50 to less than 20. As the canal represents 10% of
Panama’s not inconsiderable GDP, the shortages are best avoided. The fee for
the canal, incidentally, is based on tonnage capacity (not the weight
transported on any particular journey), or in the case of cruises, passenger
capacity. The record fee for a single crossing is $1.3 million. Don’t like it?
Feel free to sail around Cape Horn instead.
We’re there about 11am, not really a port, the ladies' toilet being behind a
sheet of canvas, the gent's a field. It’s another small boat with a massive
engine. Immediately, Abby gets very excited as some huge container ship is
coming north from the Pacific. They can carry up to 16,000 containers, each the
size of a big lorry. This one, the ‘Korea’ which is registered in Hong Kong and
en route from Long Beach to Brazil, has maybe 12,000. It’s accompanied by two
multi-million-dollar tugs (made in Japan) that nudge the boat from side to side
when necessary and, on each journey through the canal, the ship’s captain is
compelled to give up control to a local pilot or three.
Abby spies a ship coming south from the
Caribbean. They’re going to pass each other! He shouts, sounding like those
Latin American football commentators bellowing goooooooooalllll! I don’t doubt
his sincerity, I appreciate his enthusiasm, I know he gets excited by the
Panama Canal, but It’s not good for my damaged ear.
There are other big ships too.
But this is the best boat trip of this
holiday so far because, besides it being in the Panama fucken’ Canal, the
wildlife in the lake’s islands is wonderful. No stupid sloths, but crocodiles,
Jesus lizards, huge iguanas, howler, capuchin and Geoffrey’s spider monkeys
(the latter very rare apparently, Lou's in tears, although one of the other
guides feeds them so I reckon a plant), snail hawks etc…
The Miraflores Locks are less fun.
They’re very busy, full of Usacan tourists on day trips from Pan City, and
there’s an IMAX, complete with popcorn stands, processed food and expensive
beer. No smoking anywhere and we haven’t had one since 11am. The lock is just a
big version of the one I grew up next to on the River Wey, no boat is coming
through right now, and we have to wait 45 minutes to watch a stupid 3-D film
narrated by Morgan Freeman, which is an hour long if you include the 20-minute
Panamanian version of Pearl & Dean. We would have left and smoked outside,
but Abby was guarding the exit.
Because Abby likes ships so much, Annie
and Peter buy him a small rubber one which we all sign.
The outskirts of Pan City are a bit grim and desperate, people trying to get by
however they can. The hotel, which we reach by 4pm, is okay. I confess, I did
no research and have absolutely no idea what to expect from this place.
Abby assures us this is the safest capital city in Central America, which
probably doesn’t mean much. The area we’re staying in is populated by both
retirees and students. The orientation bus takes us through the main shopping
area, along the waterfront and to Panama City Old Town which, just to be
confusing, is not the same as Old Panama City. You probably know already -
Panama City has more skyscrapers than anywhere else in Latin America (may be
true, can’t be bothered to look it up), because they’re absolutely certain
there will never be an earthquake here. There’s also a thriving financial
sector here, partly based on loans for canal crossings, and partly based on the
washing of other commodities.
Apart from the gridlock traffic, the Old Town is absolutely lovely, built in a
baroque style after 1673 when Captain Morgan’s Rum burnt the previous Panama
City on the orders of the British Queen, according to Abby, who I point out was
called Charles II at the time. It’s full of very upmarket shops, posh
restaurants, fantastic-looking bars (often Argentinian), nice buildings and
souvenir shops which mainly sell Panama hats, which actually come from Ecuador.
Our orientation walk is not that boring,
and although time is promised for people to go shopping, or in the case of me,
Claire, Peter, Alan, Natalie etc... a desperate life-saving beer, we’re
directed to the place we’re going to have our last supper. Abby pointed it out
earlier as the most exclusive restaurant in town, his joke lost on 13 people
who got up at 5:30. Its front terrace is half a chicken bus and there are poor parrots.
It’s a wee bit touristy for my taste.
There are two other tour parties there and a 90th birthday party. The menu has
very unappealing brown photographs of the food, and takes an hour and a half to
arrive. ‘I bet they make me wear a hat,’ I whisper to Alan. At least there is
plenty of beer.
At 8 pm dancers swish around, musicians
walk about the tables, the birthday boy gets up for a dance, most of our table
gets up for a dance, they make me wear a hat…
At about 9 pm we’re given the choice of
staying in Old Town or coming back in the bus. Claire, Ann and I decide to go
back to the hotel. Maybe that’s because we’ve been on the road the longest,
we’re just tired. So, it’s hugs all round to Belinda and Nadja, who are both
Swiss but that doesn’t mean they’re related, petite Monica from New Ecuador,
the up-for-everything Somerset sisters Natalie and Lissy, Alan with the
explosive laugh and very white teeth, Lou from Costa Rica who doesn’t stop
looking at her phone, good-hearted Fred and our friends Annie and Peter from
the Northern Territory. They’re going clubbing.
It’s goodnight and goodbye to Abby too –
one of the most colourful characters I’ve ever encountered. Everybody we’ve met
along the way seems to know him, he went the extra mile for us and he’s a great
guy.
In fact, everyone is lovely. Adios Amigos.
I’ve written most of this and go out for a final cigarette about half past
midnight. A guy, slightly older than me, tries to have a conversation but we
can’t communicate. His friend the night watchman comes out to help translate
but his English isn’t great either and, like most other Englishmen, I think
that any word in any foreign language will do. The gist of the conversation is…
Queen Elizabeth was the longest serving English monarch. She came through the
canal once. When she died, everyone in Panama cried.
The British Empire was the largest in the world ever.
Thomas Tuchel must be crazy to leave Cole Palmer out of the England squad.
25th-26th May (Days 46 -47)
Panama City is the least Central American place of the trip. It has a
prosperous glitterati (you should have seen the guy in the zebra suit last
night!) and a cafe culture more reminiscent of Palermo or Lisbon by night, or
Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur by day, i.e. hot and very humid.
Abby arranged a late checkout and we could have done a morning tour of the Old
Town or gone up a skyscraper or two but we don’t. Instead, we embark on the
traditional holiday activity of trying to find a particular brand of tobacco in
several smoke shops spread across the city, most of which are closed. By the
time we return to the hotel my clean clothes are soaked in sweat.
We share an Uber with Ann, the driver
having a bottle of Abuelo in his coffee-cup holder - the ultimate travel rum.
The impressive one-way system takes us two miles in the wrong direction, then
back close to our hotel, then north along the ebbing waters crowded by grey
pelicans, through another cluster of skyscraper apartments and finally to
Tocumen Airport. I ask Ann which flight flight’s she on and it turns out to be
ours, which is not what she said yesterday.
The check-in area is near-empty, the staff super helpful, but there’s nowhere
to smoke for hundreds of metres. Security is lax and the departure area is
surprisingly busy, suggesting this is mainly a transit airport.
A traveller like Ann knows you need to eat before you fly or bring your own
food, but we’re from the ‘eat when you’re hungry’ school. The food court
upstairs is closed, the stalls don’t advertise their prices but if you ask them
sandwiches start at around $12, and a small beer is $10.
The plane is half-empty, or half-full if you’re an optimist. We chug our
suitcases figuratively across the Darien Gap and a short while later we’re in
Bogota, Colombia, saying an emotional goodbye to Ann in the security queue and
ready to rejoin the Panamerican Highway. Except we don’t, because there’s a
flight to Heathrow in a couple of hours. We could have come back via Madrid but
that was a later flight, or Miami, which was an option not considered by me for
some reason.
El Dorado airport is a vibrant microcosm of Colombian culture with Shakira
impersonators on every corner performing their takes on Latin salsa-pop, Carlos
Valderrama-owned restaurants serving freshly-made intoxicating bandeja paisa,
ajiaco and lechona, and a themed monument to the greatest moments of Juan Pablo
Montoya’s career. Except it isn’t – it’s like every other major airport in the
world – overpriced and soulless. The only difference is that they sell beer in
650ml glasses, and these we bought in a Greek restaurant. It's also at an
altitude of 2,548 metres.
Nine and a half hours on a full plane with no legroom or sleep. The Uber
driver’s laughing with his mate on the phone, misses the turn and has to use
Vauxhall Bridge in rush hour. Get home, everything in the house is broken and
Alex has gone to Ibiza.
I’m surprised to see so many British package holidaymakers on the flight from
Bogota, but why should I be? The world is getting smaller, there’s fanta and
coca cola coming to a Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts near you in your favourite
mall, cheap air fares and Uber Eats. Ten years ago, I never thought I’d ever be
able to go to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, but now there’s
construction in every place where rich consortiums have bribed government
officials and resorts are on the way, where you can eat from the same worldwide
laminated menu – ‘delicious’ burgers, ‘juicy’ steak, ‘crispy’ fries,
‘mouth-watering’ pasta and ‘perfect’ pizza – and lie beside a pool or on
artificial sand beneath a rentable umbrella, occasionally rising to snorkel
around the dead coral while fighter jets rumble overhead.
So, is it a case of ‘see it now’ or ‘you should have seen it years ago?’ It’s a
bit of both. I’m not blaming Intrepid because tourists and travellers alike,
and is there really any difference, expect to see Mayan sites like Tikal and
Copan, historic cities like Antigua, Leon and Granada, wildlife centres like
Monteverde and Sarapiqui, tropical islands like Caye Caulker and Bocas, the
volcanoes of Lake Atitlan and the Panama Canal. If we were to see the real
Central America it would be slums in Guatemala City, San Salvador and
Tegucigalpa and, frankly, San Jose was bad enough. What made the trip special
was the people, the locals, the tour leaders and the travel companions, and
what remains of the wildlife. We didn’t see any jaguars, ocelots or tapirs and
spent far too much time hunting stupid sloths, but there were always the birdz.
I heard over 180 separate species in less than a month, some of them in
unlikely places in the cities. Whatever mankind does to ruin this planet, the
birdz will always be around us.
Even it’s just the bloody grackles.
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