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I´ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more Colombia

By admin | February 7, 2008

Panama NewsMaster Mike Flynn signing in for the 10th Blog of the trip….

Billy Boyd was informed by his overworked dad that he was coming back early to help out with the business and to live with his bro in CA for a few weeks.

Soon afterward, I arrived in Panama on December 30th, where the diesel fumes flow freely and the shopkeepers won’t haggle. The airline had, as expected, misplaced my bag (laden full of delicious Clif Bars). Van Halen said it best…Panamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

When I stepped out into the open air of the airport turnaround, looking for a taxi, two strange hombres sporting ridiculous mustachios and red, white and blue headbands (the colors of panama) started hooting and hollering. I instantly crouched into a fighting stance preparing to go to deal them fearsome blows in protection of my wallet and passport. But then as they emerged from a cloud of exhaust I saw that I had in fact mistaken Sean for a local due to his extremely dark tan… and the other, who at first appeared to be Will Ferrell was actually none other than Dan Hudson Esquire, handle bar mustache rippling in the wind like a poorly trimmed sail on my boat ride from Panama to Colombia. I joined in on the hooting and hollering instantly. Now all I needed was a mustache….

As was customary, Sean had left his Panama hat in his taxi to reserve it, and as was customary, the taxi driver drove away without warning. A few minutes later, perhaps having seen the movie “Pay it Forward”, or perhaps because he wasn’t allowed to park in the airport turn around, the taxi driver returned. We got into his uncouth and decrepit vehicle, and requested that he take us into the banking capital of Central America… PANAMA CITY.

Our ride was littered with near fatalities as it is customary or drunken fun to run across the highway without looking both ways. A pattern of happy go lucky behavior that would only get worse (including maneuvers such as the Guatemalan standoff, the Colombian business man strolling across the Panamerican highway maneuver, and the Ecuadorian two lane mountain chicken pass) as we progressed into the deep underbelly of South America. Finally we arrived at our destination… a push button hotel located strategically close to our parking spot at the local firefighter (bombero) station. We got out of our taxi, walked to the door, and pressed the button to request entry into our new abode.  As always, Dan was sweating profusely due to an acute condition of hyper-hydrosis and having more hair than a Himalayan Badger. 

The name of our equatorial paradise; Hotel Monaco.  To give you an idea of the class in this region of the city – you can pay for our hotel by the hour or by the night.  $5 per hour or $24 per night.  After some tough math, we obtained the rooms for the night.  The cost: 24 dollars a night for 3 people. The cost of staying in a hotel within 2 blocks of Fiesta Casino: hundreds of dollars, severe sleep deprivation, excessive mumbling.

Since the road from Panama to Colombia does not exist, we needed to send our rig by boat across the Caribbean to Colombia. Actually accomplishing that would end up being about as enjoyable as getting face kicked by an Ecuadorian donkey.

In the meantime, we had three weeks to kill in Panama City. Kirk left off right after New years, so I’ll skip ahead to after his post.

Lil Billy Boyd had to take off soon after I arrived due to the aforementioned patriarchal control scenario, so we hung out and played liars dice and said our good byes. He had promised Alex he was going to shave off his huge handle-bar mustache, but he didn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if upon seeing him with that monster that they either broke up or got married on the spot as a result… but surely nothing in between.

After Bill was gone, Sean, Myself, Dan and Bryan decided to take a trip to a little place on the Caribbean side of Panama called Isla Grande to try and find surf and a little sanity after Panama City’s madness.

On the way over we stopped briefly at a port city called Colon in search of shipping companies for the truck. Out of nowhere, we got flagged down by the local news station in our car. We pulled over (Dan, Bryan, Sean and I were in the car at the time) and proceeded to give them an interview. Actually, it was mainly Sean talking while the rest of us posed Zoolander style for the camera. None of us, Bryan, Dan or I, had driven down on the trip, but we got a full page picture in the local newspaper and our interview was shown throughout Panama. Definitely winning.

With that under our belt, we made the remaining 3 hour drive through pothole laden streets to Isla Grande. We took a skiff out to the Island, which turned out to be pretty small, and with no surf. It ended up being a mess. The entire island was booked up because it was a Panamanian holiday (commemorating their recently won full control/ownership of the canal, as well as mourning the loss of those who were hurt/killed when we bombed Noriega controlled Panama. They don’t harbor a great deal of resentment about it… but I still avoided pointing out that I’m American while talking about the holiday.) We did end up finding a room that first night, and played liars dice while waiting for the waiters to do anything. This is the Caribbean… things move slowly…. On the second day, we ended up trying to find surf again. Sean got a 3 second ride on some rocks, and I paddled for a few minutes.  That night, we stayed in a non-airconditioned hovel that smelled like toilet cleaner and let in mosquitoes.  We actually witnessed the 70 year old female owner of the establishment lift her nighty and relieve herself in the side yard.  Class Class Class…  We got out of there early the next day and headed back to Panama City.

Once we returned to Panama City, we spent the next few days shuttling back and forth between the police and customs trying to get the paperwork necessary for shipping out the truck. In the midst of that, our brakes blew out and we had to take the truck into the Ford dealership. They didn’t have the part we needed, in the entire country of Panama. So we had to arrange for the part to be flown from Miami at an exorbitant rate, and it still took 4 days to get the part.  With that additional delay, Sean and Bryan got on a boat to Colombia, while Eric and I stayed behind to get the car fixed and shipped.

The weekend before Eric and I were taking the boat to Panama, we went out on the town with our future shipmates. Somewhere along the way, I got separated from the group, and Eric rallied all the guys to go out to the casino. He showed up at 7AM after an early morning shrimp, rice and milkshake (batido) breakfast.

As it turns out, when Sean and Eric had entered Panama, they had done so right as the customs office (spanish: “aduanas”) was about to close. Like any respectable bureacrats, they had cut corners to save time and avoid working… and gave Eric paperwork that did not sufficiently document the rig. No problem, aside from the fact that we had to spend two days of stressful work between the police and customs to unravel the mess. Rule: get it done right at the border the first time.

Eric had met a great guy named George (hor-hay) earlier in the Bocas del Toro region of Panama. Apprarently he was a big deal in the marketing industry in Panama, and had seen the light of Green – Feral Green that is. George’s cute girlfriend was also involved in sustainability by creating paintings based on nature and environmental issues.  Things turned out perfectly and it happened that George was putting on a recycling fair in Panama right before we were about to leave for Colombia.  We arrived and found a big Pepsi bus bumping amazing Backstreet Boys and “Give Me More”. There was a group of about 15 kids and 30 adults, as well as 15 booths set up representing different Panamanian organizations.

Eric read our volunteer book “All the Way to the Ocean” to some young kids, and in the middle of an epic book reading session, the Panamanian beauty queens arrived. They were three attractive girls with a ridiculous entourage of about 30 people playing horns and rapping on drums.  The queens danced for an awkwardly long time, and then got up on stage and spoke to the crowd. It was good to have them out there to add some flair to the event.  I fell in love with one and was sure there was a bright future for us.  In actuality, I only said three words to her, but she immediately knew I was fluent in the international language of Feral Love. 

As the day was running down, everyone still wanted to see our veg oil beast, so Eric and I raced over to Ford to see our completed truck. Yeah right. When we arrived, nothing had been done to the car at all. They didn’t even know the part had arrived. We went into project manager mode and promptly heckled the people in charge, while gifting the workers and everyone bribe-worthy with chocolate Clif Bars. Satisfied that we’d actually gotten them to start working enough to finish in the next hour, we sat back down and played Gin Rummy for pride.  The hot girls working the front desk at FORD had seen us on the news and in the paper.  Their cold shoulders had turned warm…

At this point, we rolled by some hotels and picked up about 30 gallons of used vegetable oil. Huge score.  This would allow us to get half way through Colombia without filling up on diesel.  While we were stopped at the Hotel Continental and picking up 20 gallons, a taxi driver pulled up and told us he’d seen us on the news. Very nice. We’d become know to the gente (people) as celebrities.  People offered us their first borns, their cars and their servitude.  We turned them down for posterity’s sake, but none the less, were flattered.  Next we stopped by a Mexican restaurant. The waiter was kind enough to hop into his dumpster space and pull out another 8 gallons or so of veg for us.  Scoring again….

We settled down after a successful day of promoting environmental responsibility and alternative fuel use, and got a good night of sleep to prepare to leave Panama for a little wonderful place called Colombia.

The shipping of the truck went reasonably well, although it was a lot of cash to dole out. That afternoon, we drove out to the port where our Catamaran sail boat was leaving from, and hung out around town, had a few beers, etc. while we waited for our midnight departure.  Hanging out in the local super market, our future Capitan Ron rolled up in a taxi. He was drinking a beer and most likely had a few other controlled substances in his system. This begins the tale of our adventures with Captain Ron.

Eric and I took a “water taxi” skiff onto our boat that night. We met up with the crew on deck, 4 Swiss girls, 1 Japanese computer Engineer, Eric Myself, the first mate Yago, an Australian, and last though not least a Dutch guy.

We took turns doing dives off of the ship and sharing about our backgrounds.  After a while that got old, and we took inventory of the people on the ship. There were supposed to be 3 English guys, a Spanish couple, and one more Swiss girl on board. However, that Swiss girl was missing along with a Costa Rican guy she’d been swimming with earlier that day. Her name was Marina, she had a Costa Rican lover, and it took her until almost midnight to return to the ship so we could leave.  Needless to say, we are all a really big fan of hers….

That night, and the following day, we sailed from Porto Bello to the San Blas islands at an arduously slow 1.5 knots. in other words it would have  faster to walk that portion of the trip.  Most of the people got sea sick the first day. Three people lost their lunch over the starboard bow, including our friend Hongo DLG (Eric Paine). The San Blas islands were gorgeous. We hopped off the boat and swam to shore where we purchased coconuts for 50 cents and frolicked in the sand like tree nymphs in Narnia. 

After four and a half days, we reached Colombia. From the get go, we could tell the place was perfect. Eric and I stayed the night in a place called Cabana Darius, where we got an education on the local politics, and some stories about the region. Apparently back in the day, a prop plane laden with cocaine had engine trouble and emergency landed on the airstrip in Capergena (where we stayed that night). The pilot and crew fled into the mountains with the money but left all the drugs, which the local authorities fought over. A UNICEF logo was on the abandoned plane, which is still there on the airstrip… which you should be able to see in the photo gallery. Nice.

Finally, we arrived in Cartagena and met up with Sean, who had been scuba diving in Taganaga for the past week.   We picked up the truck from customs and drove southward, into the heart of Colombia.  Our travels from Cartagena to the world famous Medellin will come in the next blog, but I can guarantee you, it was one of the craziest things that has ever happened to me. 

Signing off,

-M

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