The Path to Kuna Yala

It is completely dark when we wake up. No traces of the frantic packing of the day before. I silently say goodbye to my lovely apartment. We meet Rigoberto, our driver, opposite the "God loves tourists" Gamboa church at 4:30am. He drives an old Land Cruiser with bench seats along the walls in the back.

In Panama City the first pink clouds of dawn bloom in the sky as he picks up a haggling, unhappy Israeli couple outside of Super 99. At the next stop we add heavy boxes and a Kuna man, woman, and young boy to our cargo. Then large containers of water and fuel. We stop again for gas and coffee, a couple more people, at a passport checkpoint, and finally for a last pee before turning off the Darien road and heading into Kuna country.

Rigoberto decides to add a woman and her 5 children to our load, much to the dismay of the Israeli girl. Probably used to more comfortable conditions. Now we are 16 in one car. Roxanna and her silent, tiny little brother sit up front with me. They walk 3 hours of mountainous terrain twice a day if no one stops to pick them up.


The views become breathtaking as we ride through the red-pink flesh gashes in the earth deeper into primary rainforest jungle. The road is bumpy and unpaved, and our driver speeds down sheer cliffs and takes the gravelly hairpin turns without flinching. The alleged 2.5 hour ride stretches into 5 hours, but we are thrilled and uncomplaining.

Fancy cameras film a misplaced woman in a small shirt on the edge of a vast panorama of endless rainforest tinged with purple mist. They come over to our car and soon I am being interviewed out the window for Panamanian TV. Channel 2. She asks if I am scared about doing the trek in this car, while another man argues with our driver about how dangerous it is.

We continue on, and now it is even steeper. The Land Cruiser struggles, heavily laden with passengers, luggage, full containers roped to the top. The many children are no longer aboard, instead we have gained a man who clings to the outside of the car as we swerve and jump. Rigoberto calls him "spiderman". The vehicle inches up vertical muddy inclines in the lowest 4-wheel drive gear available, and then speeds down hills to gain momentum for the next impossible climb.

We are approaching a river and I look for a bridge, but instead we plunge straight in. The water comes high enough to pour in my window, but we make it through and soon are at the ocean. A small shack demands entrance and exit fees to and from Kuna Yala.

Our boat is a rickety blue wood canoe with a removable motor. A teenage Kuna boy with a sweet smile is our captain. Salty spray covers my face and glasses as we skip over the water's surface towards white islands. Endless turquiose water surrounds me and I am breathless. A dolphin leaps along next to the boat, joyful and curious.

Chichime (or Wichitub) is the last island, farthest into the Caribbean Sea. Our host, Humberto, welcomes us and the colors are unbelievable. We sleep on hammocks in a palm frond hut, learn phrases of Kuna from our lovely 10-year-old teacher, Lydiana, and snorkel all day. No fresh water, other than what we brought with us, and no bathrooms. A remote paradise.

4 days in Costa Rica

48 hours of bus riding over 5 days. Cold, cold air-conditioning is a shock after hot humid Panama. Border scams and long lines at 7am. My first new unknown tropical fruit juice across the border is sweet and delicious. In San Jose the bus terminal area is sketchy and I haven't changed any money yet for a taxi, but I somehow obtain a free guide who walks me to my hostel. Everyone here is amazingly friendly. In the park, I can hardly write my letter with so many people stopping to talk.


Monteverde bus leaves early and passes through gorgeous green mountains and up a steep dirt road. Hostel owner is pure loveliness: gay, braids, lots of cute threats to punish me if I don't brush my teeth or wear pajamas. Wind whips through my hair as I speed along cables high above the canopy. So fast! Epiphytes drown the tall trees in lush greenness.


Salsa dancing, live music, fun travelers. What the best hostels are all about. Up again at dawn and hiking through the cloud forest reserve. Fairy mists swirl over wooden stepping stones and under mossy fallen logs, strident bird calls are all that pierce the thick stillness.


Missed my stop to Heredia, but still manage to borrow a cell phone and call Andrea to come pick me up. Her mother is deep hugs of warmth and goodness, her house is tiled and tasteful. We drink a beer high above the twinkling lights of the town in a bar of wooden walls lit only by candles and christmas lights. First good sleep in days and a sunny morning walk through the main streets before I head home with my new Panamanian visa in hand (thanks to my Smithsonian ID and my blue eyes).

The Hammock

The lonely empty hammock hooks gaze at me beseechingly. I must do something. Waiting for the bus, I meet a middle-aged man missing some important teeth. I lend him 25 cents and he tells me how amazing it is to do something for others. I agree. The bus fills up quickly and I am jammed against a window with my knees pulled in tight, unpleasant smells wafting closer. I open the window and the crisp scent of wet forest rushes over my face.

I switch buses at Terminal Nacional and ask someone where to get off for Plaza Cinco de Mayo. I walk the wrong way down a crowded street, vendors on both sides, the thick grease of fried meat in the air. A man walks five feet behind me, whistling every few steps. I am not scared, we are surrounded by people, but it is unsettling to be followed. Eventually I stop, turn, and stare straight at him and he slinks away, off the sidewalk, his head down. I realize that I am going away from my destination, and buy some cashew fruits as I backtrack.

The hammock store is open on two sides, covered by a wooden roof. I pass over the bright colorful patterns of fish and triangles, they are all acrylic. I find one of a simple thick cotton. It is cheap, which is why I came to this neighborhood not frequented by tourists. My light eyes and skin stand out as I try to find where to catch the returning bus. A drunk man stops me and asks where I'm from. He tries to grab my arm, a friendly but undesired gesture, and I shake him off sternly. He tells me I'm beautiful, and I cross the busy street with no obvious traffic signals, dodging the speeding buses, trying to find my transport.

I finally find it, near a trash dump. Broken concrete blocks covered in bright plastic and fruit peels, the sweet heavy scent of rot behind a sagging chain link fence. A man hanging out the door of the moving bus tells the driver to stop when I flag him down. There are already people crowded into the aisle; I squeeze on and stumble as I attempt to steady myself with the ceiling rail while still holding my bags. An elderly woman seated next to me wordlessly reaches out and puts my hammock bag onto her lap. I feel so grateful for her compassionate perceptivity.

At home, the hammock is perfect. I drink cold mango juice and take a nap.

Barro Colorado Island Nature Monument

obnoxious alarm at 6:30am on a saturday...why am i doing this? my body aches but i scramble to dress and pack lunch and race as fast as the rusty bike will roll to the dock. a sleepy boat ride, watching the flirtatious giggling interactions of a preteen school group loaded with fancy cameras. coffee surreptitiously slipped from the cafeteria helps and the humid heat hits hard. dim and misty under the tall canopy, the harsh barks of howler monkeys muted. scaly armadillo scuttles ahead and tamarin monkeys drop delicious red fruit at our feet. bright colors spring from a background of rich thick Green and musky browns. fig bats squeak gently to one another, hanging upside-down from tiny wing hooks on the bark of Big Tree. a brook chatters to me, burbling over mossy rocks and under a fallen log. root stairs, flying rectangle, disappearing trails. heavy spider silk catches my face and is strong enough to stop forward movement. jungle treasure surrounds, waiting to be found. cicadas scream, louder than expected when next to an unsuspecting ear. a nap in the sun above the world, indecisive raindrops cool, impromptu picnic. red faced, chigger-bitten ankles, mosquito covered, tick sanctuary, bliss.

Pig shit gas stove

This is the contraption which I mentioned in my previous post...Fermented pig shit, straight to the kitchen where the farmer and his family use the gas to cook!

The Darien

We head East at 5:45am on the only road which ventures into this half of the country. It begins just north of Panama City in sprawling and unusually picturesque slums extending outward in an unplanned and disorganized expansion. Soon the large Walmart-style buildings turn into warehouses and then dissolve into new structures just being built. We drive alongside construction which is widening the two lane road into a larger highway; an attempt to make living so far from the city center more palatable as the inevitable development continues. Panama, when you look at the per capita statistics, is growing faster even than China.

The road is quieter now, and we pass through new growth of trees, re-establishing from the continuous clear-cutting. A monkey bounds across the bridge in front of us, a tractor rolls by leisurely with a horse plodding behind. A young man dressed in the latest style with his cap at a hip-hop tilt, slouches by on his skinny grey horse. Squat concrete shacks give way to huts on stilts thatched with palm fronds. Many have no proper walls to allow for airflow in this wet humid climate, and inside I see glimpses of Kuna families; the women wearing bright skirts and cloths on their heads, the children running around naked. We are now in a world than spans different eras. Men walk along the road to various destinations, all carrying sharp machetes. The pavement deteriorates and potholes three feet deep and four feet across seem to jump out at us. At times it seems that the unpaved road is safer than the paved sections, mud and dust instead of large ditches between the broken asphalt.

We have been driving for five hours and are nearing the end of this lone road. I expected to be deep in the notorious Darien jungle at this point. The forest of the Darien is so thick and treacherous that no road has even been built between Panama and Colombia, and it is home to many revolutionaries and drug lords in hiding. However, we are still in relatively open farm and pasture land, and it saddens me to realize that any (relatively) easily accessible part of the rainforest has been cleared for lumber and unsucessful farms. The topsoil is too thin for conventional farming methods, so after a couple years the soil is ruined and the people move in deeper.

Sunshine and I visit a sustainable farm. The farmer lives in a spacious hut with a mud floor and palm roof. One of his young sons hobbles around a shaded wooden enclosure on bent feet. The farmer is (deservedly) very proud of himself, as he is the only permanent worker on the largish farm. He grows pineapple, coconut, yuca, banana, passionfruit, mango, borojo, avocado...and he raises chickens, conejos pintados, and pigs. In an ingenious move, he has built two connected plastic bubbles: in the lower one the pig-feces runoff collects and ferments, and then methane gas rises into the upper one which he has connected to a pipeline that goes down the hill, through the trees and up another hill into his house. He uses it to cook, and doesn't need to pay for gas! He has also made a little pond where he can fish, and we saw a friendly turtle in it. After walking through the farm in the suffocating midday heat, he treats us to fresh young coconut water and frozen pineapple. He hints in a round-about way that we should pay him, and Sunshine does (research costs...after all, she may need to work with him again for her future project).

On the way back I am driving so Sunshine can eat and rest, and I have trouble avoiding the massive potholes. I swerve to avoid an especially large one, but then I hit a different one which I didn't see. The truck goes out of control. I turn the steering wheel, but the tires don't respond and the truck veers from one side of the road to another. An oncoming car is approaching quickly so I slam on the brakes and stop in the middle of the road. The car passes around us, and I slowly check if the steering is working again, and if the wheels are aligned. Everything seems fine, but the rest of the time I drive like a fearful snail.

We arrive back in Gamboa at night, and it feels strange to have so quickly passed between such different worlds.

I found a rainbow of shells...

the bat episode

I'm washing dishes in the evening when I hear a loud shriek. Soon, I hear "Vecina! Vecina!" coming from the apartment across the hall from me, so I go out into the stairwell to see what's wrong. My neighbor, a Teak exporter in her thirties, is yelling to me through her closed door that there is a bat in the stairwell. I don't see anything, so she opens her door a crack and peeks her head through. The bat picks this moment to fly up the stairs, trying to find an exit through the screen windows which line the stairwell, and my neighbor screams and slams her door.

Through the wall I can hear her accented English saying "What are we going to do?! We can't leave the apartments! You work with STRI, GET IT OUT! Oh my God, what are we going to do?!"

So I head down the stairs and open the front gate, and then slowly herd the cute furry bat down the stairs. The creature is smart and has sonar, so it finds the open door right away and escapes from the terrifying world of shrieks and screens.

When I come back upstairs, I find that my neighbor has already called the landlady. And that the landlady wants to speak with me, immediately.

Now this landlady is notoriously crazy. She drastically raises the rent and then pretends it was the same price from the beginning, intimidates even the bravest of people, argues fiercely with tenants, wants to know every action that occurs in the house, and hates people from STRI (supposedly because someone left the air-conditioning on once when they left the apartment for the day). To make matters worse, I just found out the day before that I'm not actually supposed to be living in the apartment; meaning the landlady thinks that for the last two weeks, two French women have been there, and not one American woman. Unfortunately, my neighbor seems to have (accidentally) just informed the landlady of this. I need to call her right away, or she has threatened to drive to Gamboa tonight to see what is going on.

I am in the apartment because originally I was going to be house-sitting for the whole month of July, but then a British family who is here had a bad housing situation where the house was not appropriate for their two small children. So they moved into the house-sitting house for their last two weeks, and I moved into the apartment they had rented for their two assistants who have already left Gamboa. But since the landlady is so difficult, they decided not to tell her about the change and hoped she didn't find out during my two week stay.

It is my second to last day in the apartment, and the landlady has found out. I briefly tell my neighbor the situation, and she says I should pretend that the two French women are in Costa Rica for a couple days while I watch the apartment. But I can see myself getting deeply entrenched in a drama of lies that really has nothing to do with me, so instead I call Sunshine, who tells the two Brits, who call the French assistant who has a reasonable (though fearful) relationship with the owner. Meanwhile, I go to my friends' house for dinner.

By 9:30pm, I'm tired and the problem still isn't resolved. At this point the landlady hasn't been called back for over two hours, and I picture her sitting in my apartment, going through my things to figure out who I am, fuming. Both the British family and my friends who I ate dinner with offer their places for me to sleep, but I decide to brave the potential wrath and go home.

It is dark and no one is inside, so I go in and lock the front door and my bedroom door and fall asleep. In the morning, the landlady is finally reached, and she is upset but calmed when told that I am another assistant and that they know me very well (both not true).

The next day I pack my things, drop the keys off with the neighbor, and gratefully leave the apartment for good.

a wild night out

Nyla and Brian and I went into Panama City on Saturday to get some supplies, explore, and have some drinks on the Amador Causeway, a long stretch of road that goes out into the ocean and connects three small islands.

The nighttime view of the city was lovely, and we sat outside by the water near fancy white yachts and ate yuca frita and drank the only beer they have in Panama...something pale and tasteless, but refreshing nonetheless.

We missed the last bus back to Gamboa, while waiting for our check. Nyla and I had to get up the next morning at 6:30am to hike to a birding canopy tower with another friend, but we thought we may as well do some dancing if we have to take a taxi home anyway. We walked back along the causeway in the warm ocean breeze and caught a taxi (our driver was a huge Tupac fan) to a club that the taxista recommended (he said he was going to come in with us, but we lost him at the entrance).

Inside, it was pretty boring. Some silly private party kareoke upstairs that tried to get us to sing spanish songs, and no one dancing downstairs...Only a TV on the wall with a strange mix of disturbing YouTube clips, like a waitress putting milk from her own breast into peoples' coffee, and a sheep wearing a Scream mask that freaks out the rest of the flock.

We sat at a table for a while, and then eventually some people started dancing near another table, so we went and joined them. Here we met David, a rambunctious dancer who was flamboyantly gay, and his two friends, Giselle and Gari. They piled us into the back of their car, and took us to a MUCH better club called Lips. It is a gay dance club, and you pay $8 to get in, but then there is an open bar and all your drinks until 5am are free. The music was fabulous, a mix of electronica and reggaeton with some merengue and salsa thrown in. And the best part was that when a guy touched me on the shoulder, it was just so he and his partner could get past me, and not because he wanted to grab my ass. Aaah. So nice.

We danced with our new friends and drank free Bacardi with ginger ale and a few times I had to pretend to be Nyla's girlfriend when her dancing got a bit too flirtatious and she picked up some intense lesbian admirers. The guys all LOVED Brian...a young nubile 20 year old with blond hair and blue eyes, and he got a real taste of what it's normally like to be a woman in a club full of men. But Brian's a super chill guy who is comfortable with himself and down to try things out, so he was fine.

By 3:30am David was kissing Brian on the dance floor, Nyla was running around taking photos with strangers, and I had made friends with a bartender who would serve me ice cold water with a big smile before everyone else whenever I came up to the bar.

Dreading the 7am hike, I gathered us together and Gari helped us find a taxi (she is an awesome woman who has a grown daughter around our age who she says doesn't think she is a good mom, but Gari knows better!). The 40 minute drive back to Gamboa was hilarious; Brian sat next to me saying: "I've never kissed a guy before...that was strange. He was so agressive!" and Nyla sat in the front seat making friends with our driver who teaches at a local community college during the week.

I finally got to bed around 4:30am, and then woke up two hours later for a painful, sleepy 4 hour hike. Nyla forgot to set her alarm and didn't wake up to my 20 phone calls, so I had to be the only one running on empty. But the tower was beautiful, and it was exhilarating to be so high abve the rainforest canopy!

Gamboa Scenes

I used to live in this house...
Now I've moved to one below.

Not so different. Most of the buildings here are in the old canal-style from when Gamboa was thriving as a town for workers and administrators involved in building the canal.

Right after I moved there were two long shaky earthquakes in three days. A little unsettling since this part of Panama NEVER has earthquakes and I doubt the architecture is made to withstand big ones. Hopefully no more are coming.

On Wednesday, I got off work a little early and went for a two hour hike up the hill behind my house. There is a big canopy tower that the hotel put up there for tourists, and I went up it just as a light rain began to fall. This is the view of most of Gamboa from above. The canal is in the background, and my house is near the bottom.In the other direction, the Chagres river stretches into the distance.
I tried to find the shortcut home, but it was getting dark and I couldn't see very well. A tree had fallen across part of the path, and as I pushed the foliage aside, something stung me hard. I didn't see who did it, but the sting was ridiculously painful, and my finger is still pretty swollen, two days later, even after Benadryl and lots of ice...

On a happier note, here's a photo of Sunshine and me, all sweaty and thrilled after collecting queen ants that had just flown.

The flood

One lazy Panama Sunday morning, I leave the little town of Gamboa squeezed into a car with some friends and neighbors to go to a nearby swimming hole. We are 6 in the car, and someone notices that the tires are a bit low…but there’s no gas station around so it will have to wait until the next grocery trip into Panama City. We park at the trail head and walk into the forest to a lovely spot with dappled sun patches on a small amphitheater, a covered picnic area, and little trickling waterfalls pouring into a pool.

It’s refreshing to dip my body into the water; I’ve been wanting to swim in the Chagres River since I arrived, but supposedly there are too many crocodiles. Humph. I climb up the rocks along the side of the waterfall and explore the shallow pools above. Strangely, we find floating sunflowers…A date gone wrong? Who knows. I plant them in the pool and they look cheerfully yellow.

After a while, the sun disappears and drops begin to fall. We sit at the picnic table and share a couple beers while the tropical storm picks up in full force. Rain dumps, tiny hammers pounding into the ground all around us, forming new streams. The thunder booms and I can feel the deep rumbles in my chest. We nibble muesli and watch the water.

Soon, the dribbly little waterfall has become a raging, frothing, brown monster; alive and hungry, eating away at the banks and rushing through in wild waves. It is almost unrecognizable as the pool that we swam in. My sunflowers are washed away.

When there is a short break in the rain, we walk back to the car along a path that has become a river. We drive slowly back, hardly able to see the road in the wash of white water covering the windshield.

We cross the long one lane bridge into Gamboa, and find that the road up to the ridge where we live is flooded out. Tall bamboo stalks have also fallen and are blocking the way. Luckily, there is another road that you can take, around the back of the Gamboa Rainforest Resort. We head into to the main part of town, only to find a large tree across the road. The firefighters are there in full costume, chopping at it with machetes. I wonder if they are thrilled that they finally have something to do around here…

We go over a speed bump, and the car scrapes painfully. Low tires are no good in this situation, so first we try the way with fewer speed bumps. Nope, completely flooded. Have to turn around. So we brave the speed bumps; going over them at a sharp angle, sucking in our breath to try and be lighter, hoping the car is not destroyed each time. We make it home eventually, and cook a big (late) lunch as we dry off.