Panama 2005, Part 2: Isla Tigre

we're back in panama.

Last time I started us off on the Panama journey back in 2005. Here's a refresher on some of the salient points:

Timeline to Date
June 18 - arrived in Panama City
June 19 - Walking tour in Panama City. Casco Viejo (the old town), Bella Vista, shopping, excellent dinner in Casco Viejo.
June 20 - flight to Playon Chico, the crappy little island. Negotiations with ANAM. tour of community. hunting mangos. swimming on island and m's ass stung. crab dinner. hunting little crabs. camping in room with rat-dog climbing on pipe.
June 21 - black tongues and despair. negotiation for motor boat to get the hell out of dodge. boat ride to isla tigre. stopping on tierra firma community and meeting god bless new york old dude. the new boat and the intense boat ride on open sea. arriving at isla tigre. swim. dinner. discussion of robot future. efigenia and her food.

Isla Tigre Continued
Now, it's June 22. We're in Isla Tigre. Caribbean coast of Panama, native peoples named Kuna, first week of trip.



We're at the top left thumbtack at this point. I have tried to make an interactive map of the trip. Right now there is nothing there but I'm going to add thumbtacks as I go.

As you may recall, the primary virtue of Isla Tigre was that it was not Playon Chico. There was some cinderblock, but it was a bit more like the cool kind of native island that we were hoping for - thatched huts and stuff.


palm trees and soccer goal on the tiny island of isla tigre


hello, dinner

the bitchinest thing about this photo is the flipflops. those were I believe purchased in guatemala years earlier for one dollar. they are stylin. I think I lost them because now I have u.s. flag flipflops. I'm not sure where that crustacean came from. I think efigenia brought it to our tent for approval as something we were going to eat later. she consulted us carefully on meals and planned them hours in advance.

After an emotional talk, some time on the beach and slothlike in the hammock, we went for a walk in community and buying molas.

Molas are woven decorative items that look a little bit like placemats. I talked about this a bit in the last post. I bought the stupidest one, which involved Santa on a horse. 95% of them featured animals, a couple had abstract geometric shapes, and there was this one with the Santa. I felt obliged to get the Santa because it reminded me of 1997 when I was in Guatemala in a small sweltering town and came across a statue of Santa in a town square. I can't find the mola anymore. M. must have stolen it or hid it.

the weirdest thing about the molas was that everyone appeared to make them, with no one to buy them. there were two other people visiting the island when we were there (I think they were panamanian or columbian but we didn't talk) and we didn't get a feeling that people really went there. it wasn't as unvisited as playon chico but it seemed close. that was part of the reason we bought our molas i think, and with melissa's purchase of a hammock and woven handbag, we definitely contributed some moola in return for the molas.


Clothes drying on a thatched roof in Isla Tigre


wild pig jaws hanging outside a home in isla tigre

Only through inquiry did we learn that these suckers were pig jaws. We figured out gradually that one of the ways to stand out socially as a Panamanian native was to be a slayer of pigs. For tribes that had subsistence agriculture, the occasional pig was a feast. There were tigers, but they were very rare and who wants to eat a tiger. Anyway, whoever lived in this house must have been Captain Bad Arse.

The Pipe Dance
The thing to do when you are a native tribe and you have visitors is give them a dance with some music. As dusk approached, we were led into town to a small square, where we sat in front of something like a bar, in a large ring of people, and watched the men of the villages dance their asses off while playing instruments that were sort of like pan flutes. it was really cool. M. wanted to photograph it but I wouldn't let her because I thought it wasn't appropriate. We later decided I was wrong, which is too bad since we didn't get any pictures. But I have some great pictures of another tribal dance coming later in the trip.

That dance was the first really cool thing we saw on our trip. But we still left the San Blas region a bit shakey on how our trip was going. I was pretty happy, but M. was miserable and vocal about it.

So instead of sticking around the Caribbean coast we took a little plane back to Panama City the next day. We had to take a boat to a nearby island, Corazon de Jesus, that morning. Unfortunately, in our relaxation the day before, we had neglected to negotiate the price for this extremely short boat ride. The boat dude took us over to the planes (VERY LATE) and then gave us our price on arriving (VERY BIG). I was ready to kill him, but eager to make the plane, just paid him.

Review of Hoseries
This great hosiery encouraged me to begin compiling a List of Hoseries, a record of when we got hosed the worst. So far it read:

1. Boat ride to Corazon de Jesus to catch plane. $15, should have been $2.

2. Lunch for 4 (including our guide and Mundo) on Playon Chico during all-expenses-included town visit. $8, should have been $0.

3. Price of room at the ANAM building in Playon Chico. $30 for two, should have been $10 for two.

Ranking the hoseries was a difficult task. The boat ride was a petty, traditional, but perfectly executed hose job. The ANAM lodging price was kind of a boring one, because we were negotiating with Mahone from a weak position and we weren't sure if we were even going to be able to stay on the island (we should have known it was just about the dinero baby).

The second hose job, in more ways than one, was really a stroke of genius of a hose job. Looking back, Mahone looked like the shrewdest kind of lex luther mastermind of a hoser. You could almost argue that he had hosed us so bad that we had gotten our money's worth, because he had given us a great lesson in how to hose the crap out of someone. If he had sat down with us and informed us that I was to pay for lunch for m. and myself, I would have objected, noting that it was an all-expenses paid visit to town. But no, he had us pay for lunch for ourselves AND FOR HIM... but no, also for his RANDOM FRIEND WHO WAS JUST SITTING THERE. As a further distraction, he asked more for lunch than was appropriate ($4 would have been more like it). Ah, what a bastard. Looking back I still can't figure out how I felt about him and Mundo, who were likeable in so many ways.


bye, thanks for having us
if we stay any longer my girlfriend may try to swim away

Was the Jungle Trip in Jeopardy?

We got back on a tiny plane, somehow took off, and we were headed back towards Panama City.

The status of the trip was precarious. M. had her ass stung, had eaten very poorly (including a black tongue), had slept poorly (think: dog-sized rat), and had not appreciated life in a cinderblock community at Playon Chico. She ventured to say that she was not having very much fun.

I was concerned. Our first leg of the trip was supposed to be a warm-up for the most intense part yet to come, our journey into the jungle of Darien. I would be damned if the jungle trip was aborted. Also, I wanted constant recognition along the way that this was the coolest trip ever and M.'s comments were getting in the way of that.

We needed to recuperate and build up M.'s morale before doing the jungle trip. Admittedly, I was not averse to a little break myself. But the problem was that M. did not like Panama City, which was where we were headed to recuperate. For some reason, the idea of relaxing for a couple of days in a dangerous slum did not appeal to her.

The solution I had in mind was a two-pronged attack. First, we would go to El Valle. El Valle was a frequent weekend destination of Panama City's wealthy. It was supposed to be a lush area with great hikes and horseback riding, and good restaurants. I would take M. there and bribe her into submission, to the extent my non-budget allowed it.

Second, we would return to Panama City and take a boat south to Isla Tortuga, a former pirate stronghold.

If anything could appease M. and bring her back to spirits, I thought, it would be a vacation destination, food, horses, and pirates.

To find out what actually happened, stay tuned for the next episode of Panama 2005: the Greatest Fucking Trip Ever.


next time: a horse adventure, "camping", and a pirate island