Homeward Bound (for now)

Today I begin the long journey back to Australia. Starting with an 18 hour bus ride tonight up to San Jose. On Wednesday I leave Central America and on Friday I arrive back home in Sydney.

Eight months, eight countries, hundreds of chicken buses, dozens of boats, motorbikes, horses, quad bikes, self built cars, mini-vans, taxis, tuk-tuks, utes and a couple of planes. I've read close to 50 books, watched dozens of movies, met hundreds of people. I would hate to think how much beer and rum I've consumed but I have done dozens of yoga classes in several different towns to hopefully counteract some of that. I've eaten more beans and rice and fried chicken than I care to think about.

Central America is beautiful and fascinating. Each country is so different from each other but I think you need to spend time here to really see that. Even the differences between Pacific and Caribbean is huge. Most people wonder how I could possibly spend eight months just in Central America but I can't see how I would have done it any other way.

This blog will take a well deserved break over the Australian summer but I'll be back online in March to report on my new adventures - volunteering in India...

Panama Canal II

Today I headed out again to that engineering marvel, the Panama Canal. The Miraflores Locks to be precise - an obligatory stop for any tourist in Panama City. It is pretty cool to see the boats being raised up through the locks and passing through. No much else to say so I'll give you some statistics on the canal.

The Panama Canal is 77 kilometres long between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This waterway was cut through one of the narrowest saddles of the isthmus that joins North and South America.

The Canal uses a system of locks -compartments with entrance and exit gates. The locks function as water lifts: they raise ships from sea level (the Pacific or the Atlantic) to the level of Gatun Lake (26 meters above sea level); ships then sail the channel through the Continental Divide.The water used to raise and lower vessels in each set of locks comes from Gatun Lake by gravity; it comes into the locks through a system of main culverts that extend under the lock chambers from the sidewalls and the center wall.

The narrowest portion of the Canal is Culebra Cut, which extends from the north end of Pedro Miguel Locks to the south edge of Gatun Lake at Gamboa. This segment, approximately 13.7 kilometers long, is carved through the rock and shale of the Continental Divide.

Ships from all parts of the world transit daily through the Panama Canal. Over 14,000 vessels use the Canal every year - commercial transportation activities through the Canal represent approximately 5% of the world trade.

The Canal was built by Americans (after a failed attempt by the French) and was opened in 1914. The Americans controlled and operated the Canal until it was handed back to Panama on December 31, 1999.

The project to widen the Canal and build two new sets of locks has been underway since 2007 and they hope to complete it in 2014.

The reason the French pulled out of the project was the deaths of over 21,000 workers from yellow-fever, malaria and landslides. A further 5,600 workers died during the American construction phase.

Most of the workers came from Jamaica, Barbados and other neighbouring countries and islands. Many settled in Panama once the Canal was completed.

San Blas

On Tuesday morning I set off for a few days sailing in San Blas or Kuna Yala. This is a part of Panama on the Caribbean side that belongs to the indigenous tribe, the Kunas. It is an autonomous area that is governed by the Kunas under an agreement they have with the Panamanian government.

There are about 365 islands in the area, of which only about 30 are inhabited. Many of the others are used to grow coconuts and they are owned by different Kuna families.

The Kuna are an interesting lot. They have lived their lives quite peacefully there for generations, with the main trade being coconuts, fish and molas (the local handicraft). Apparently they only started dealing with money in the mid-nineties, prior to that trading using barter. Given the islands are pretty much at sea level, there is a program to relocate all of the island dwellers to the mainland in the next five years. These beautiful islands may not exist as they are for much longer if we keep killing our planet.

Many of the children are now growing up wanting a more modern life in the city and to get away from the simple island life. This is a big problem for the Kuna so now the chiefs are creating new rules on a regular basis to stem the flow of people. They need now a letter of permission from the chief to leave the area and this is not always granted.

To get to San Blas, there is a new road with a bridge that has only been completed in the past two months. Now it is really the beginning of the end of quiet, idyllic San Blas. With the bridge finished, they can start moving in the heavy equipment to build a huge marina and hotel complex and I'll bet it won't end there. This type of enterprise will help keep the young Kuna here but it won't be life as they know it.

On the boat we sailed around, visited a few of the islands and did some snorkelling. There was an eclectic group on the boat - a mixture of poms, Canadians, Guatemalans, an American captain and the token Aussie. The Guatemalans were a mother and her two children and I later learned that the mother is the daughter of a former Guatemalan president who now lives in exile in Panama. The kids, I've also learned, are convinced that I'm a writer since I spent so much time on the boat reading.

From Tuesday to Friday this week there were a series of national holidays so the islands got pretty crowded with rich city Panamanians coming out for a night or two of camping. I had planned to stay on an island for a couple of nights after the boat but changed my mind when I realised it might not be the relaxing time I had hoped. Luckily Captain Tony let me stay on the boat another night to get a bit more time there.

The Panama Canal

Yesterday was a great day. I had signed up for some tour of the Panama Canal, not knowing exactly what it involved but it was a good opportunity to see it. We were collected at the hostel at 8am after very little sleep and driven to a point on the canal where there is a lake - Lago Gatun.

There we were met by Carl, an American who lives in the only houseboat on the lake and he runs tours there. This is the part of the canal where it is wild jungle and it is absolutely gorgeous, except for the ugly parts where they are working on the canal expansion. But the jungle reclaims those areas in a matter of a year or two after they've finished, digging, dredging and blowing things up. We passed some absolutely huge ships going through the canal, making us feel tiny in our little boat.

We saw four different types of monkeys, two types of them came onto the boat and we fed them peanuts and bananas. At Carl's houseboat (which is also a guesthouse) we had lunch and hung out with his menagerie of animals which included a caiman, toucan, three iguanas, parrott, monkey, snake and a rabbit. The rabbit was meant to be food for the snake but the snake was freaked out by it so now it is a pet.

After lunch we kayaked down a narrow canal and swam in a small waterfall and pool. When we got back to Carl's we all lazed around in the water on our swimming noodles drinking beer. There are crocodiles and caimans making this water home but we weren't too concerned. Carl reckoned we should check out some of his videos on youtube so we can see exactly what we were swimming in. I'll have to do that...

The Zombie Protest

You know some days you wake up and think what the hell happened last night. Well that was me this morning.

When I arrived at the hostel on Friday evening, they told me about the Halloween party they were having the next evening, tickets were $3 and there were drink specials. Cool, that sounds like a good deal.

I spent the day in the mall shopping, which was also slightly bizarre as I haven't done anything so cosmopolitan in months. Anyway, when I got back to the hostel people were getting dressed up and putting makeup on. I wasn't planning to go to any effort and was rather pleased to be wearing some new clothes. Lainie who was putting some zombie makeup on asked if I wanted any. What the hell. (Lainie incidentally, belonged to a Zombie performance group at home in LA.) So we made ourselves up like zombies. When I was finished she asked if I was going on the Zombie Walk. What Zombie Walk? Apparently there was a bunch of people getting dressed up like zombies and were going to walk through the streets of Casco Viejo, our neighbourhood. Since I had the face ready, I thought sure. We walked a couple of blocks down to a bar where zombies and other scary people were starting to gather. There were some great costumes and they were playing music like Thriller and the theme from The Godfather to get us in the mood.

It turns out that the Zombie Walk had been written up in the papers for the past week or so and that the police were not happy about the "protest" so we were being watched very closely. As the crowd swelled with all manner of scary people, we were unsure of exactly when we would be walking and by now there were a couple of dozen police hanging around. The fact that this was being called a protest was hilarious. What do zombies protest about anyway? Apparently for such a religious country a pagan celebration is frowned upon. The only "protest" I've ever been involved with is the Walk For Reconciliation across Sydney Harbour Bridge many years ago. Quite how I got myself involved in a Zombie Protest in Panama City I still can't figure out.

By now it was getting close to 9.30pm and we would be walking soon, but there was a bit of unrest and the police arrested one of the zombies. Not quite sure why because there was no violence or aggression going on. Some people were getting freaked out and left but really, I couldn't see how the police were going to arrest a couple of hundred zombies and other scary people. Then when we finally started walking, the police were all over us and we had to stay on the footpaths, if you walked on the road you would get arrested. So we walked a few blocks to a bar, we were there only about 10-15 minutes, enough time for a quick beer and a sausage on a stick, then we continued. By the time we got to the next bar, we had police blocking either end of the street. They really were not down with the zombies.

At that point it all got a bit boring so I headed back to the hostel with a couple of others, being careful to walk on the footpaths. There we had the party with all sorts of costumes. That part of the night was slightly more normal. Although I did hear the next day that after 9pm the hostel would not let anyone out on the street with any makeup on.

I think if you want to go trick or treating next Halloween, Panama City is probably not the place for you...

***Stop Press***

Here's the article from the Panama daily rag, La Prensa: http://mensual.prensa.com/mensual/contenido/2010/11/01/hoy/panorama/2389431.asp

And the translation (courtesy of Google Translate, sorry about any inaccuracy):

Mayor and Police face 'zombies' marchers

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On the eve of Halloween, the mayor of San Felipe, Jairo Morán, had his "witch hunt." Or, rather, of zombies.

By order of Moran, the National Police arrested three people Saturday night, during the preparations for the "Zombie Walk 2010" at Plaza Herrera of San Felipe.

One of the detainees, Mir Rodriguez, was brought before a night court, which fined him $ 365 for "disrespect for authority."

"They are attacking very important constitutional rights such as freedom of movement and free expression," Rodriguez said.

The other two detainees were taken to the substation in the neighborhood, where we applied the Peel Police. Since they had no search warrant, were released.

The mayor tried to stop the march (in the end, he failed), citing Municipal Decree 521 of 1998, which prohibits "any move to disguise or mask the streets of the city district of Panama." The penalty is 10 to 50 dollars.

Moran tried to persuade the zombies do not leave, because in San Felipe three gangs operate.

Rob Rivera, an organizer of the walk, Moran complained that he ignored a note of 29 October, in which the general secretary of the Mayor of Panama, Eliades Serrano, gives its approval to the activity.

The walk focused dozens of people (organizers estimate 200 to 300), attracted to the idea of strolling through historic Old Town as the undead. It is the fifth time that Rivera is organizing the event, the previous four did so in the Urraca Park and Calle Uruguay.

Patrizia Pinzon, resident of San Felipe, lamented that the mayor sent to several police officers (she was 15) and three patrols to suppress a leisure activity, "but every time we've had real problems shooting, always on all fours to see them send officers. "

Central America In Four Days

In the past four days I have travelled from Utila in the Bay Islands of Honduras to Panama City. Almost from one end of Central America to another. I started with the 6.20am ferry from Utila on Tuesday morning and finally arrived here in Panama at around 4pm on Friday. The last bus ride alone was 17 hours. Along the way I got to stay in two of my least favourite places, San Pedro Sula and Managua.

I did have a nice little chuckle to myself however in San Jose where, while waiting between buses, I popped down to the Mexican restaurant down the road for dinner. Inside the menu at Maria Bonitas is a note to diners, just under the part where they tell you about the compulsory service charge. It said "To be a family restaurant the loving scenes they are prohibited". How cute is that. It was about 9pm on a Thursday night and I was the only paying customer there. There was also grandpa watching the baseball on the giant plasma, daughter who was the waitress, dad the maitre'd and I suspect mum was in the kitchen.

But I'm here now, in the most cosmopolitan city in Central America and the only capital worth staying in. There's even skyscraper buildings. I'll take a photo tomorrow and upload it - there's a great view across the water from my room.

Anyway, that's all I can say about this week.

The Lionfish

One of the most impressive looking fish in my diving here was the Lionfish. Sadly, he is not wanted. Native to the Western Pacific, the Lionfish appears to have arrived in the Western Atlantic and Carribean as a result of hurricanes and tank releases in the early 1990's. Their impact is simply disastrous.

"Protected by venomous spines, lionfish are voracious and effective predators. When hunting, they herd and corner their prey using their pectoral fins, then quickly strike and swallow their prey whole. With few known natural predators, the lionfish poses a major threat to coral reef ecosystems in the Caribbean region by decreasing survival of a wide range of native reef animals via both predation and competition. While native grouper may prey on lionfish, they have been overfished and therefore unlikely to significantly reduce the effects of invasive lionfish on coral reef communities." (http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/2009/articles/lionfish_invasion.html)

On one dive over on the north side of Utila last week (where people don't often go and haven't been for a while) we saw well over a dozen lionfish but unfortunately did not have the spear with us that day. Hunting here is very controlled, each spear requires a license and the only fish you are allowed to spear is the lionfish. Even then, the spear owner is very particular with who they give permission to.

There are so many beautiful fish here that deserve protecting so it would be good to see regular spearing trips to eliminate the population here.

Diving and Hurricanes

Well I'm still here in Utila... It has been a nice week with lots of diving and chilling out. The weather has been up and down, usually nice in the morning then rainy in the afternoons. On Saturday the weekly booze cruise at Altons Dive Shop was cancelled (again) and it was replaced with a dock party to celebrate Hurricane Dick which was meant to be hitting Utila around midday on Sunday. The weather was pretty rough on Saturday afternoon then it calmed right down in the evening. I learned later that the island had a curfew at 9pm because of the hurricane and the only place open on the island was Altons. Then yesterday there was not much to do while we waited out the storm so the debauchery started very early in the day - kind of reminded me of when we were snowed in when I first arrived in New York.

Hurricane Dick turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. After everyone on the waterfront evacuating their rooms and everything being locked down, he was nothing more that a rough storm for a few hours in the morning, passing about 90kms off Utila by lunchtime.

The plan was to leave this morning but it was all too hard, so, manana. Today the weather is perfect - the best weather since I've been here and the water is crystal clear. I'm heading off on the afternoon boat for what will be my final dives here in Utila.

Utila

Utila is a tropical island paradise with turquoise waters and beautiful sunshine. But not in the rainy season. It is still a nice place to be but the rain is annoying and the water is a kind of murky brown close to shore, but nicer further out. The diving is still pretty good most days.

The island is very much a party and diving island, with not much to do beside those two things. There is not much point to being here if you don’t dive and then afterwards, everyone hangs around for some beers or rums or whatever. I can see how people get trapped here for months on end, eventually becoming divemasters or instructors. The lifestyle is pretty good.

My first day was just for relaxing, getting over the Mosquito Coast.

Second day I started my PADI Open Water Diving course. The theory was easy and logical and most of the skills were okay but I struggled with one of them – almost throwing in the towel.

We did the skills in a pool at some guy’s house on the island. Two and a half hours we were in there and it was so cold by the end of it I was shivering, and that was with wearing a wetsuit.

The past two days I have been on four dives to complete the skills in open water. This afternoon I complete my theory and exams and then its all fun diving from here on in.

Back To Civilisation

We had to be up at 2.40am this morning to get the boat back to Batalla. We knew no-one would have told Eddis we’d be a day later and we were actually happy not to go with him again after last time.

As soon as the boat gets in at Batalla there’s eight or ten pickups there all trying to get you to go back with them on the return journey. Their cars are empty so it is a good chance for them to make money if they take passengers. We found the guy who was giving us his Guarita on the first night and went with him.

His driver was a legend. We tore out of the place as soon as we got in, not a second to waste. Half an hour in we got a flat tyre and I don’t think he had all the tools to change it. We got help from another pickup and before too long we were speeding off down the beach. This guy was doing speeds of up to 60kms per hour along the beach – and it was quite a high tide again.

We didn’t even go on the first pontoon. These guys drive further along and one gets out, walks through the water, if its not too deep, we drive through. It was pretty cool. The whole trip was fast and bumpy but he seemed to be a much more skilled driver than our first and that definitely matters out here.

By 10am we were back in Tocoa and I was hopeful I’d make it to Utila in the same day. We jumped on a chicken bus back to La Ceiba, happy to be on proper roads. Not too long into that journey and there looked like a problem with the bus, smoke was billowing out from the engine in the front of the bus. There were two conductors and they kept having to jump out every ten minutes or so to fill up containers with water to pour into the engine. They took it all in their stride and seemed to be having a bit of fun with the situation.

We got into La Ceiba in heavy rain and a bit later than we should have but that was fine, I would still make it to Utila.

The boat ride to Utila was pretty rough, at least it was a big boat so I didn’t mind too much being almost airborne on some of the waves. Apparently a lot of people get sick on this trip but I don’t think we had any, thankfully.

Raista

Today we were making our way back, going downriver to Raista, which is not far from Belen. It took about four hours in the boat, going back the same way we came.

The weather was not as good today and we had a bit of rain on the way back so we huddled under a big bit of plastic to protect ourselves.

There were a lot of birds out on this trip and we were lucky enough to see a lot of toucans, they always sit really high in the trees but their profile is very distinct.

We got to Doña Elma’s at around lunchtime but she was expecting us yesterday – obviously no one was talking to anyone on this tour so I think we kept surprising people everywhere we went as we were a day behind schedule. Doña Elma whipped up a good lunch for us and got our rooms sorted. We were surprised to see other tourists here, as we hadn’t seen any in a week. There were three Spaniards and a Columbian.

In the afternoon we had guide come and take us on a tour of the community. This pretty much involved walking along the dirt road, he pointed out the butterfly farm, school and church, then we returned back along the beach.

The beach was a real disappointment, there was more rubbish then I’d seen anywhere before. The guide said it all washes up from the Bay Islands but I find it hard to believe that is the only source. But still, why doesn’t anyone clean it up – there is plastic everywhere.

When the “tour” was over we went back to the village to buy some cold beers, our first cold beer in days. They tasted fantastic! Doña Elma is apparently known for her good cooking and we weren’t disappointed at dinner. We also got to eat our first vegetables in a week – some raw cabbage and tomato.

After dinner there was a Mosquito Dance just for us. This was a bit cringeworthy as they set up three chairs for us to watch the three dancers. There was a bonfire and our guide from this afternoon was on guitar and vocals. Around the outside everyone else from the village and a couple of other tourists who were staying there watched. A few of the dances involved our participation and while it was quite funny, it was also pretty horrible with everyone watching. At one point the bonfire became a raging inferno scaring the dancers so the guitar guy got some water to splash on to calm it down then the whole structure collapsed - it was hilarious.

Las Marias

Today we were meant to do a trek but with everything still wet from yesterday we cancelled that plan and Mariano agreed to take us for a walk through Las Marias. It was a much nicer day today, in fact it was hot and really humid after all of yesterday’s rain.

Mariano showed us some more medicinal plants and took us to see the health clinic/hospital and the new tourist centre they’re building.

They have only around fifty to eighty tourists down here a year. I don’t know whether it used to be more and it has dried up since last year’s coup or whether they’re very ambitious. The new building will even have internet. I can’t imagine too much tourist traffic through here although you can fly in on light planes.

Given there aren’t many tourists, a few people thought we were a good opportunity to get some money which was a bit annoying, but generally the Mosquito people are very nice – quiet but friendly.

The Petroglyph

After breakfast, Mariano came to collect us to head of for today’s adventure. It was raining and we had our jackets but were hoping it would clear up. We walked through the village of Las Marias which is very spread out along small dirt tracks. The centre of town is about a 15-20 minute walk from Doña Rutilia’s place then we walked through more of the village down to a point in the river where we would meet our boats and guides. One of the guides was also the priest and he blessed our journey which did make me start to wonder what we had ahead of us.

The boats just kept getting smaller. We were in two dugout canoes which sat only inches above the water. I had my own canoe with three guides – the priest being one of them. Two of the guides were at the front of the boat, pulling us up river by sticking their long wooden poles down into the river floor and pulling. It was raining and that movement made the boat rock a lot, this was not going to be a comfortable ride. If it wasn’t raining and the boat wasn’t rocking so much I might have been game enough to get some photos or video but there was no way I was taking my camera out on this boat.

After about an hour or so we got to a point where we were going to walk through the jungle a bit. Valencia was our guide and she was pointing out all sorts of medicinal plants and how they use them. Most medical treatment down here uses plants for the first few days of illness, then if you aren’t better, you see a doctor or nurse. They really seem to have a cure for everything in these jungles.

Lunch we had brought with us, spaghetti with tinned sausages and bananas with some coconut bread. Can’t say I’m really enjoying the food down here at Las Marias and there isn’t a vegetable anywhere in sight. We ate what we could of our lunch then the guides finished it off – we were really embarrassed when they passed around our plates of unwanted food, there would have been plenty to share had we known.

We had an hour more upstream to get to the petroglyph and some of it was pretty hard going. The river was so shallow this whole time and we’d often scrape the boat on the river floor. Some parts had quite strong rapids and we just had to charge through them. These guys that work these boats have probably the strongest arms – it is incredibly hard work.

The petroglyph is a rock in the middle of the river that dates back over 1,000 years. It is unknown exactly what the picture depicts and who put it there. It is thought to have perhaps been Aztecs or Mayans or some other civilisation but no-one knows. We didn’t spend long at the petroglyph cause it was still bloody raining so we turned around for the cruise downstream which was a two hour journey.

For this part the guides used paddles to navigate the river and it was quite good fun and less scary than I imagined going through the rapids. By the time we got back, another half hour walk to the hospedaje, we were so cold, my hands and feet were blue. It had been seven hours of sitting and walking through the rain and everything was wet, despite my wearing a waterproof jacket. No hot showers here either, just a bucket and some cold water. Lourdes made us some coffee and before too long we started to thaw out.