Nine Degrees North

PART ONE....
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Panama wasn't really a place I'd ever thought of visiting.  Not until Tom told me he’d dreamed of retiring in Panama for years and hadn't yet visited to check it out.  Bocas del Toro seemed like just the spot to have a little mid-winter vacation.  By all reports, a nice place to holiday.  Tom didn't have a passport.  Now he does.  Good for ten years.  It was a good day in the Dunsmuir Post Office.

As for me, my spring breaks come along just about every March and Panama sounded just like a trip for the two of us.  Plans were made.  Research initiated.  Lonely Planet, couchsurfing, the Bocas Breeze, Moon's, etc., etc.  We found lots of opportunities to play.  Reservations booked.  Excitement Built.  Countdown begins.  Picture This:  Two weeks on the Caribbean in March, hot and sunny.  Laid back beach town, a mountainous retreat with a coffee plantation, cabin on a hill with a cacao farm. Yeah.

Along with the places we go to see, the people are what stick in my heart, wherever they are.  Our first bus out of town, leaving Napa with our backpacks and water bottles, found us on the Number 11 bus to the Vallejo Ferry Terminal.  Just one of my silly mistakes.  It used to be the #10 bus.  New route, new time.  So now we have time for breakfast while we wait another 45 minutes for the right bus.  Black Bear Diner across the street for breakfast and coffee?  Beautiful sunny morning, plenty of time to play.  Eggs, biscuit and gravy.  Wow, way too much food on this plate!

What I enjoy most about public transit, it’s a good time to listen and watch, the world outside, the world inside.  Long conversation between the driver and a fellow rider about healthcare, public policies, the gun industry, bureaucrats, the Koch Brothers (!), ways to get around the rules and where to get the good stuff for what ails you.   You never get this riding along in your own little vehicle.

Anyway, our plans had us staying in SF overnight, catching an early 0600 flight.  So we get to play in the City for a bit on our first travel day.  We ended up going to the Main Branch of the SF library to check out their art exhibits.  Walking through Civic Center, picking up nuts and fruit snacks from the Heart of the City Farmer's Market, perfect for the journey ahead.  In the library, we check out a beautifully done Endangered Birds of the Philippines exhibit. 

We have the joy of working through artist Maia Scott's collection of mixed media and interactive works, SEE/SAW, hosted by SFPL's Library for the Blind and Print Disabled.   

Amazing stuff.  

Walking through the stacks, I ended up stopping at the many volumes of Life Magazines, finding one printed the day I was born.   Heh heh heh. 

We eventually made it over to the hotel in Milbrae, via BART and the airport/hotel shuttle.  By this time, we were hungry, hot and thirsty.   Walked a mile or so up El Camino Real to the London Fish and Chips place, highly recommended by the worker guys at the local fish market we just passed by.  Walked in and recognized a fine photo of the Crescent City lighthouse, up in the town where Tom and I first met, when we both lived there many years ago.  The owner told us he was visiting his friend recently who owns a restaurant up in Smith River, just north of CC, and they went to see the lighthouse while up there.  

Small world, huh?  We just about danced over to the bar next door which was already festooned with green shamrocks and cheap bead necklaces, this was March 12th.  The bartender told us, 'sure, eat here, have a couple drinks'.  So we did.  What do you think?  Take a couple of those necklaces to celebrate in Bocas on St. Paddy's?  Of course!

Up early, out the door next morning (0400), into the airport, through security, no problem.  Freakin’ early in the morning, that's all I can say.  I'm not used to that anymore.  I don't know about you,  I'm not about to drink a bunch of coffee before getting on a long airplane trip.  No way.  Tom told me he wasn't about to get on that long airplane trip without a bunch of coffee!

We change planes in San Salvador.  Customer service chick comes over to us and asks if we would accept a free first class, upgrade?  Yesss, we would.  So now we have two aisles seats, across from each other.  Comfy, leather, free drinks.  Yeah.  The guy to my left, on the window seat, his name is Rudolpho, he's a consultant for the United Fruit Company up in the far northwest farming regions of Costa Rica.  He advises the growers as to when to pick the fruit.  Interesting guy.  Born and raised in San Jose, totally enjoys living up in the rural areas and not in the City anymore.  After reading a few novels which center around Central America and the United Fruit Company (Gabriel  García Márquez) it was fun to meet a real live person associated with the UFC.

We had decided to fly into San Jose, Costa Rica and then take a private shuttle bus to Panama, another whole day of travel, rather than a flight semi-direct into Bocas.  We really wanted to see the ground, how people live, what things look like 9 degrees + of the equator.  We had a day to visit San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, pay our $7 exit fee that Costa Rica implemented recently for travelers crossing over their border into another country.  We were staying in a hotel outside the City, took a couple of local buses into the City and spent a few hours in downtown San Jose.  It's always fun to make your way through those little transport hubs when you speak so little of the native language.  Try to keep that little phrase book in hand.  Go with the flow.

We’re sitting on the bus, windows open for the breeze, and a visually impaired 35-ish year old man starts strumming his guitar, singing a ballad, while walking up the aisle of the bus.  I sit and watch, enjoying his performance, wanting to, and not taking his photo. He stops playing, gives a short talk, of which I understand not much.  Begins walking back up the aisle, and I see passengers giving him small handfuls of change for his performance.  So we do, too.  I was thinking how this would be taken in the US.  It wasn’t pretty in my mind.

After getting off the bus in San Jose, we pass by a lovely church that calls us and quickly stumble upon the branch of Bancredito on the town square in which we pay our $7 tax.  I talked with the bank security guard while waiting for 'el bano'.  Well, talking isn't really the correct term, we 'communicated' with smiles, nods, poquito español y poquito Inglés.  He asked where I was from.  "Estados, California," I tell him.  "AHH, California!"  He tells me his father in law lives in Beverly Hills, 'no, I don't go there, no he doesn't come here.'   In so many words.

We're walking along the main street, storefronts along the entire boulevard, street vendors with little card tables here and there selling whatever they have - food, trinkets, shirts, hats.  All of a sudden, there’s this spurt of raw

sewage breaking through the sidewalk!  The locals sitting and standing nearby looked down as we did, with semi-shocked and questioning faces.  No one really looked as if there was anything to do other than gawk.  So we just kept walking.

Up the street, we come across Barrio Chino, and walk over to rest our feet with John Lennon.  It turns out that the 'Chinese government' financed this transformation of five blocks along Calle 9 into a nice and pleasant pedestrian mall, benches for sitting and contemplating, a zen-like place. 

I’ve heard from friends around the world how ‘the Chinese’ are building this and that and this and that.  Heard it again in Bocas, as a matter of fact, where a big steel structure is going up right now.  And then sometimes economies change, don't they?  I saw an entire village with three story apartment buildings, sitting empty, waiting, outside Marrakech in Morocco.  I passed by entire apartment complexes along the coast of Thailand, empty, after being put up by a Chinese/Thai partnership years ago.  Peculiar looking, indeed.  

Anyway, back to San Jose and Barrio Chino.  We walk alongside a large archway, modeled after the Tang Dynasty architecture, at the north entrance to the Barrio, with a few Chinese-Costa Rican businesses along the sidewalks.  Many of which were closed mid-day.  Wrought iron bars cover the doors and windows, as on most businesses and residences we see there in both Costa Rica and Panama.

The Lennon statue was sculpted by artist José Ramón Villa, marking the spot where, in 1966, Costa Ricans smashed Beatles records in protest of Lennon’s statement that the Beatles were ‘more popular than Jesus.’  The official name of the statue is Imagine All the People Living Life in Peace.

more to come.....