Day 10: Panamanian
pandemonium at the border. We left Puerto Viejo in the mellowness of
the off-season, drove through drooping, stagnant banana towns –
fincas owned by Chiquita Co. – and arrived smack in the
onslaught of heat, hustlers and traffic that is the Costa Rica/Panama
border over the Rio Sixiola. The border itself was out of another
era: an old railroad bridge with rough-hewn boards nailed haphazardly
over the trestles, workers carrying racks of bananas and old women
with children shuffling across. But on the Panamanian side there was
chaos, presided over by men intent on hustling groups of heat-dazed
backpackers into their elaborate money-making schemes. Jesse and I find ourselves caught in the flow, swept
into a room to “pay” for our luggage and squeezed into a packed
van without A/C. We careen through a squalid city and over a mountain
pass to a dock in the river town of Almirante, where we are
transferred onto a boat and motored past stands of mangroves out to
sea and, finally, to the islands of Bocas del Toro, where the
in-your-face entrepreneurism doesn't stop but at least the beer and
food are significantly cheaper than in Costa Rica.
Day 11: We escape
to the outer islands of Bocas, and our days are spent reading,
snorkeling, boogie boarding and exploring. Time slides by like skin
on oiled skin, the hours melting into each other, a swirl of ocean
and sun and one jaw-dropping view after another. And then we meet
Polo.
To find Polo, fly
first to Costa Rica, grow disillusioned, head south to the
comparatively lawless Panama, cross the Rio Sixiola, take a boat to
Bocas Town, and then find a water taxi to the beautiful, pristine
stretch of sand called Red Frog Beach – where camping is
allowed, and where the Palmar Tent Lodge will also give you a
thatched-roof shower, solar power and delicious communal meals right
on the beach. After a day or so of acting like a beach bum, go for a
walk. Go past the bar where tourists from Bocas Town come and past a
construction zone where million-dollar condos are springing up.
Follow the shoreline, cutting into the jungle when it becomes too
rocky. When you think you've walked far enough, walk farther. And
then, when it seems like you've reached an absolutely empty stretch
of white sand beach and turquoise water, you'll find Polo.
Polo is 68 years
old and has been living mostly alone on this stretch of beach for 50
years. He speaks three languages – Guari-Guari, the indigenous
dialect, Spanish and English – but none are fully intelligible and
all are punctuated by a near-constant stream of expletives. “Fock,”
he says, slapping you rather hard on the arm, “I've focking been
here for 50 years. I'm the roughest focking guy! The roughest focking
guy you ever meet!” He holds out his weathered palm as proof,
squints into the sun.
Polo lives under a
tall thatched roof riddled with gaping holes. His bed is a filthy
mattress in the corner. There is a propane stove where he cooks the
fish he catches with his spear gun and sells to whomever wanders by.
Empty gas jugs and trash litter the sand.
Locals from Bocas
come by boat and bring Polo coolers of beer, and take his homemade
coconut oil back to town to sell, while Polo sits on a bucket, shouts
expletives and tells stories, scaring some people away and entrancing
others. While we are there, we meet an Israeli man who met Polo while
traveling here 20 years prior and stayed for years, learning to
spearfish and live off the land with no electricity, no entertainment
and little contact with the outside world. The man returned to
Israel, married and had a son, and has now brought his family back to
this island to meet Polo. He cooks Jesse and I plates of breadfruit,
red snapper fried in coconut oil and heaps of rice, and it is perhaps
the best meal I eat in Central America. We pay $5 for all you can eat
plus a beer. The food tastes exactly like what I ate when I lived in
the Marshall Islands, and is made even better by the fact that I eat
it with my hands, in my bikini, feet in the sand, and am told
afterward to wash my own plate in the ocean and throw the bones under
the palms for the crabs to eat.
Day 13: Sunday in
Panama, feeling Hemingway-esque on the back deck/dock of the Hotel
Brisas. Everything is draped with a veil of humidity and the slow,
forgotten air of what Pico Ayer calls “tropical classical.” Bocas
in the off-season is a town of potted palms and old-fashioned
furniture and mahogany bars built with grandiose notions, a place
where you feel there should be literary ex-pats smoking cigars and
drinking rum. But they aren't here. Instead the décor has become
faded, dusty; half-crumbling but clean nonetheless in hope of
attracting backpackers and sailors on the prowl for cheap drinks and
beds where you can hear the waves lapping at a dock. Here at the back
of the Hotel Brisas, a girl in a floral dress sketches at a table,
Jesse and I sit reading and writing on a bench piled with pillows and
a white-haired man with a paunch and a ponytail sings King of the
Road while strumming a guitar. Several sailboats are anchored in our
view, with pelicans landing on their masts, and a man in a dugout
canoe poles his boat between million-dollar yachts looking for fish.
Day 15: Crossed the
border back into Costa Rica and drove to the town of Manzanillo, then
hiked 8K through the Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge to Punta
Mona, where an 80-hectare experiment in low-impact, off-grid living
and permaculture design welcomes guests to sleep under a thatched
roof that brings ocean breeze, moonlight and the sounds of the jungle
into your bed. It is one of our last nights here, and we are spending
it the way we've come to like it: candlelight, mosquitos and the
sound of water.
Day 18: In the air
en route to Atlanta, Jesse gets up to use the bathroom. Across the
aisle sits a Swiss gentleman in a suit with a clean-shaven face and a
wedding band and neatly clipped nails typing on a laptop. Then Jesse
comes back to his seat, endearing in his one clean shirt, wrinkled
khakis and hole-ridden Converse All-Stars, a month's beard sworling
on his jawline, blue eyes bright in his tanned face, and I notice
that at some point over the last month I have fallen in love with him.
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