Arrived in panama

Capurganá is a nice little town out in the nowhere. But the charm of the town reflects in no way the charm of the inbreeds living there. It has a feel to it like i remember only from gibraltar. Generations of incecst makes this people dumb and ignorant – or so it seems… Or maybe they just hate foreigners and that’s the way they show it, they also treated tati like a foreigner! Also we had great party with locals, but we were like funding the whole night, so one night of that was also enough. Anyways, not like we have to work with any of them or anything – we left after only three nights again with the boat to panama.

Capurganà

This place here (we can never remember the name – tati can now: puerto ovadia or similar) is the only overland boarder town to colombia. It’s pretty straight forward, tati had to show her swiss driver licence – she said it’s her swiss id – and that was that. 180 days. We actually heard you have to have 500 USD if you don’t have an onward ticket. So they have this business of people renting 500 USD to colombians who want to cross the boarder for illegal working and charge for that service 100 USD (the minimum wage in colombia is arround 230 USD, in Panama 700 USD!). Then open all luggage and have it checked by a dog – for once I totally understand that procedure…

The place here is like out of ‚the walking dead‘, deserted streets and abondoned houses – or so it seems. Fantastic place! Friendy people! We wanted to stay a few days. When we wanted to go to the beach we first had to get permission from the military and then put down names and phonenumber (tati just told me that actually they wanted the passport number) – at the checkpoint which is at the boarder of the town. ‚Don’t go to far!‘ Ok, why is it dangerous? ‚No at the beach not‘. The beach itself wasnt really that: stones mixed with rubbish and dirt instead of sand.

In a place where you can feel the time stand still and every second feels like a minute you need to have a beach, especially when you are in the caribbean – at least that’s what we think. So tomorrow another boat ride for six hours takes us to Cartí, where the San blas islands are, looks nice on the pictures! We need a place where we can cook, which is not to expensive, not too fucked up, where it’s quite, nice people and a white beach with turqoise water, can’t be too much to ask for now, can it?

On the move – again…

 

Tati not happy with the looks (and the smell chchch) of my shoes:

As the planes (110 us / 45 min) are either not flying or are fully booked for no one knows how long, we decided to go by boat and car (150 us / the whole day). You have the free choice of two big black mamas who make space through ramming there ellbows in your ripcage or a proper sunburn at the sunnyside of the boat. You can of course also have a little bit of both. After waiting for the boat for 1.5 hours, it’s six hours with some interruptions inbetween: a big family of indigenes joins the party, the boat is overloaded and slow now. The engine turns off now and then but the captain always manages to get it going again. A boardercontrol stops us with serious looking guys with sniperrifles an the like: ‚Nicolas?‘ ‚Yes thats me!‘ No answer… ‚Nicolas, you don’t have an entry stamp!‘ ‚But I do, look here:‘ grumble numble bumble ok, buen viaje!
Arrived in Cartí, we realised it’s just a port. It’s raining like in the rainyseason, it is actually the end of it and we can only choose between another boat towards an island for again 25 US and some more beeing rippedoff or taking the 4WD towards panama city. We actually wanted beach and sun, but we also were too tired to pay this people more money again and then be stuck on an island, where they take more and more of what you have, and it was also raining heavily – so we choose the driedness of a nice toyota landcruiser…

Arrived in Panama

The rain was on and off, but of course on when we left the car. Sunburned, sore eyes and tired we asked for some cheap hotel, so we found ourself standing on the streets in a whorepart (?) of the city with three choices of hotel without much hassle. The second one for 30 US looked nice on the outside, but not so much on the inside. Hotel Riozar – a place where you possibly just go to have sex or maybe if you don’t give a shit for the sake of saving money or because you’re young and have no minimal standards – like we obviously do, I have to admit it, otherwise the whole trip is not coming to a good end! I looked it up later, it even has votings, a 3.6 – thats at least 3.6 too much! It’s a dirty stinky shithole where you don’t wanna touch a thing like the tv remote control for example. Where you don’t wanna lift the bedsheets cause you don’t wanna know, putting your head on the pillow where you are scared it moves and smelling the weird smell of the bed (just realised big part of that smell is from my still wet flipflops ;)) – it is ‚en serio‘ unsettling. There’s a thing startiting every 30 seconds just outside the window, sounds like a waterpump filling a washingmashine, but just louder. People going in and out of this room every few hours. The other time you can here something like a mouse screetching and next to the bed the wall screetches like an old wood door irregularly like every hour. She offered us another room, but that one smelled so weird, we decided to just survive the night in this one. Half a temesta got me through half the night. Since then i’m on hotel sites fantasising! Got one for 76 CHF – more double our budget, but fuck it! I have to make it up to Tati and me big times – it has a gym and a sauna and a boxspringbed with soft pillow topper – like home. 89% say they liked the quality of the bed says tripadvisor hehe…

With other words: it was way too much running from place to place since cartagena, tati fighting her Claustrophobia in each boat and bus not getting the support from me she expects (and deserves – after i truly understood the seriousness of that subject). People not beeing nice. People beeing so intolerant or more like ignorant about the vegan thing. Here it’s the same though for vegetarians: this concept of not eating meat is just something they start laughing at, which also with a good selfesteem gets to a point, where you loose your sense of understanding and just wanna ‚beat them ignorant monkeys‘.

Tati was on the verge of having enough seriously now for the first time. I also was totally fedup with it all but then on the other hand also kind of exited now the next day. We went ‚through hell‘, you know like this travelling masochistic stuff, which did kinda inspire me to write a few lines, which i kinda missed – but then i see now it’s not necessary having this kind of adventure over and over again, cause the plan was not to travel really – actually there was no plan at all – but maybe it’s time to lie into a comfy bed and talk about that subject… Maybe for a few days!