Ok. It´s early, maybe 7:30am, and finally on the Pacific side of the whole deal. Woke up yesterday in the Caribbean — Bastimento, Panama, to be exact — and after a full day of travelling consisting of 3 buses, 2 boats, and 1 taxi, we arrived here last night. Currently the town is amock with American boys I initially thought to be frat bros … the most nervous I´d been the whole trip, to tell you the truth … all barbed-wire and thorn rings around their massed biceps, visors, you can picture it … turns out to be Coast Guard dudes (there were a few women among them too…picture them, too). It seems that they´re out there on the Pacific waters from Columbia to San Diego, breathing heavy on boats going by … one Guard (is that how we call them?), who uses the word ”dick” as a synonym for ”bro” or ”dude”, was telling us that with the current war with Iraq, they´ve had more freedom to do what they do … Do what you do? … Yeah, I love killing drug dealers … OK. So. Now what?
Well, CNN is on the TV behind us, in Spanish, but the theme song for the War On Iraq is the same … that mellifluous little melody with a hint of sympathy tinged with jingoism. As you can imagine, there´s a lot of graffiti here about the war, and none of it is very US friendly … Strange to see it from this perspective, though I haven´t really seen much because I kind of boycott the coverage. Interesting to see its social implications from another country. I was in Czech during the few weeks after 9/11, and that was a strange time too… a month of anthrax and drums beating for blood. Huh.
So, today I think we´re heading across to Pureto Jimenez, an hour by boat, and check out the beach over there. Tomorrow Maja and myself are taking a little Cessna back to San Jose, and so on and so on so forth and blah blah blah and if it happens I´ll tell you then …
Ok. Ciao.
