Corrinne and I said goodbye to La Jungla the day before yesterday. We took about an hour and a half to say goodbye to each of the animals, and to the owners, Dorothy and Luis, and to all the kids at the joint who were as much fun to hang out with as the animals. Corrinne fell in love with a little rabbit (of course) who was adopted about the same time we showed up, and delighted in telling the kids what each of the rabbit’s mannerisms meant. Bunny ownership has its perks.
Corrinne with Fluffy the rabbit. The name is not her fault.
It’s remarkable how attached we got to this little place in five days. And what’s interesting is that we almost ended up spending a few more days here than we intended, because we ran out of money and had nowhere to get more.
This is a curious quirk of life in Panama. The ATM’s run out of money more often than you would think. Suddenly there’s a line of people coming away from the ATM holding nothing but a receipt, and you know you’re not getting any more cash in town today.
We ran into this for the first time in Bocas del Toro. There’s only one bank on the island we were staying on, and with the New Year’s Eve revelers in town, the ATM was tapped. Everyone was milling around the bank, looking up at the sky, because the money plane was due to arrive and bring enough money to the bank so everyone could pay their bills and/or bar tabs.
It’s a good thing we’d gone through this once before, because another quirk of the ATM’s in Panama is that, when they run out of money, they don’t tell you that they are out of money. They tell you that they can’t help you and you need to contact your financial institution, which can throw you into a panic. There you are going, “What the hell did I do wrong? Why is there a hold on my account?” And the ATM is telling you that you better figure that out, because this ATM is most definitely not out of money, and this is clearly all your fault, so you need to contact your bank and atone for your sins.
So you do, and your bank says, “What sins?” And you go back to the ATM and say, “What the hell was that all about? Were you out money the whole time and trying to pin it on me?” And the ATM is all like, “Oh come on, baby. Let’s not bring money into this.” And you say, “But you’re an ATM! Your whole job is to bring money into this!” And the ATM gets all huffy about that and says, “Oh. You know what? I can’t read your card. BAM! Now why don’t you go to Banco de Panama and get up out of my air-conditioned safe house.”
But the other ATM’s are out of money, too. Because there is a festival in Boquete that week, and every ATM is out of money, and they are all passing the blame onto you. “Contact your financial institution, man. I’m high.”
We left Boquete with our new friend Sarah about three o’clock, having scraped together enough to get to David, where we scored enough cash to cover the next leg of our trip. Sarah has been one of the best surprises on our trip—not just because we made a damn good friend, but because she’s coming from New Orleans, having lived in some of the same neighborhoods as us, and even frequenting the same coffee shop as me. We know some of the same people, and are pretty sure we’ve run into each other on occasion without knowing it.
Sarah with her chips. And yes, that does say “Scandalous Cheese.”
So here we are on the far end of the continent and we meet a traveler who knows a lot of the same people we do. And because we all know New Orleans, we all start talking about it. Have you been here? Do you know this person? And with each shared experience comes a memory, and with each memory comes a story, and soon we are spooling out tales of New Orleans until we are all homesick for a place we all carry with us, that we all war with in our minds with the question of: Is it time to go back?
We hung out with Sarah for the better part of three days, and I think the three of us re-stoked each other’s interest in New Orleans. But that’s something that happens with that city more than with any other I can think of. If you meet someone else who know it, it’s like you are all in on a secret. It’s a club, passwords and all, except you kind of want to get everyone you know into the club with you.
We expected to be traveling for the next two days, so our stopover night in David was all about fortifying ourselves. The three of us hit the grocery and I made a coconut milk curry stew with chicken, carrots, potatoes and onion, while Sarah made Plantains Foster, using a rather frightening lump of crystallized molasses she bought in Palmira that we are pretty sure was supposed to be some kind of a candy bar. Whatever. We melted it over the plantains, poured rum on and set it on fire, because that’s what you do to your dessert in New Orleans—you punish it.
This was our third stay at Hostel Bambu in David. I’ve already written about it, so I’ll just say it was a wonderful place to find, to relax, and to use to get between each of our stops in the country.
So this is goodbye to Panama, and also to our new friend, who is continuing south to Panama City, and then on to South America, while we turn north for Nicaragua. I’m glad we ran into Sarah. In the middle of a chaotic trip, it’s nice to run into someone who reminds you that you come from somewhere, and that home is closer than you think.
It’s now Thursday, and I’m due for another update. The trip to San Jose was…well, I’ll cover that in the next update.