If your lucky on your pilgrimage  (and that is how I would classify it: a pilgrimage) to Agua de Salud you might come across a local dance or party on the walk. And if you are really lucky they will be playing real Panamanian Tipco music and drinking ChiCha Fuerte (Corn Alcohol). Sitting on a windy summer night listening to Tipco music, drinking, talking, watching farmers burn their fields in the far distance and absorbing the wildness of the place will put your senses on edge. 

Life in the countryside is rough and I don’t want to idealize what life can be like in rural Panama. I remember one of the first weeks I was in the countryside, the father of the family I was living with had been having dental problems. As I was eating lunch a man I had never seen before and would never see again came into the mud and grass-hut kitchen where the family ate, and said “lets do it”. “Let’s do it” meant pull out the back molars from the father’s mouth with a pair of rusted pincers. The father didn’t even make a sound as the molars cracked and popped . About a week after this, we returned to the village after clearing a distant hillside in order to grow corn, and the father looked at the dog and said, “it’s time”. I was eating a soupish-rice mix at the time called quacho; anyway, the dog was thrown on the ground and his testicles were sawed off with a blade. Dog blood shot all around. The dog handled it surprisingly well. I fed him Snickers and old rice. Sangfroid is very important in the countryside. 

Probably the single most obvious sign of the harshness of life in the countryside is the number of amputations. At first I thought the loss of hands and forearms was due to disease, then I thought machete fights, but learned over time that the amputations were due to people fishing with dynamite.  Some people had both hands and forearms missing. 

This old slice of road has some wonderful scenery and is almost completely unused except by those who live in the small towns that lie along this forgotten section of road. If you are a bicyclist then a trip from Tole to Sona is highly recommended. 

On this back road you will see green meadows and old iron bridges that are placed in a landscape that is ever changing: from mint green meadows with wide flood plains to sharp-inclined river valleys and back to open cattle land.  When you drive down the road stop and go to the rivers and swim, but be respectful. 

As a side note, it’s true that Che Guavara walked along this strip of road on his way to Guatemala in 1953. The story goes that the truck he was riding in broke down and then crashed somewhere between Sona and San Felix. He had to camp out along the road and walk another day before catching a ride up to Golfito, Costa Rica. 

Santiago:

If you plan to visit any of the places I’ve mentioned then you will need to find accommodations in Santiago, Veraguas; this is the only town in the Province that has hotels and restaurants. I would also recommend renting a car (Budget has an office in Santiago as well as Central) since the distances and heat in this part of Panama are so great. If you want to camp in Veraguas, make sure not to camp on somebody’s private property. Go to the Hotel Grand David or Piramidol in Santiago. The latter is more private; the former has cheap rooms with just fans and no Air. Check out the chicken stand down from the bus station towards town. The baseball stadium is right behind the stand. The Mar Caribe restaurant in Santiago is great for seafood. 

Panama City: 

Hotel Ideal is cheap with fierce air but great pool, cable and restaurant. Hotel Roma is a favorite: $60 a night. Food: Athens Pizza; cheap and good and nice if you are vegetarian: try the vegetables in the form of a cone. Café Ozone: Afghani, Senegalese, English and Indonesian food as well as Russian, North American and Iranian. Good sushi in Panama: Matsui 12:00 to 8:00 all the sushi you can eat for $20, Bennihanna and Korea House are also good. Also, the Wine Bar in the Hotel Las Vegas is a nice place to people watch and eat pizza and have a good bottle of wine.

Make sure to visit the Causeway in Panama City as well as the Bahai Temple and Old Panama. A visit to Taboga Island  or the Pearl Islands is worth a look. Cerro Azul has one of the oldest cloud forests in the world, but you need a 4X4 to get there. The forest is located in a place called Cerro Hefy. .