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Leaving We had come to the highlands because we needed to get out of Panama City: our first stop was the town of Cerro Punta. The best way to go to Chirqui is by flying, if you make the car trip it’s about 8 and half or nine hours to Cerro Punta from Panama City. Take the plane if you can; it’s not too expensive and a short hour. The plane lands in David; in David rent a car: there are National, Alamo, Thrifty and Budget rental car offices in the airport. In the airport ask for directions to David, as you can get easily lost between the airport and the city center. We rented a
car and drove to a supermarket, picked up some wine; there was still a
little sunlight left in the sky and the grocery store was old, in the downtown
of David, and had a very good selection of beer. We drove up the inter-American
highway in the direction of the Frontera and turned right at the town of
Conception, this took 25 to 30 minutes, the sky was dark, there was fog
on the road as we headed to Cerro Punta. The road was new and we were staying
at the Bambito Hotel, where I had stayed 7 years before. We arrived to
the hotel: the first thing we saw when we pulled off the road into the
entrance of the hotel, after the 50 minute ride from Conception was a sign
that said “Nueva Administración” – “New Administration.” What a
funny thing to see as we pulled up, and I thought to myself, my god, what
kind of mood will this be. But the place was exactly as it had been when
I had come 7 years before; there were no visible changes. The Hotel was
originally built by Italians in the 1970s; the wood is blonde, very nice
large mirrors and beds; the Junior Suites have balconies and the
Hotel, though old, feels very new: the people that built it must have put
it together very well, because the fountains in front of the Hotel are
always on; in fact, there is water moving all around the hotel and the
views from the front of the hotel are incredible.
The road that passes in front of the hotel leads to the town of Cerro Punta. After leaving the hotel, the road runs through a small canyon and along a rapidly flowing river; the river must have cut the rock out of the canyon over thousands of years. After you drive through this small, short canyon, the land opens up in front of you and you are in a very beautiful open valley, with agricultural fields running up mountainsides. There is plenty to do in the areas around the town: there is Parque Amistad which leads up to and over the border of Costa Rica; years before there had been a European Colony near Parque Amistad, lot’s of Germans but also other Europeans as well, I think mostly Czech. The one time I hiked into Parque Amistad, I ran into some Germans. There is also Parque Volcan which includes the highest volcano in Panama; the volcano is no longer active, the Park is a very good place for long walks. We drove around
the valley and enjoyed the fresh air. The valley is full of plants and
flowers that you would normally only see in a flower shop in the U.S. or
Europe, but in Cerro Punta the flowers and plants grow in the wild. The
houses are A-frames with wood alpine exteriors. Most of the houses in Cerro
Punta are made of wood. There is water all throughout the town and the
soil is black volcanic: lots of onions and lettuce being grown and flowers.
The Panamanian supermarket chain El Rey is the major producer in Cerro
Punta. Land is not readily available; we saw one lot that was going for
$25 a square meter; we saw a two hectacre place with 4 small bedrooms,
two-bathrooms that was going for $250,000. It was set up and back from
the town and the owner, I think, is the owner of the Hotel Quezales – also
a very nice place to stay.
But back to the Hotel Bambito and the new admistration sign. We checked in and went to our room. As I walked into the room with the bellboy, I remembered that Jimmy Carter used to come to the Bambito to fish. There was a bar in the room and thick glass ashtrays and an old disconnected stereo system from the 1970s. We went to the restaurant and had a good meal, then went back to the room and talked. People quietly pulled up during the night and walked to their rooms, no noise, very private. After I woke up with a terrible headache, we went to breakfast and then checked out and walked around the grounds of the hotel taking photos. They have a pool and two tennis courts with lights. The price of whole thing - flight, rental car and hotel - can be as low $119; you get breakfast free and you can eat strawberries and crème, bread and cheese in the town of Cerro Punta for lunch. There is also a pizzeria in Cerro Punta and other small restaurants. The $119 package is available through National Car Rental, Aeroperlas and the Bambito Hotel, rent a car first with National and they can offer you the package. We stayed in Cerro Punta for an hour or two and then drove back down to David: we ate at a pizzeria in David in front of the Hotel Nacional David. Very good place and then headed for the town of Boquete where Gabi’s oldest friend in Panama mother lives. The drive from David to Boquete is very short. Boquete has been in the news a lot lately for being one of the best places to live and retire to worldwide. And I can see why. But the real beauty of Boquete is the farm land up above the cliffs that overlook the town center, that is where the air and views are incredible. We were tired and we pulled into Boquete at sundown around 6:30pm. There is a Sushi restaurant in the town along with coffee shops: not normal for a small Panamanian town, the people we talked to from Boquete were O.K. with the changes and large influx of outsiders, though we heard some people were not. We called Gabi’s
friend’s mother and she sent her younger daughter to come get us. They
had a new car and we followed them up into mountains. Coffee fields all
around us now, with the late day sun against the dark, green metallic
coffee leaves. The views of the valley below were open and as you wound
up the road, going higher and higher, the landscape changed and then changed
again around you. One moment it was Panama, then Costa Rica, then Ireland
and then the greenest Pennsylvania. I was floored by the changes.
We turned left across traffic and went up a small country lane that was not paved but had two concrete strips that you drove on; short green grass grew up around the concrete. The views were of open fields and wooden, brightly colored houses. We entered the farm and met Marilyn’s mother: she reminded me of people I had known when I was living in the countryside of Panama, but she was stronger than the people I had known; she lived in a place where the soil gave back food. The earth was volcanic and anything that you planted would flourish in the soil. In the poorer areas of Panama this was not so and people were hungry and struggled. Nothing worse than a farmer who can’t grow anything. We went out into the fields and looked at the carrots, the onions, yucca, bananas, Zazamoras (Raspberries), beans and papaya. She was a strong fiery person, very conservative, but decisive – which is often the case – and wanting to tell us about the evils around us. Men were evil; they talked pretty but never stayed around: she secretly wanted to have a male companion and hinted so, but none of them – men – had ever stayed around long enough to trust – “they’re all dogs.” I was in dangerous territory as my wife Gabi caught onto this line of thinking very quickly, two-on-one. I moved the conversation to letting the mother know that I had lived in the countryside of Panama and had always liked it. We became friends after that. She liked shotguns; she had had a Brazilian shotgun she told me – she didn’t have it now – she said the dogs kept people away now and anyway on this side of the valley there were no problems. She told me that on the other side of the valley men were being raped, so people were carrying guns. She never told me who was raping these men. She pointed in the distance and she told me an American had bought a piece of property nearby recently: she liked Americans, at last someone, and she was looking after the place for him, making sure no one was stealing anything. We then walked up to an area that was open and airy; in the distance I thought I could see where they were cutting the new Boquete to Cerro Punta road. Sean Connery is supposed to have a place along the road. Not that this woman would give a shit about that: who? We drank a little wine and talked about the bible, she did, I listened. What she said about religion was directly connected to her immediate world, her fields, her house, her family. As she talked I noticed a picture of a young U.S. military soldier on her old wooden cabinet. He had been a friend of her daughters; she couldn’t remember his name. He had stopped writing around the time of the first Gulf War – they thought he had been killed. Seeing the official army photograph of the G.I. didn’t really surprise me: lots of homes in Panama have pictures of U.S. G.I.s that came through Panama on their way to somewhere else. The winds pick up at night in Boquete and the stars come out; there is no light for miles and you have an encompassing dark sky, with high winds, and the sound of wind whipping through pine trees and in the distance you can see the outline of distance hills and volcanoes. .
We stayed in a little side section of her house and slept, not very well, the mattress wasn’t comfortable, but the air was good. We woke up around 6:30 and had breakfast; Corn tortillas with fresh mountain cheese and Nescafe – she didn’t like coffee even though it was the major cash crop in Boquete. We had an early plane to catch in David, so we left before 7:30am. The flight back was smooth; I was tired from the early morning wake up and slept a little on the plane and two hours more back at the house. Places To See Hotel Bambito http://www.flylatinamerica.com/hotels/panama/bambito.htm Hotel Los Quetzales: http://www.losquetzales.com/s_index.htm Parque Amistad http://www.letsgo.com/CORI/10-SouthernCostaRica-122 Parque Amistad And Parque Volcan Baru http://www.adventurepanama.com/page9.htm Hotel Nacional David http://www.panamainfo.com/granhotelnacional/ Aeroperlas: http://www.aeroperlas.com/eservicio.html http://vacations-a-la-carte.com/?http://vacations-a-la-carte.com/airlines/airports/panama/david.html
http://www.nationalpanama.com/english/promotions.htm Hotel In Boquete http://www.travelimpressions.com/destinations/camerica/pty/pty_pmt.html The Trials Of Henry Kissinger I read most of the book and now have seen the movie based on the book starring: Kissinger, William Shawcross, Seymour Hersh, Edward Korry, Alexander Haig and Christopher Hitchens, and supporting cast of: Michael Tigar, William Safire, Elizabeth Becker and Richard Nixon. The people interviewed in the movie were very articulate and well spoken. The message seemed to be that diplomacy has a strong propensity to ignore the legal and pursue the purely political. Politics has less rules and more flexibility than the law. That means politics in the form of diplomacy can do great good or do extensive damage. In politics if you are the strong then you can negotiate over the life and death of people you now nothing about. Politics in this case will depend very much on the cast of mind of those involved in making political decisions, as there are no general road maps as in law.(As a side note, Kissinger is out of step in the video when he talks about himself as a "swinger"; he should stay to the kind of politics he knows.) Kissinger comes off in this whole thing as a little confused. Terrible childhood filled with chaos, insecurity and exile, all of this was inflicted on Kissinger and his family in the name of order and security – in this case Nazi Germany. Why would you come out of that and want to inflict with such savagery the same on others: destroying Cambodia, or planning the assassination of the Chilean Chief of Staff. Actually, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense: youth and enviroment Of course Kissinger’s rational for carrying out the killings in Cambodia and Chile is the doctrine of “national security”. But the doctrine of “national security” can be used to justify about any criminal act, and has been used in the past for just that reason. The conception of “national security” has changed in the United States over time. When the country was founded “national security” meant protecting the country from foreign invasion. After the threat of foreign invasion was eliminated, “national security” meant eliminating the native population and chasing the Spanish out of Florida. From there “national security” meant expanding west and taking lands controlled by the Mexicans. After that was achieved “national security” meant not only controlling Mexico, but also Central America and the Caribbean. Then at the end of the 19th century “national security” justified American expansionist policies in the Pacific, with the taking of the Philippines from the Spanish and the annexation of Hawaii. After that, in the beginning and middle part of the 20th century, “national security” meant securing Europe, and then in the 1950s and 1960s “national security” meant fighting in southeast Asia and now “national security” means expanding into the Middle East and curtailing civil liberties within the U.S. What I am saying is that the term “national security” can be used to justify any kind of policy, no matter the policy’s moral foundation good or bad - it can't just be all one or the other. Other articles by the author:
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Hiding
Out In Panama - 