John Wayne Island: In An Imaginary Tropical Western ~ by Escapeartist Staff

John Wayne Island
In An Imaginary Tropical Western ~ by Escapeartist Staff

It was only after I had been in Panama for three or four years that I began to hear about John Wayne in Panama. A friend told me that he had spent a lot of time in Panama during the 1960s and at one point had owned an island in Panama as well as being a part owner of a shrimp business. Apparently, Wayne liked fishing and of course Panama has the best fishing in the world; in fact, Panama, the word, means an abundance of fish. For years I was unable to decipher which island John Wayne owned or where the island might be located; it was only recently – the last year or so - that I realized that a John Wayne Island did in fact exist and that there was a project being developed on the island by a group of Austrians.

For years I was unable to decipher which island John Wayne owned or where the island might be located; it was only recently – the last year or so - that I realized that a John Wayne Island did in fact exist and that there was a project being developed on the island by a group of Austrians.

It was only after I had been in Panama for three or four years that I began to hear about John Wayne in Panama. A friend told me that he had spent a lot of time in Panama during the 1960s and at one point had owned an island in Panama as well as being a part owner of a shrimp business. Apparently, Wayne liked fishing and of course Panama has the best fishing in the world; in fact, Panama, the word, means an abundance of fish. For years I was unable to decipher which island John Wayne owned or where the island might be located; it was only recently – the last year or so - that I realized that a John Wayne Island did in fact exist and that there was a project being developed on the island by a group of Austrians. The McGrath family was American – U.S. Canal Zone gringos but with the kind of style and grace that allowed them to be important in the Republic of Panama as well as the Canal Zone. One of the McGraths, in fact, became Archbishop of the Catholic Church of Panama in the 1980s during the Noriega years. Anyway, Wayne spent time playing cards with the McGraths and a man by the name of Paul Kramer.

Kramer was a Sinologist and author of the book, The Last Manchu; the book tells the story of the last Chinese emperor; the movie, The Last Emperor, was based on Kramer’s book. Kramer, the McGraths and Wayne were partners in a shrimp business out on a point in the Bay Of Panama called Chame; Punta Chame is the town at the end of the fin-shaped Punta Chame peninsula. Wayne and his business partners played cards; Wayne was very well liked in Panama and understood Panamanians well – that was what people told me. He had berated Ronald Reagan when Reagan opposed the Panama Canal Treaties in 1978.

The island that is John Wayne Island is located just across from the town of Punta Chame, which is about one hour and twenty minutes from Panama City taking the inter-American highway in the direction of Costa Rica. Before the beach towns of Gorgona and Coronado you will take a left: there is sign on the road that you can’t miss for John Wayne Island. The real name of the Island is Taborcillo.

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The road leading out to the island from the inter-American highway is not very good.The road leading out to the island from the inter-American highway is not very good.We left Panama City early in the morning with a mild headache and drove to Punta Chame where we were to meet Mary pronounced – mar-eee – and a young Austrian woman named Alexandra. At a small house in the town of Punta Chame we met Mary and Alexandra and then very quickly we left for John Wayne Island. It was a small boat and we traveled across the calm waters of the Bay of Panama very slowly; there were fisherman looking for crabs on a sandbar halfway to the Island and far beyond the fisherman we could see large ships lining up to enter the Panama Canal, it was 11:00am; after fifteen minutes of traveling on the boat we arrived to John Wayne Island. There had been a morning rain and the island had just received rain for the first time in weeks; apparently, in the Summer – January to March – the island is dry and the winds strong. As we prepared to jump off the back of the boat, we could see Panama City in the far distance, but only a small sliver of the city: the Punta Paitilla part of Panama City was visible to the east. My feet hit the shallow water and warm wet sand as I exited the boat and entered the sea. In the near distance four flags were flying at the entrance of John Wayne City on John Wayne Island.

The Austrian, German, Panamanian and U.S flags hung motionless in the humid air. We talked to Mary and went to the main office and reception lounge. Books lined the walls as well as pictures of John Wayne dressed in movie costumes, and posters of his movies also hung on the walls.

The best picture of Wayne was one of him on the Island coming out of the water with swimming trunks and a white Guayabera-esque shirt. The reception lounge had a nice feel: open with plenty of air, the atmosphere was not tense and the people who worked at the hotel were very friendly – they were dressed as cowboys and cowgirls: you know, with a red scarf and blue jeans and hats. This would be the first of many incongruities on this journey; they would come flying at me like an Argus. Before we started the tour of the island I asked who was the owner. His name is Ralph Hübner and is the publisher of the Who is Who Guide in Europe.

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He bought the island seven years ago and has been slowly building a resort for foreigners and tourists, mostly German, but also North Americans.We left the reception area and were headed down a small walkway named Main Street on which there was a sign that told us not to shoot our guns and to lay all firearms down before proceeding.Though this sounded ridiculous on the surface, it was actually a good idea on John Wayne Island. We walked down Main Street which was just a walking path made of black sand, the black sand gave Main Street, in some strange way, a degree of Western authenticity – how strange here on this tropical South Sea island. The island was getting better by the minute. Main Street has a jail, where you can go and lock someone up which might be fun: there were prison suits and graffiti on the walls of the cells saying let me out and scratch marks of five marking days spent in the cell. Vintage photos and a revolver case on the wall added to the authentic feel of the jail. Next to the jail there was a small mock post office with a vintage 19th century postal desk, complete with counter glass through which you could pass your hands and letters. In the post office there is a huge, larger-than-life cardboard figure of John Wayne dressed in his costume that he wore for the movie True Grit. On the other side of the street, in a building named Robert DeNiro, was a Western museum with a very old vintage movie projector. There were very detailed exhibits set up which explained the history of the Plain Indians of North America; the exhibits were in both English and German. The exhibits were in very small picture frames that were filled with information and pictures of North American Indians and Indian relics. Hot tropical, South Sea air blew through everything.

As I walked through all the incongruent juxtpostioning going on around me, I started to laugh and feel giddy about the whole thing. I thought about the past and remembered that before coming to Panama, I had talked with some people who had visited Panama in their youth. One such man was a pathologist I worked with in San Francisco at the California/Pacific Medical Center by the name of Dr. Tolls; he was a very nice man and he told me about having been thrown in jail in Panama while in the U.S. Navy or Army; he said to me as I was leaving the pathology laboratory for the last time, and he said it with great enthusiasm: “People lose their minds in Panama”. Maybe he had been to John Wayne Island? I felt a great desire to run free and go crazy on Main Street, but it was a writing assignment and this was not vacation time so I had to stay serious. I saw a small church that was being built at the far end of Main Street. Mary, who was an excellent guide and nice person - everyone on the island was cool and relaxed - told me they were hoping to have people get married on the island; I would have. The rooms were nice, clean bathrooms, simple bedrooms, but plenty of room for drinks and beer, some had large patios that looked over Main Street, others looked out across the tropical green and gold grass. Each room was named after an actress or actor; on the walls of the rooms was information, as well as posters and pictures of the Star of the room. Jodie Foster, John Wayne, Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, ect. I was hoping for John Hurt or Helen Mirren; not yet. The privacy of the island is very relaxing, only 53 to 58 people can be on the island at any one time, which for the size of the island would mean enough people for a good time, but not too many crazies.

We walked on to the hotel restaurant which was done in a Western style with wood booths for two; all of the booths had at head level a perfectly shaped sheriff’s star drilled through them. The music was country and western, early country, and authentic country. The walls were covered in Western stuff, metal stuff; things you see in Westerns. They also had another dining room which was on the second floor above the Western restaurant; it was very clean, tropical with lightwood, white walls and nice views of the ocean and pool.

We ate downstairs and talked with a Dominican who was running the restaurant and the chef who cooked a great filet with small pan fried potatoes and star shaped carrots: excellent food. Jim, my traveling companion and I talked about how good the food had been on the way back to Panama City – something I hate to do. Alexandra told us that security on the island is very good and that they put dogs on each point of the island at night in order to protect the people of island from night pirates. The dogs are only there for now, when the resort opens on December 4th to the public there will be very discreet security, which Panamanians do well. After eating we walked through the “bird area” and passed by what is going to be a Mexican Bar, and a Casino; we also passed an outdoor chess-set and what looked to be an outdoor bowling alley. The grassy path to the beach was hot; we passed one of the houses that had been built by a buyer on the island. It was a simple house with small windows in the middle of some hot scrubland. They are selling lots on the island. On the hotel side the lots are going for $71 a square meter; on the far side and prettier side of the island the lots are going for $65 a square meter. The beaches are big, though we were there at low tide and there are many sandbars that you go can out onto and sunbath, and swim in calm clear water. The ocean is pretty and very calm; the island gets very hot.

We walked on the beach only for a short time because it was so hot. Walking back to town we saw birds and iguanas. The sun was so hot that there were tangled cactus growing in the underbrush and insects made loud noises and iguanas walked slowly in the hot sun. When we arrived back to the main reception lounge, I thought about something Mary had told me during our tour. I asked her what had John Wayne left on the island. She said that John Wayne had built a little house or structure on the Island, but that it had disappeared into the tide, as she told me this she brushed the air as though shooing something away from the shore into the sea. Wayne would have been on the Island in the mid to early 1960s; anything he would have built, would have been destroyed by now. Mary had been on the island for 7 years, she had come from Colombia. She loved living on the island and it showed. The room rates at the hotel range from $50 to $150 and that includes food. We talked more with Mary and she walked us over to where a German had built a large house of which she was the caretaker. She told us that the resort was opening in December and that everyone was excited about the first group of tourists that would be coming. I am going to come back, I told her, because I think it will be blast come January 2005. It's going to be a fun place to meet people. We said good-bye to our hosts; they gave us our card and wondered when the article would appear; more precisely, where would it appear. We took the boat across to Punta Chame, as we arrived people on the shore watched us approach on the boat; fisherman and children stared intently at us as we exited the boat from the stern and Jim told everyone that he was planning to buy the whole place, that it was his and that you, the people Chame should be told that I am buying the whole place. The people laughed, smiled and shook their heads having heard the same kind of crazy talk before, probably even from John Wayne himself.

Spring Semester In Panama

Are you a university student who has thought about spending your Spring Semester abroad? Would you like to go to a place with a beautiful tropical climate, flora and fauna like no other on earth, and with one of Latin America’s most developed business infrastructures? If you have, then you should think about spending your Spring Semester abroad at FSU-Panama. FSU-Panama is located in Panama City, Panama and has been in operation since 1957. The University offers four-year programs in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Computer Science and International Relations. The University also offers internship openings at the United Nations office in Panama as well as UNICEF. In addition, the University has its own research island - Linton Island - on the Caribbean side of Panama: the island is located in a great spot for scuba divers: the coral shelf around the island and nearby Isla Grande is full of underwater life.

Linton Island is in the process of being turned into a research center for marine biologists and underwater archeologists. FSU-Panama offers you a chance to spend a semester abroad learning another language as well as expanding your knowledge of Latin America and obtaining practical experience working in a foreign country – all in a safe, healthy and affordable environment.

January to April is the Panamanian summer: the weather is hot and dry with little to no rain, a perfect contrast to the cold, snowy and rainy winter weather to the north. Summer is the best time to visit Panama’s great beaches and to visit the Darien jungle and the beautiful costal region of Bocas del Toro. You can also hike the mountains of Chiriqui and Cocle.

Summer is also country fair season in Panama: in the interior there are fairs that last for a week or more and the fairs are great way to meet people and get to know the diverse geography of Panama. One of the most popular fairs is the Boquete Flower Fair which begins in January. Boquete is a beautiful mountain town located in Chiriqui province, Panama; the town is surrounded by large coffee estates through which flow mountain streams that are lined by green meadows. The Azuero Fair, the Ocu Fair and the International Fair in David are some of the more famous fairs, but there are many more fairs to see and experience in the small, tucked away in the countryside, towns of Panama.

If you are more interested in urban life, then Panama City has plenty to offer: a great choice of restaurants and some of the best nightlife in Central America and the Caribbean. The banking district of Panama is the most developed in Latin America and many students that attend FSU-Panama work in local and international banks. And of course there is the Panama Canal: one of the engineering wonders of the world. There is also the deep history of Panama City; the Casco Viejo section of Panama is the “old center” of Panama City and is now a UNESCO cultural heritage site. There is also Panama Viejo; this is where Panama City was founded and was the city center until the pirate Henry Morgan burned it in the 17th century.

This is just a small sample of what you can see and explore in Panama. If you feel you want to get out of the cold winter in the U.S., Canada or Europe and spend a semester in the tropics, then you should contact FSU-Panama and find out about the different possibilities that await you in Panama.

Information On John Wayne Island

To see John Wayne Island web site Click Here

To contact John Wayne Island write Alexandra Click Here

Information On FSU-Panama

To contact FSU-Panama write Jessica Starr Click Here

To see FSU-Panama's web site Click Here