A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. ~Lao Tzu

Cuzco on My Mind

June 4th, 2006

Cuzco is an old Incan capital as well as a Spanish center of operations during the colonial times. It is a dilapidated and charming town; the Spanish colonial buildings fail to cover the Incan past. Once in a while an earthquake will take down a few of the Spanish walls or buildings. Underneath the incredible and mysterious Incan stonework shines through, complete and untarnished. The cathedral was built upon the Incan castle – it is now an unhappy marriage of the architectural creations of two very different cultures. Pisarro once ordered the Incans to fill an entire room in this palace with gold in order to buy the freedom of their final emperor. The Incans obliged and brought gold from cities and ruins all over Peru to satisfy this lofty request. In typical Spanish style, however, they killed the emperor anyway as soon as the room was packed with the precious gold of the great civilization.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Travel | No Comments »

WE MADE IT UP THE HILL!!

May 20th, 2006

Peru 17 004.jpg

WE MADE IT!!! The Dolphin has chugged and sputtered and heaved its way up the Andes to 12,000 feet. We have conquered our most difficult goal – it’s literally all downhill from here.

In Arequipa, the halfway point where the roads reportedly become much steeper and the real mountains begin, we stopped for a night to rest in a parking lot near the center of town. We awoke to the sight of great mountains looming behind the walls of the tiny parking area. We knew the next day would be the real test – from 3000 to 13,000 feet. As we were heading out of town, we stopped outside a little open air market. We bought fresh pineapple juice from a grinning Incan woman, who laughed through her gold teeth and kept refilling our cups and told us she had one niece who was married to a Japanese man and another one in Brazil. Everyone from Mexico on has called Yoshi “Chino,” which irritates him no end. It appears to be the only word people in Latin America know for Asian. When we tell them he is Japanese however, they inevitably begin to smile and bring up some story about a relative in Japan or someone they know of Japanese descent. The Japanese seem to have left only good impressions in Latin America, both through the charitable works done by the Japanese governments (bridges, disaster relief, public buildings, etc) and by the Japanese immigrants and tourists themselves. People in both Central and South America always say, “Ah! Japanese! They are good people, the Japanese. And very intelligent! Look at their cars and their cameras!” Yoshi will, I’m sure, only add to the positive image the Japanese have down here – hopefully he will also aid to educate people on the differences between Asian nations and those around him will stop calling him Chino. Worth it to try at least!

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Travel | No Comments »

Tags: Peru, South America

Lima and Lines of Mystery

May 16th, 2006

On our way to Lima, we stopped in a small town whose market included the largest witch doctor market in Peru. Yoshi and I were still ill and markets are generally not Yoshi’s favorite place anyway, so he stayed behind in the dolphin while Jonas and I wandered through the bazaar. The market was crammed with every possible ware. We moved slowly through tiny pathways, squeezing past cages of chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs, fruit stands, tables of fly-covered meat, baskets of bread, sleeping children and men hacking up piles of coal to sell. When we arrived at the section of herbal medicines, the foreign smells of freshly cut plants made my head spin. Hanging from the tiny stalls were all assortments of dried and fresh herbs, voodoo dolls, seeds, skulls, knives, dried lizards, snake skins, hides, gourds, beads and teeth. Old women haggled over bags of plants, leaning on displays of boxes of powdered cures from the Amazon and China. Jonas asked a vendor about a hanging item resembling an animal bladder and the man asked him where he was from. “Brazil! You guys have stronger stuff than we do!” He attempted to marry Jonas off with one of the women in his stall and laughed when Jonas said he already had one. “Well, have two!” The vendor at the next stall tried to sell us Hayahuasca powder in a small baggie behind the counter and another tried to entice us with his shamanic services. I bought a small bottle containing floating herbs, seeds and a weird worm like figure and we headed back through the aisles to find the dolphin.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Travel | 1 Comment »

Tags: Peru, South America

Pooben del mio cuore

May 10th, 2006

Peru 5 010.jpg

In 1969, three young people, a couple and their single friend, set off in a truck for an overland voyage from Texas to Brazil. The single member of this group was a quiet, kind young man named Jerry, easy to laugh, with a bit of a wild side. He was the seventh child of an Irish Catholic family of ten children in Ennis, Texas. Some of his brothers became engineers, one went to war, one became a priest. But Jerry was the black sheep of the family. Instead of engineering, he chose architecture. Instead of joining the military, he joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Tunisia. Instead of getting married and settling down in Texas after his degree, he grew his hair long, framed his mustache to his handsome face in the handlebar style of an old western hero and sought out to follow adventure. He and a friend from college, a rotund, good natured, sharp tongued and hilarious Texan named Isaac somehow came up with the idea to drive to Brazil. The country was at war. The hippie revolution was in full swing, even if it never really reached Texas. There was nothing for them in San Antonio or Galveston or Dallas except low end work in firms and drinking on Saturday nights. The lands south of the border were a mystery and travel there was still considered a voyage into the great unknown.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Travel | 4 Comments »

Tags: South America

Northern Peru

May 10th, 2006

Peru 7 056.jpg

Saturday, May 6 : Peru We sent an email to the Canadians in the Galapagos and left early toward the Peruvian border. The distances on the map had gone from two-day country crossings in Central America to thousands of miles between cities in South America. We were running out of money and had to get moving. We stopped at a grocery store, happy to be able to cook our own food, and bought basic staples for the trip. When we received the Dolphin, it had not blown up, but it had turned its fridge off, presumably due to lack of oxygen. The entire inside of the fridge was black with mold and somehow, in our panicked and stressed out state in Panama, we had forgotten raw chicken in the freezer. The fridge now smelled like death heated up in a microwave. I began to clean, throwing everything out that was not absolutely sealed. I held my breath and sprayed 409 like water in every corner. We stopped to dump the garbage and have lunch. As we waited, a man stopped his car and offered us $3000 for the dolphin. We refused, but he left his card with us anyway should we change our mind. We returned to sit in the Dolphin, eating our ramen and hot dogs, until I noticed a small worm crawling across the table. “Oh God. Where did that come from.” We all stopped eating. My eyes came to rest on the cap of the Grey Poupon mustard jar, one of the few things I had thought ok when I cleaned out the fridge and which Yoshi and Jonas had slathered on the hot dogs they were now eating. The inside was crawling with small worms. It took seven hours to get from Guayaquil to the Peruvian border. When we arrived, a “helper” showed up and told us that the aduana for foreign cars was closed on the weekends – we would have to wait until Monday or bribe them $60 to let us through without exit paperwork. Jonas leaned on the outside of the car and we contemplated our once-again screwed up predicament.

On the dashboard of the Dolphin, we had posted Zen sayings which came from a tear-out day calendar my co-workers had given me upon my departure. I sat in the front seat and stared at them.

Saying #1: “You have everything you need for complete peace and happiness right now.” -Wayne DyerI didn’t know who Wayne Dyer was, but I silently told him to go to Hell. He was probably in some cushy Zen meditation retreat in the Redwoods right now, sipping tea and lecturing wealthy women from San Francisco on how to get past their suffering.

Saying # 2: “Don’t be surprised, Don’t be startled; All things will right themselves.

Don’t cause a disturbance, Don’t exert pressure;

All things will clarify themselves.”

- Huai-nan Tzu

I figured Huai-nan had obviously been through more shit than Wayne, and I thought this one through. Saying #3: “If you understand, things are the way they are. If you do not understand, things are the way they are.”- Zen Proverb

This, finally, was the crux of the matter. The corruption and dirtiness in Ecuador had pulled us in and shown us the true way of life in the third world. I had always known it to exist, but had never been a moving cog of its dysfunctional machine. Money is often the only thing that speaks a powerful voice here, or anywhere really. Isabelle at the hostel had told us that her husband was in a motorcycle accident. As he lay bleeding on the street, people had come running up, presumably to help. Instead, they removed the helmet from his head, his sunglasses from his face and left him lying in the street. When Isabelle’s naïve Canadian brother was being abused and robbed by his new Ecuadoran wife, Isabelle and her husband went with guns and sat in front of the woman’s mother’s house all night. The woman stopped her dealings and became the image of the loving wife. This is the language people speak here. It is a language of violence, corruption, and desperation. It is the language of a people exploited and oppressed and given no chance, no dream of self expression. I do not know how or when this language will ever change. It seems that the very core is rotten, abused and weeping. How to rebuild, how to gain ones footing, how to ever exit this system…it seems impossible. A black tinted Mercedes drives by a mud shack and all is normal; it’s 8 pm and all is well. Paul Thoroux said, “To see a country’s poverty is not to see its heart; yet it is difficult to see past such pitiable things.” Poverty makes one flinch and seek escape. When one who is not accustomed is shown poverty on a grand scale, it seems a disease that he might catch if he gets too close. He feels inside an immediate need to stop looking, to run, to hide from the sheer number of desperately poor and hungry people around him. He suddenly comes face to face with the fact that so many of them are afflicted, yet he, for some odd reason is not. He is a healthy man in the midst of a global plague. He feels sorry, maybe guilty, maybe deserving…but mostly he feels afraid. He looks for reasons to excuse their poverty and his comparative wealth…things like laziness or corruption, disorganization or greed. He blames the race or the culture, some inherent lack of desire to better themselves. In this, he feels acceptable once again in his own skin. I, as anyone from the wealthy world entering the world of the poor, have gone through some of these emotions at one time or another. Yet I refuse to let them become my pillow at night - the soft downy arrogance in which we can so easily fall asleep. The injustice of poverty must be a horse hair shirt we wear and feel at every moment during our well padded days.

So, when I read that things will be as they are regardless of our understanding, the nature of the world seemed…just as it is. We need not ask why, we need not feel put upon, we cannot expect. We can only sigh and pay up. We live the slot we awaken to each morning as best we can. After a long discussion with multiple aduana offices, we finally found someone who told us that we needed to pay no fees and could exit at will. We recorded his name in our memory and sought out the official at the border whose name he had given us. We could exit Ecuador. The “helper” had obviously been another sham.By this time, however, it was late in the evening. The border between Ecuador and Peru is a chaotic bustle of carts, dogs, chickens, vendors, border crossers and money hawkers. We had been told multiple times not to buy money at the border – it is all fake. We bought as much gasoline as we could carry in four huge tanks chained to the back of the dolphin. Gas in Ecuador is $1.50 a gallon; in Peru it’s $4 a gallon. We decided not to risk driving at night into unknown territory and paid a man $3 to stay in his guarded parking lot for the night. He was a Pinochet supporter and was obviously better off than most people of the dingy border town, with his shiny new truck and large watch. Jonas discussed the economy of Ecuador and Brazil with him for a while, in the friendly, never-ending conversational manner of Latin America, until we begged off to make photocopies for the border crossing the next day. When we returned, the “guards,” an old man and a Peruvian teenager, sat in plastic chairs at the entrance of the tiny lot. They were interested in the Dolphin and Brazilian soccer. The old man, whom we first thought to be drunk but later understood instead to be old, a little shaky and beyond formalities, said to Jonas, “I see you talked with the boss. He speaks beautifully, no?” Jonas smiled and said, “Well, he likes to talk, that is true.” The man asked Jonas if he had brothers and sisters. Jonas replied that he was the only child.“Good! People here are crazy. They have 14 or 15 kids. Those countries are right that have laws on child bearing!” Jonas said, “Yes, like China - they have over a billion people. There are more people in China than all the Americas combined.”The old man’s face opened in shock and he stammered, “Hijo de puta!!” Son of a Bitch! He slapped the young Peruvian on the shoulder. “Did you understand that, dummy? Do you understand what the man just told you? Hijo de Puta!”Since we were all exhausted, we decided to try to find dinner out that night instead of cooking. Meals in Ecuador are extremely cheap – usually $2-3. We wandered down the street and found a little restaurant serving fish dinners – it seemed clean, we were close to the sea and the food smelled good so we sat down for fish soup and rice with shrimp. The next morning Yoshi and I awoke ill. We crossed the border with few problems. The border is on a bridge over a miniscule river, filled with carts and vendors. People were everywhere; as I sat waiting in the back of the Dolphin multiple heads popped in to stare. I felt like I was in India again. After exiting the border, we began the long drive south. Yoshi and I both had diarrhea of differing colors and a fever. Yoshi wanted to continue driving to keep his mind off his illness, but I lay in the top bunk and slept, completely worn through.Northwestern Peru is a vast desert. In the beginning we skirted the Pacific coast, which reminded me vaguely of Baja. Dry rocky hills led into a blue, active sea. Here there were beaches and tourist towns and signs of a semi-healthy economy. Once the road moved slightly inland from the ocean, however, the land dried into a Mars-like landscape; large dusty peaks rose abruptly from immense flat deserted spaces of sand. Everywhere we looked was empty; everywhere was a dusty red-brown. From the humid cesspool of Guayaquil we drove off the earth and landed on an alien terrain. Tiny thatched huts appeared on the side of the road, miles from anywhere. Inside an old woman sat and stared at the road from her plastic chair, or a child played in the dust or a dog slept in the shade. Here was poverty as I had not yet seen - desolate, isolated, and hopeless. But there was also, as in all things stark and infinite, extraordinary beauty.We stopped for the night at a lone gas station. The old man who owned it let us stay for free and told us we could watch TV if we wanted. The other truckers who were stopped for the night were crowded around a small television near the gas pump, its sound hurried away by the wind rising up from the desert. This was a place of pop cans rattling idly across the road, dogs scratching in the dust and the vacuum of great solitude eating at every sound, every motion, every scrap. The roar of a passing truck blotted out the silence momentarily, then was gone, leaving us again to the eerie quiet of vast places. Yoshi exited the truck and lay down on the cement, trying to calm the aching limbs and joints caused by the bacterial battle being waged inside. Afterwards he lay down on his bed, wrapped his belly in a soft pink blanket, and attempted a fitful, feverish sleep. Jonas swung from the top post of a small soccer goal, his feet scraping the sand below. Although the greatness of South America scared us a little bit, it felt good to be out of the crush of humanity of Central America. The air was cool and dry and the night’s rest was free.

The Zen saying taped to the top of the stove reads, “Wherever my travels may lead, paradise is where I am.”

–Voltaire.

Posted in Travel | 2 Comments »

Tags: Peru, South America

Guyaquil Ports

May 9th, 2006

Monday we were loath to return to Guayaquil. We believed, however, that we might have the Dolphin by the end of the following day, so we reached the city with anticipation in our bellies. Back at the hostel, we walked to the nearby mall, where we had spent much of our time the previous week. The mall was called the Rotonda, or the circular, and its motto was “Wherever you go, it’s always around you!” Ugh. We had found a nice Lebanese fellow there selling Shawarma, who had lived in the States until the cost of living rose too high. He loved Ecuador and said his standard of life was better here than in the US. We had come to know him fairly well – our daily trips to the air conditioned mall had become a necessity. Upon return to the hostel, Isabelle asked if we had heard that the aduana was on strike. We had not heard and this news was not welcome. After Easter week, Labor Day, bureaucracy in Panama, failures, fiascos, late boats and missing officials, this was the last piece in the puzzle of frustration. A strike, how wonderful. Tuesday:The next morning we called our mustached helper, Kiros, and went to the port to meet him. He brought with him a real agent of the aduana, Antonio, and Antonio’s brother Vicente. The brothers seemed nice and soft spoken and I was glad Kiros would not be our only contact. Of course, the Aduana was on strike. Maybe they would open at 2.

We quickly found out that in fact, there are no official fees to remove a car from the aduana, except the storage fee. The extra $100 requested by Kiros for the aduana was bribe money. $100 was only the beginning. At 12, Antonio bribed a couple officials to let Jonas and Yoshi into the port without authorization. I waited with Kiros, following him around for over an hour, until he waved me over and led me to the aduana, where Jonas was waiting. Once inside, they had attempted to convince the port boss to open the container and complete the inspection. He would not do so until we obtained a signature from the appropriate authority inside the aduana. Since neither Yoshi nor Jonas had authorization to be inside the port, it was difficult to get them back out of the port and they left Yoshi behind and went to seek authorization. Kiros bribed the guards to let me, Antonio and Jonas into the aduana offices. There we wandered around the halls with Antonio, searching for the appropriate authority, who was not at his desk. We waited for an hour against the missing official’s desk, which was stacked with official documents, until 2 pm when the aduana would end the partial strike for the day and open the offices. We assumed the official would come in to work at that time. His secretary did, but he did not. She claimed he had been out of the office for five days and she had no idea when he would return. He, of course, was the only official that could sign for the inspection. So we waited. Eventually, Antonio left to find the boss of the official, a fellow named Lucho, whom we would encounter frequently throughout our stay in the Aduana Hotel. Jonas and I sat on the table, thought about Yoshi inside the hot port, and waited. Eventually Antonio returned with Lucho. He looked like Lou Diamond Phillips and wore a bomber jacket; He was obviously quite proud of himself and took his role as the Boss very seriously. I was worried. This one would not be easy. Lucho agreed to the inspection, but it took him another half and hour to sign the paperwork and send it through. Jonas and Antonio disappeared back into the port. I waited for over two hours outside the port, surrounded by staring men, for the guys to return. Kiros and Vicente quizzed me on why I didn’t have any children (“You people think differently than we do. We don’t need jobs to have children – we have them anyway at 15! You’re getting too old, you’d better do it soon!”), lectured me on eating more, asked what my father thought of me traveling like this. We were worlds apart and nothing I said made sense to them. Finally, Kiros took me deep inside the aduana to the office of an official for the signing of paperwork. Jonas had all the paperwork with him in the port, so this was useless anyway. Kiros left me with the official, telling him to converse with me, and went off to do God knows what. The official asked me about the US, told me he had lived there too, and then mentioned that even if we had the paperwork, the final official who needed to sign it was not there. Maybe tomorrow. By now it was time for the aduana to close and the official told me to wait in his office for Kiros – shouldn’t be long. I waited and waited…Aduana employees came in and out of the office, looking at me quizzically, until one finally told me I would have to leave – the aduana was closing. I left the office, irritated, and wandered down the now dark halls to find Kiros, who was nowhere to be found. I left the building and there was Kiros, leaning against a car. He waved at me and I glared at him. I could not communicate well enough in Spanish to interrogate him about why he left me inside a locked aduana, so I just rolled my eyes and asked what was going on with Jonas and Yoshi. The response in rapid fire Spanish was unintelligible. Kiros and Vicente continued to tell me that the guys were on their way out, only a little while more, while making fun of me for having to sleep alone that night since Jonas was stuck in the port. I was tiring of the whole scene to the point of panic.

Meanwhile, inside the port, a girl who looked to be about 15 showed up to complete the inspection of the vehicle. Jonas and Yoshi watched as the container holding the dolphin swayed and tilted as it moved along the large steel arm and was brought slowly down to the ground. They were happy it had not exploded. The girl had forgotten the metal tool to open the container, so they sat looking at the container until someone finally came to open it. Once open, the girl noticed on the shipping documents that the shipping company had written “Vehicle, six boxes, personal items.” The six boxes, of course, meant that there was the equivalent of six boxes of personal items in the car. The girl became confused and called Lucho, who told her to hold the container – there would have to be a second inspection. Everyone tried to argue with the girl but she refused to budge, and in the process caused us an extra four days of waiting. The guys arrived back at 6:30 pm, an hour and a half after the aduana had closed. They were pissed as hell and fed up. We went inside the aduana, argued with the guards until they let us in, and wandered through the darkened halls until we found the girl, tapping on the computer. A cleaning boy in an orange jumpsuit leaned against the doorway of a second, dark room. His eyes were the droopy burning red of a drug addict and his movements seemed to be through water. Antonio attempted to push past him into the dark room, but the boy stopped him and shook his head. A moment later, Lucho arrived behind the boy and snapped the candy of a lollipop off like the head of a rat in his mouth. He moved past the girl, who put her hand on his waist and began explaining to him what had happened once again. Lucho read through the paperwork then launched into a long explanation, claiming that he could not let the container out because he was responsible for the inspection. He had to make sure everything was in order or it would be on his hands. There was no arguing Lucho out of it … so we agreed to come back the next morning for the second inspection. What they thought they could determine with a second inspection, I have no idea – in actuality they just saw money signs.We hailed a broken down suburban taxi and climbed in. Ecuador had the oldest and most dilapidated taxis of any country we had seen so far. With such low fares ($5 for a 45 minute ride) I could not imagine how the cabbies survived. In Ecuador, no one uses lanes – everyone constantly pushes and jostles into the hubbub, attempting to squeeze into whatever space is available This taxi was driven by a quiet old man, whose driving method was The Drifter. As we meandered slowly through traffic, the gears grinding with every shift, we gradually realized we did not recognize any of the scenery around us. Irritated drivers honked loudly as the old man barely missed side swiping them; with each honk he jumped a little bit, squinting into the side mirror and adjusting the position of the truck. We quickly understood that although he had agreed to take us to the Rotonda, he actually had no idea where it was, nor any of the street names we mentioned. The old man stopped to ask pedestrians in his quiet, shaky voice, “Excuse me, ma’am? Do you know the Rotonda Mall?” Some ignored him completely, others gave vague hand waves toward the left or right : “Yeah, go over there.” The more pedestrians we queried, the shakier and more confused the old man became. His old truck rattled and shook and his drifting increased. Angry young drivers yelled out their windows and pedestrians continued to be less than helpful. I felt like crying. He pulled to a stop alongside the street and went around the back, shuffling through the bed of the suburban and pulled out a dirty jug of water. He popped the hood, filled the water tank in the engine and crawled back into the driver’s seat. The engine sputtered and gasped and rose to life and we continued our journey down garbage-filled alleys and dark side streets. After the ugliness of the day, the sad state of this old man was breaking my heart. I could imagine that an Ecuadoran customer would not take this well and that inevitably he receives abuse from his passengers. Over an hour later we eventually ended up somewhere near the hostel and we asked the old man to stop, paying him a couple bucks extra on top of the fare. We watched him drift off through traffic and I prayed he would make it home ok.Wednesday:The next morning, as we sat in the hostel eating our dry bread and eggs, I began looking through a Traveler’s Health Book. As I turned to the insect bites section, I noticed a paragraph on Chagas Disease. I had heard of the disease in relation to Suriname, where it is wide spread. The disease is carried by an insect that lives in thatch huts and the dark, dirty holes of urban slums. It is a disease of the poor. Chagas disease comes through the feces of the insect as the it feeds on human or animal blood. It rarely causes symptoms until 10 -20 years later, when the diseases can cause heart failure, intestinal dysfunction, problems with the nervous system or death. If you catch the disease in the very early stage, within 8 weeks, there is medicine that can stop the parasite from fully infesting the body. If you miss the early stage, there is no known cure. When I showed the section to Jonas, he looked at the drawing of the insect and grabbed the book. It looked exactly like the bug that had bitten him on the head a week prior in the bathroom of the hostel. Before going to the port, we went to the internet to research the insect. When it had bitten him, we had taken close up photos of the bug in case he became ill. Now we saw that although the coloring was slightly different from those pictured on the internet, it was in every other manner the chagas carrying insect. Jonas said that in Brazil they learned about this bug in school - there they call it the Barber Bug because it makes the sound of snapping scissors. He remembered that the bug had made the sounds of scissors as he pulled it out of his hair.We sent the picture of the insect to people in the States to confirm if it was indeed that chagas bug. We found sites showing infested areas, which included Ecuador. We found that the insects, called Assassin Bugs in English, were often found in areas inhabited by the small monkeys that lived in the hostel. I began to feel dizzy with anxiety. Jonas, amazingly, was calm, and joked about the whole episode. I knew he was worried, but he put the thing out of his mind and we returned to the port. We would have to deal with Senor Chagas later.Serge and Manon had arrived late the night before to a full hostel and had had to search elsewhere for accommodation. I waited for them at the hostel and we went together to meet Jonas and Yoshi at the port. We passed through a picket line of striking aduana workers and arrived to a completely closed aduana. The strike was to go on the entire day. Kiros grabbed me and dragged me over to a shiny suburban van with tinted windows. An older man in an expensive suit and gold wristwatch exited out of the van and greeted us. He moved inside the aduana. The guards stopped us from following him, but he turned and pointed to me – “Let the senorita come in.” I followed him inside behind the desk. The man put his hand on my arm and listened while Antonio explained our situation. The man apologized to me and said that if he could get the car out he would, but no one was here to sign and the aduana would be closed the entire day. There was nothing left to say, so I thanked him and left. He was the director of the aduana. After a long discussion involving Jonas, the helpers and multiple passers-by, they decided to go to the picket line and try to bribe an official to secretly sign for the car so we could exit. At this point I began to laugh – the entire story had become something out of a bad third world dream. We took taxis to the picket lines and attempted to convince officials to sign…no deal. Antonio even dragged me to one of the top officials in an attempt to use the poor little foreign girl card, but the official refused. He promised, however, that as soon as the aduana opened for a half hour, he would have our vehicle out. We left, discouraged. When we arrived back at the hostel, Isabelle showed us an article about the aduana strike : “Horrors in the Aduana!” It claimed in the article that the director of customs had resigned because she refused to be part of the massive corruption there – she had since received a death threat. The government wanted to privatize the aduana in order to reduce corruption, and planned on firing everyone and rehiring or sending in the military to take over. Apparently the aduana was at one time run by the military, which had reduced corruption. At this point, I felt that most of those people deserved to lose their jobs and that privatization was probably the only solution. I hoped they would settle, however, because I could not imagine having to wait until the military was able to take over the aduana procedures to get the car out. Each day, upon returning to the hostel in the evenings from the port, we would pass a long funeral procession. Hundreds of people, carrying coffins on their shoulders, escorted by cars or taxis decorated in flowers, walked a straight line down the main boulevard toward the cemetery. All the day’s deceased moved at once alongside the rush hour traffic toward the huge white hillside cemetery, which was composed of rows and rows of tiny corpse-sized tombs stacked on top of one another – a beehive of the dead. Each day as we returned, our spirits would fall even lower; we felt as though somehow we too had died and gone to an outer layer of inferno…where we were stuck, day after day after day. That night we went to check our email and discovered that Trixie Mixie, one of the demons of our outer layer of hell, had sent an update. Instead of the Desearther departing May 2 as she had promised, it would not be departing until May 20, because the shipping company would not give authorization for the shipment. I did not believe Jonas when he first told me this – it seemed impossible that the situation could get even more fucked up. We walked home, worried, sad, stressed and depressed. Instead of imparting the bad news to the Canadians, we went out to dinner with them instead, ate crab, drank three bottles of wine and slept a restless, sweaty sleep in our swaying bunks in the dark corner room of the hostel.Thursday:The following day I decided to stay at the hostel to bear the bad news to Serge and Manon. They took it well, as always, attempting to laugh at the situation, but I could see they felt lost and fed up. This would mean a total of almost two months of waiting for the shipping process. Jonas and Yoshi left early for the port, and I stayed behind to attempt to call the Miami office of the Canadians’ shipping company. Although I called about a dozen times, I could never get through to the appropriate people. Apparently, they were all busy dealing with a crisis in Ecuador. I had a feeling I knew the nature of their crisis. At the port, the aduana finally open, but they had to wait hours for the official (who had promised ten minutes the day before) to sign the paperwork and another 45 minutes for security badges to be issued for their legitimate entry to the port. When they finally did enter, they had to bribe Lucho $50 to forget about the “six boxes” issue. They also paid $100 to the port storage company, who was making a killing off storage fees because of the strike. They returned to the aduana to have the final signature completed by Mr E. Guzman (which seems to be a powerful name in Latin America – I have seen streets from Guatemala to Ecuador bearing the name Guzman). A car import business in Guayquil bears the name E. Guzman as well – coincidence? I don’t think so. Must be nice to have the pull to import cars without paying taxes or waiting for customs. Inside the aduana, Yoshi and Jonas were led to a tiny mezzanine level office resembling the half floor room of Being John Malkovich. They were told that the computer was down and the paperwork would not be completed that day. They exited the building and queried about the computer failure. Here they were told no, the computer was working fine and the paperwork could be completed. So they returned to the half floor room on the mezzanine layer of inferno, and waited. They were bumped from their place in line by a wealthy gentleman in a large gold watch who obviously could bribe a higher amount they could. By the time the final paperwork was completed and everyone was sufficiently bribed, the aduana exit station had closed and they were once again unable to get the Dolphin out. On their way out of the port, the two security guards almost attacked Antonio, demanding their pay-off, until they were finally made to understand that the car was still inside the port. They calmed down and said they would accept the payment the following day. Yoshi and Jonas did not return to the hostel, where I waited with the Canadians, until 7 pm. They were exhausted, pissed off and famished. The strike was over, however, and we were to get the dolphin out of jail the next day.Friday: Serge and Manon left on a trip to the Galapagos to escape the heat of Guayaquil and await news of the truck. We said our goodbyes, wished them luck with the shipping saga and promised to send news when we were able to contact Miami. As I watched them go, I wondered how in the hell they were going to be able to handle this ordeal on their own. So far, Jonas had done everything for them and I could not imagine how they were going to communicate with Kiros the verbal machine gun or negotiate through the ridiculous system of bribes and corruption. But we had done all we could for them and had to move on.When we reached the port, Kiros and Antonio were waiting. I wondered briefly if they slept on mats outside the port gates. I was left to wait, once again, with Kiros, while Yoshi and Jonas went to get security badges to enter the port and remove the dolphin. I attempted a half dozen times to get through to Miami while I waited, but could reach no one. Eventually Antonio came to find me and we went to the security badge office. Outside we waited for 30 minutes with a large group of men, also awaiting the security badges, until the official came out and told us to move. He had made Jonas and Yoshi wait multiple times the previous day despite his promise to help, instead rudely ordering them to move out of the way or out of his office. When he came out and saw me standing there, he told them to move and offered me a seat inside. This, apparently, was the last straw for Jonas and he faced off with the man. “Who do you think you are? You have been ignoring us for days, making us wait in the hot sun and now that there is a girl here you suddenly have a place to sit inside? You are rude and poorly educated! All of us out here are waiting! There is a serious problem with this aduana – you people do not know how to treat people!” The official looked surprised, mumbled something about professional courtesy and went back inside. The security badges were completed within 15 minutes. Yoshi and Jonas went inside to retrieve the Dolphin. Vicente led me outside the port, through traffic and down the road to wait on the edge of the road. We were surrounded by men sleeping in the dirt and the black clouds of exhaust from passing trucks. There we waited for about 40 minutes, until finally, FINALLY, I saw the Dolphin arrive in the traffic to the final security checkpoint. My heart flipped and I held myself back from the urge to run and hug it. The final check took half an hour, the longest 30 minutes I had spent throughout the ordeal. I sat on one side of the security guards, watching the dolphin 50 feet away, while the aduana officials went through it. I became convinced that they, too, would find some problem and we would be stuck in our hell for another day. Almost 4 weeks after starting the process of shipping, the dolphin finally drove over the port lines and was FREE. We drove our three helpers in the dolphin to a nearby mall to retrieve money to pay the remainder of their bill. They wanted more than we had agreed because they had had to bribe hard to get past the strike. They sat in the back of the dolphin, arguing over the spitting of the payment. Kiros wanted the largest portion since he had found us, but Antonio was the actual aduana agent and had done the most work. Kiros was exactly the wheeler dealer we had pegged him to be upon first seeing him in the aduana. We sat in a huge mall and argued with Kiros, slipped a little extra to Vicente for him and his brother and then said our goodbyes and watched the three disappearing down the street. They had done their best and somehow we felt sad to see them go, especially the brothers. Kiros had promised to come visit in Brazil. If he ever shows up, we’ll have to kill him.That evening Jonas and I went to a fancy doctor recommended by IAMAT for Guayaquil. He specialized in Infectious Diseases. He was tall and white and wore a large gold watch and charged us $50 for a 10 minute consultation. He barely glanced at the photo of the insect that had bitten Jonas and instead assured us that Chagas does not exist in Guayaquil. In all seven years of practice, he had never seen a case. I wondered about this, since Chagas is a disease of the poor and is very difficult to diagnose…I doubted that he would have seen it in any of his rich customers even if it was rampant in Guayaquil. But one point he made rested solidly: The bug does not feed on the scalp as it is too difficult to suck blood there. It is only through the feeding and defecating process that the disease is passed. Since the bug bit Jonas and did not feed, he should be ok regardless. A blood test would be another $100 – we decided to take his word and wait to test until Brazil. We returned to the hostel feeling, for the first time in weeks, relieved. To celebrate, we went to the Rotonda to eat Lebanese food. There I was able to connect finally with Miami. The fellow there told us that the next couple ships had been booked for weeks – anyone who had told us differently had been lying. This someone had been Trixie Mixie, of course, and after confirming with the man that he would book a place on May 20^th for the Desearther, Jonas called Mixie and gave her a verbal thrashing. She claimed she had never promised May 2, that she had attempted to book with the shipping company, etc etc. None of her excuses were valid, but at this point there was nothing to be done.After eating, we checked our bank account. The month of unforeseen hotel costs, bribes and eating out instead of cooking for ourselves had wreaked havoc on our budget. We had barely enough money for gas and food until Cusco, Peru. We walked home, now completely depressed.

PS- Sorry for that ENORMOUS post. Crashes the computers down here every time I try to edit it. I had to get it out of my system however. A rose petal with chocolate sauce for anyone who actually read the whole dreary thing.. And we will make it to Brazil…We have stashes we can break the lock on to make it.We and the dolphin will drive into Jonas parents´driveway, dusty, dirty and needing a bath by the first week of the world cup…

Posted in Travel | 1 Comment »

Chapter 4 Ecuador

May 9th, 2006

We got bumped off our flight to Ecuador. In return we received $200 each in airline vouchers, a night at a nice hotel and full meals. We lounged around on big beds and watched TV and ate at the buffet until we could barely move. We desperately hoped to be bumped again the next day, but some lazy passengers had the lack of manners to miss the flight and we were required to board. We said goodbye to Serge and Manon, who were returning to Canada for a brief interlude while they awaited their truck to be shipped, and headed for South America. Guayaquil is in the lowlands on the Pacific coast, before the Andes make their steep ascent to the Ecuador we know from the travel brochures. Upon arrival at the Guayaquil airport, the three of us caught a taxi to the only hostel in the city and tried to acquaint ourselves with our temporary role as backpackers. The hostel was small, uncomfortable and incredibly hot and I already missed the wind blowing on my face as we roared down the road.

Jonas made an accurate comment about Guayaquil: “It’s hot, humid and that’s it.” The largest city of Ecuador was flat, dirty, and ugly. 90% humidity caused sleepless nights and the hostel had no common area for cooling off or lounging in one’s sweat. It was the swaying bunk bed dorms or the dunking pool, which was a dirty, uninviting pool the size of a large bath tub which frequently had cockroaches floating on the surface. We spent the two weeks we waited in Guayaquil at a tiny abandoned cement bar in the open air hallway of the hostel, our arms taking on the odor of monkey piss if we leaned on it for too long. Tiny monkeys inhabited the hostel, shared with a squash faced Persian cat, two loud, friendly green parrots and zillions of gigantic cockroaches. We became fairly intimate with each of these creatures by the time we finally left Guayaquil.

When we told Isabelle, the French Canadian hostel owner, that we were waiting for a container and not booking a trip to the Galapagos like most tourists in Guayaquil, she looked dismayed and warned us to be patient – it could take weeks. She warned us that the process was going to be long and difficult; a couple Americans had left the hostel a week before and they had waited for three weeks for their truck to arrive. My stomach dropped. We had already spent two weeks on this process – we could not afford another three. We assured each other that Isabelle was being dramatic and took a positive outlook. It was all we had.

We arrived on a Sunday. The Dolphin was to ship the next day. We contacted the shipping company each day to see if it had left…No, not yet. No, not today. No, maybe tomorrow….By Wednesday, we were becoming discouraged and were starting to believe in the possibility that we would be stuck in the hell hole of Guayaquil for another couple weeks. Finally Thursday, the boat left. We called dozens of aduana agents, asking for the cost of the service to help with the exit paperwork. Some said no, others said it’s impossible to take a foreign car out of the port, others were wrong numbers. We could find no one to help. We contacted people we knew had shipped their cars to Ecuador but none of them wanted to give us the contact info for the agents because they had been swindled or the agents had bungled the process. So we took a hair raising 45 minute taxi ride through the desolate streets of Guayaquil to the port to find out if we could do the paperwork ourselves or if we needed an aduana agent.

The port was a long strip of dirty roadside food stalls, groups of shirtless men lying on broken cardboard boxes in the shade and people running around waving documents. We entered the aduana office to speak with the guards at the front desk. As Jonas began to explain his story, a skinny, hunched man with a mustache, baseball cap and dirty jeans, standing behind the desk with the guards, croaked out in machine gun Spanish that he was an agent, he could take care of it for us. He led us outside and explained that he knew everyone in the aduana and could get the car out in one day once it arrived. Since we had heard it takes 3-5 days to get a vehicle out from the port, this seemed impossible. How much did he want for the service? $100 for the aduana fees and $100 for the service. He had the definite aura of a wheeler dealer but since he was obviously chummy with the guards we figured he was probably a well known character in the port. We told him we would pay him if he completed a one-day exit; we arranged to call him when we received notice the car had arrived.

The following Monday was a holiday, of course, so we decided to go to the mountains for the three day weekend, while the port was closed, to escape the heat and the city. We took a five hour bus ride through the winding roads into the Andes, passing above foggy valleys and through tiny villages. The Andes were a welcome site after thousands of miles of hot lowlands following Guatemala. The mountain chain was different from those I am used to – the Andes seem to remain green and lush, covered in soft velvet vegetation, almost to their peaks. Unlike the rocky, dry crags of the Himalayas or the Pine covered Rockies, the Andes seem soft and luxurious enough to sleep on. At times the shoulder of the road would disappear next to the bus and I could see only air and the valley floor, thousands of miles below. It felt as though we were on a magic bus, floating on the wind currents around the peaks. The bus ride was stunning, leaving us in quiet contemplation of the new continent.

Luckily, Cuenca, the third major city of Ecuador, was nothing like Guayaquil. Like its counterparts in Central America - Antigua, Granada and San Cristobal - Cuenca had the charm of old world colonial Latin America. Its Spanish buildings had been restored and kept up, unlike Colon, and its cobblestone streets were well maintained and calm. We stayed in a hostel in an old converted colonial building toward the center of the city – our room was white-washed, cool and slightly dusty, with thick wool blankets and a view of the garden. The air was cool and fresh; for the first time in months, we wore jeans. On Sunday, we wandered to the main square and came upon an indigenous traditional dance competition in the street. People lined the edge of the main square, many of them the short squat Incan women in bowler hats and brightly colored skirts. Their never-ending black braids hung down their backs in straight, disciplined lines. The competition featured groups from neighboring towns, each with a car heading up the group. The vehicles sported the names of the towns and were decorated in whatever they could find, colored paper, live chickens, animal hides, bizarre masks, embroidered skirts, costumed babies and burlap sacks. One truck carried in its bed three women roasting guinea pigs on a small, ancient blackened rotisserie. The dancers were dressed in varied costumes of shaggy llama wool pants, red embroidered dresses, ponchos, or see-through screen masks painted with the image of a creepy pencil-mustached, blue-eyed man. Children paraded through dressed as priests and military men together, representing Latin America more than they could know. The oddest however were dancers on stilts in full length trench coats with white sacks over their heads, holes poked out for eyes and long white, woolen hair sewn onto the sides, like the enormous love children of the Trench coat Mafia, a witch doctor and a Ku Klux Klan Wizard. The dancers were excited and nervous, sweating and awaiting their turn in the competition as each group paraded through the bottleneck past the judges’ stage. We stayed and watched until the end, when I went to find Yoshi seated on a bench, surrounded by a marching band of old men in suits, each holding his instrument. Yoshi sat quietly among them; no one spoke and they gazed together at the festivities on the street. Jonas and I wandered around the city for the rest of the day, enjoying the cool air and quiet Sunday afternoon streets.

Posted in Travel | 1 Comment »

Colon Ports

May 9th, 2006

The next morning we awoke early, packed our backpacks for the interim period of waiting for the truck, and left for the port. There are two ports in Colon, which we quickly realized were not attached as Mixie had claimed, and were on two different ends of the city. We followed directions for the Port of Manzanillo, the American-owned port from which the dolphin would be leaving. Manzanillo handles more traffic than any other port on the canal. We realized that Panama City in its wealth and its high rises is mainly for businessmen and tourists – Colon is the true port city of the canal.

Of course we became entangled in a mammoth traffic jam, sitting in the heat for an hour next to blaring truck horns and workers digging huge holes in the dirt like graves on the edge of the road. When we finally arrived at Manzanillo Port it was mid morning. We parked in front of the aduana, or customs office, and Jonas commenced a long discussion with the official behind the open window. The customs area was, as always, filled with sweaty, bored men, complaining in groups in the shade and waiving paperwork around at one another. Enormous clangs and cracks and horns came from the nearby port, like a battle of dinosaurs from another age. Semi trucks bellowed and sweated diesel exhaust in the parking lot as they arrived. Jonas finally had to encase his entire upper body inside the aduana window in order to hear the woman’s directions. I realized that he, one day, could be paid large sums of money to do the job he was doing. I felt badly that once again he had to face the long day as the only capable negotiator for two trucks.

A fellow in an orange jumpsuit came out of the aduana to process our paperwork. Unfortunately, it appeared that the shipping company had never sent through the appropriate document authorizing the port to load our truck. We went to the payphone, called the woman at the shipping company, and used our last three minutes to learn that she was not in the office at that time. No one else, of course, could sign for the authorization. We had to get the dolphin into a container that day – the next morning we had a flight to Ecuador.

We sat in front of the aduana for about three hours, waiting for authorization to enter the port and load the dolphin into its crate. Since the phone card vending machine was, of course, empty, we attempted to use my US card to call the office again. Somehow, every time the number connected, the line would shut off. So… I had to call the US, speak with the phone card company and was told that my pin number had somehow gotten stuck in the computer and they would have to reset it. Wait, wait, wait, wait. It seemed the pavement around us was stewing in the humidity and the smell of massive hot machines was all around us. Finally the card worked and we were able to get through to the irritating woman at the shipping company, who sent through the fax. Yet still no word from the Aduana.

We attempted in the meantime to call Trixie Mixie, and of course my pin got stuck again in some computer in the US somewhere. We paid some loitering men, who I am sure were the source of the empty phone card machine, to use their cellphone for 50 cents a minute. Upon connection with Mixie, she continued to argue that the two ports of Colon were the same; the Canadians could leave their truck in Manzanillo and it would be fine for it to exit from the Port of Cristobal. Jonas argued the point and she condescendingly told him she would come and give us a tour of the port herself to demonstrate how they were connected. An appointment was set for 3 pm at the port.

We returned to await our authorization. A round, kind faced young man, also in an orange jumpsuit, came out of the door of the aduana and looked curiously at our vehicle. His name was Omar - may he be blessed with good health and a sweet wife forever. I immediately liked Omar, not only for his soft eyes, but for the fact that in the security badge around his neck was a photo of a chubby, laughing toddler with Omar’s same sweet face. Jonas asked him for help and Omar told him it would have to be fast, as the containers were only loaded twice a day. The second slot was approaching in half an hour. Omar pushed through our security badges for the port and Yoshi, Jonas and I entered the real port of the Panama Canal.

Gargantuan steel crane-like machines the size of an office building loaded huge crates into stacks. The crates moved like trams down steel arms, hundreds of feet in the air. Highly organized and clean, the port gave us hope for success. I looked up at operations of such huge proportions and wondered in awe at man’s ability to dredge through a continent, build machines that can lift containers carrying trucks and create boats large enough to carry 300 of them. Regardless of one’s political views, this place was worthy of great respect. After a half hour of waiting, Jonas and Yoshi went to measure the size of one of the larger crates to ensure the dolphin would fit. They returned with a dubious and slightly nervous expression, saying that the door of the crate was shorter than the inside height. A nearby port manager snapped at them that it would fit, he knew his job, just be patient. They settled into a doubtful silence. Omar drove off to determine the delay for our container.

The container arrived on forklift, colored a dirty red-brown, with the air of being too small for our car. Around us a group of men appeared – the manager and multiple port workers. A long discussion ensued – If we drive in, how will the driver get out? There will only be 4 inches on each side of the vehicle. The port manager finally put his foot down and donned a white suit akin to those worn by hazardous material workers. I wondered what he thought he might catch from the driver’s seat, but stayed quiet.

The manager ordered an enormous brick of a man, bald, smiling and black as coal, into the container before him to secure the dolphin once it entered. The man, who was discussing Brazilian soccer with Jonas, picked up a huge hammer and, like John Henry, entered the sweltering container to nail down pegs as big as railroad ties. The manager then expertly squeezed the dolphin into the container, its ladder scraping and squealing as it hit the top of the steel doorway upon entrance. But it entered. Jonas’ calculations in front of a hippie house in the Hawthorne district of Portland had been exact and the dolphin made it into the crate with only a couple inches to spare.

Unfortunately, the predicted catastrophe arose and neither the skinny white manager nor, of course, the humongous black port worker could exit. I heard him pounding with his heavy hammer onto the floor at the back of the crate and I began to feel sick. The day was sweltering hot – I could not imagine the claustrophobia and lack of air inside the container, stuck behind a vehicle. We pondered the various ways of exiting – crawling under the tiny space beneath the car…squashing above the car…Both were horrible eventualities. I looked at my watch and realized we were half an hour late to meet Trixie Mixie and the Canadians at the aduana. I caught a ride back to the aduana, leaving Jonas and Yoshi to face the stress of facing whether or not they could make the dolphin sit securely in the metal box, which was to be lifted, swaying, onto a huge ocean vessel.

Upon arrival at the port I saw little Mixie with the Canadians, all decked out in high heeled shoes, tight jeans and a red top under her cropped dyed hair. Her toe nails had a French manicure and she looked freshly washed, but I could see that she was already starting to sweat in the afternoon sun. I noticed that she had brought with her two gigantic men, presumably for support, who now stood at her side in the shade of the Desearther. The day had been long, the week had been long, I was very worried about the Dolphin and Trixie Mixie was already pissing me off without even opening her mouth. I went to face her in Jonas’ place.

We had gotten information from Omar that the two ports were not in any way connected and that there was a customs lot at the other port customs as well, which is where the truck should rest until loaded onto the ship. I was well armed to deal with Mixie’s bullshit but I was worried about trying to negotiate in Spanish without Jonas. My irritation overcame my lack of confidence and I moved forward to battle with the Trixster. As I walked up, Mixie was attempting poorly to communicate in Spanish with the Canadians. Serge told me that she was now proposing to try to put their truck into a container as well, instead of a special open flat rack. I looked at her with absolute incredulity and fire. “Mixie, they say you want to put this truck in a container. Is this true?” She began rattling off how it would work, if we let out some of the air in the tires, blah blah blah. I immediately cut her off and told her that I had just come from trying to fit our vehicle in the largest container and it barely made it. There would be NO way to fit the Desearther into any known container. I then came to understand the purpose of the Samoan sized thugs: “You see, these two work in the port. They know everything about the port – they will tell you,” said Mixie proudly. The two thugs began trying to explain that if we just let a little air out from the tires, the container would fit the truck, etc etc. I showed them a 40 ft hi Cube container set high up nearby on a stack of containers.

“You see that container?? What does it say on the outside?”

“8.9 feet.”

“Right. This truck is over TEN feet high. It will NOT fit even if you remove the tires!!”

We argued about this for a few minutes and the guys attempted to appear knowledgeable, but were starting lose their steam and looked as though they regretted agreeing to accompany Mixie. I finally snapped a loud NO at them and they retreated to the car for a little relax time.

I turned to Mixie.

“So WHAT is your ALTERNATIVE plan, Mixie??”

She started in again on the two ports being the same, which I showed her to be complete bullshit on the map.

“So, if we leave the car in this port, WHO will drive it across the city to the other port for loading??”

Mixie pointed to the car with confidence: “Those two!”

I almost punched her twirpy little head. At this point, I lost it with Trixie Mixie. Throughout the conversation she had been correcting my poor Spanish in a condescending, irritated manner and she would not give up on the container idea. Her alternative proposal to leave the truck in one port and have Thug 1 and Thug 2 drive the $75,000 vehicle across Colon to the other port was the absolute last straw. I started yelling down into her face in my Italio-Spanish, telling her this was not a sack of potatoes, we were NOT leaving it with some unknown guys to drive across the city, no WAY, no how, NO NO NO!!!!” Her response was to retort that we would just have to wait for SENOR JONAS to discuss the matter further. I turned away from her with my hand on my head, pissed as hell, to confer with the Canadians. They, of course, agreed wholeheartedly with me and stood looking into the dirt with dismay. At that point, thank God, Jonas showed up.

In order to get the men out of the container, they had had to take the truck out. They had been able to fit the Dolphin in the crate, but only by backing it carefully in. Even so it had scraped the edge of the container slightly, screeching loudly and pissing off the port manager-driver inside. The back end could not be secured – we could only hope the secured front end would be enough. On top of this, Yoshi and Jonas had become convinced that because we had not turned off the propane refrigerator, the lack of oxygen in the container for the five day voyage could cause the whole thing to explode. They looked tired and stressed and not particularly happy to see Mixie. She ran up to Jonas with almost desperate enthusiasm as I was telling him, “Take over – I am about to kill her,” and put her hand on his arm. As she explained her two new plans, he immediately began walking toward the aduana.

When he returned, she was snapping along after him, a little more red faced and a little more desperate, yet still attempting to win Jonas’ favor. Jonas had brought Omar in tow to show him the Desearther; “Omar, will this truck fit in ANY container?” Omar looked at the truck skeptically and then down at Mixie. “Oh, no, Senora, I’m sorry, that will not fit.” Mixie continued trying to argue until Omar patiently guided her to a container that was split open, which they could walk inside. “You see, Senora, there is no way that truck will fit inside.” Mixie had lost her hot air and looked deflated. She withdrew to plan B, claiming that there was no way to get authorization to leave the truck in Cristobal Port. If they left it in this port, Manzanillo, her guys could drive it to Cristobal port for loading. Jonas asked Omar about the two port issue. “Yes, ma’am, they should be able to leave the truck in the other port. It’s the same system as here. But once the truck enters the port, it cannot exit except on a boat.” God bless Omar. We thanked him, shook hands and Jonas ordered Mixie to get in her car and meet us at the other port. By this time it was 4 pm – we had only one hour to get this settled and the truck safely docked in the port before it closed.

Upon arrival at Cristobal port, Mixie had still not produced any official document guaranteeing passage for the Desearther. We still had only the hand written receipt. As we proceeded into the aduana, Jonas asked for it. She said she had it. In the car. He ordered her to go and retrieve it right now, which she looked very reluctant to do. He would not take no for an answer and Mixie finally trotted, pissed off, down the stairs. Unfortunately, her thugs had gotten bored already and had taken off in the car. She called on her cell phone to tell them to bring back the car and the document. I wondered if it had ever even been issued.

The San Cristobal port was decidedly less organized than Manzanillo. The small upstairs office in the unmarked, beaten-up building had a piece of paper taped to the door which read “Aduana.” I began to wonder if Mixie had taken us to some building she had set up in last minute haste for the completion of her scam. But inside were a number of people milling about; some even looked vaguely official. Maybe they had just never gotten around to ordering signage for the CUSTOMS office. After speaking with the port aduana director, who agreed that we could store the truck as long as we passed customs, we hurried downstairs to deal with the paperwork. A little man in dirty pants and crazy hair immediately came running up to us, giving us orders as though he owned the place. Mixie began speaking with him, following him around, and I asked Jonas what the hell was going on.

“What is wrong with this place?? Did you see the Aduana sign? This place is a fucking mess! And who is the homeless guy giving us orders??”

Jonas approached, asking the man who he was and what he was doing. The man replied that he was “helping” us get through customs. Jonas told him to bugger off and asked Mixie why we were following him. She replied in an unsure voice, “Well, he’s a guide…”

Jonas yelled back, “Mixie, YOU are supposed to be the guide, not the first dirty port dweller who shows up!”

She looked suitably embarrassed and followed Jonas to another aduana line. At this point she finally procured the official document for entrance onto the boat, but the booking number had been inked out in black.

“What is this Mixie? Where is the number for the shipment?” Jonas snapped.

“Well, I still don’t actually have the authorization from Miami, but I will by this week! It’s sure.”

Jonas sighed and went back to the aduana official.

Meanwhile our pissed off would-be “guide” was wandering around grumbling about us to everyone he could, trying to cause trouble. After multiple episodes of paperwork progression and photocopies (OF COURSE) in disorganized lines outside the aduana, we finally were able to meet with the man who ran the port customs storage lot. He agreed to let us in. The little helper man, now making it his day’s goal to screw things up for us since we had not hired his services, started whispering something in the fellow’s ear. The port official called us back, went over our paperwork more closely, grumbled a bit and let us go. Our dirty friend looked disappointed.

Jonas looked at me and said, “I’m worried about the dolphin exploding. I think I might throw up.” He looked completely exhausted and worn down – the stress of negotiating and managing the ordeal had taken its toll. I squeezed his arm and told him we’d make it. There was nothing else I could say. I hoped I was right.

Mixie and I followed Jonas, who had taken over the role of agent since Mixie was completely useless, through two lanes of enormous trucks waiting to enter or exit the port. As she and I passed through the black clouds of exhaust, a truck suddenly rolled backwards from a complete stop, almost slamming its great steel bed directly into Mixie’s head - missing her by half an inch. I looked away and kept going. On the island in the middle of the trucks, surrounded by port workers drumming Caribbean beats on the tables with the palms of their hands, were the officials stamping paperwork for the entry of the trucks.

Here, we came once again up against the MYSTERIOUS PINK PAPER that we did not have. Luckily, the director of the aduana was there and agreed that since we had some other equally important document, the pink one was not needed. I almost kissed him. Serge drove the Desearther, at 5 pm on the dot, into the port. It was parked between a bizarre green German travel vehicle resembling a small garbage truck and a huge American Dodge truck with bumper stickers of France attached in various places. We had reached the Colon travelers parking lot. The truck would be safe here.

Outside the port, Mixie looked up sweetly at Jonas and admitted that she had learned a lot from him that day. She also admitted that she had never actually even been to the port. I just glared at her and murmured that experience is a necessity. I wanted to scream at her that she was useless at best, a scam artist at worst, and what had happened to our personal port “TOUR,” but was too exhausted to even look at her anymore. We had long since realized Mixie was not bright enough to be a scam artist.

The lot of us crammed ourselves into a small taxi and took off from the port to find a rental car agency so we could make the long drive back to Panama City. I watched Mixie’s irritating silhouette disappear in the dust and hoped to never see her again.

When we arrived at the rental agency, it had closed 20 minutes prior. Are there any other agencies? Yes, right there and it’s closed too. Buses? One leaves tomorrow at 4:30 am. Oh God. So two French Canadians, their dog in a backpack, Yoshi, the cab driver, Jonas and I all crammed into the small car and rode in silence the two hours back to Panama City. I sat in various yoga positions on Jonas’ lap, the squashed French Canadians tried to keep their dog from yapping and Yoshi obtained sensation close to frost bite on his legs from the over zealous air-conditioning in the front seat, which was actually pumping out a visible substance close to that of dry ice. It was an incredibly long two hours.

Upon arrival at Panama City, the hotel the cab driver had insisted we book if he discounted the fare (in order to gain commission) hosted a snotty, bored girl at the front desk who refused to give us a discount, even though Serge and Manon were staying three nights. She told Jonas to come back and discuss it with her boss in the morning. He replied that if he came back to discuss it with her boss in the morning, it would be to tell him how unfriendly and rude the night receptionist had been. The girl gave us a discount. Serge and Manon paid for our room to thank Jonas for his help and we ate a quick dinner at a “Brew Pub,” which offered the worst beer any of us had ever tasted. We took showers, scrubbing and scrubbing at the sticky black substance which had once been our skin, and collapsed in bed, assuming it would be our last night in Panama.

Posted in Travel | 2 Comments »

Chapter 2 Colon, Panama

May 9th, 2006

May 2

We had been warned not to go to Colon. Of course this was an empty warning since we had no choice but to go to Colon. We had heard it was a dangerous, poverty-stricken port city where tourists are walking chunks of chicken meat. We were not disappointed.

We arrived to the city at night, exhausted and fed up from our battle that day in Bureau-crack-istan. The guide books did not have much in the way of recommendations and seemed a little reluctant to even talk about Colon. As we arrived, we realized why. Colon had the feel of a hybrid between Cuba, New Orleans and a ghetto slum in Detroit or Rio. Buildings hung over themselves like slumped vagabonds on the street corners, swaying in various degrees of disintegration. It was painful to watch the children playing naked and screaming on the sagging, rotten second floor porches, jumping over the gaping holes in the floor and hanging from the termite ridden posts. People were everywhere on the streets, as is the case in most poor areas, since it is frequently more inhabitable outside than in. Groups of men squatted playing dice or cards on the corners or down alleyways, or roved in packs aimlessly on the streets. Piles of garbage and pieces of broken down colonial buildings sat in any empty space along the street. The old colonial houses were an ode to an abandoned dream, their joints and bones poking out through skins of flaked paint and insect holes. There seemed to be nowhere the eye could reach for tranquility…All was chaos, all was squalor. I was afraid, but fascinated.

We circled through the city, attempting to find a hotel in which we could park safely. Groups of men called out to us, approaching the car and yelling hello. We ignored them and kept driving, followed by the enormous Desearther. Our two vehicles could not have been more conspicuous had they been covered in flickering neon lights. We located a hotel listed in the guidebook, down a dark dirty street. A single light bulb flickered over the doorway beneath the painted sign. Jonas asked the attendant if we could park in the lot next door, which was encircled in nasty-looking curled razor wire. The attendant sat for a moment to think and finally said, “You can, but I am trying to think if it would be safer to park the car in the lot or on the street.” We did not ask why it was unsafe; the very idea of being trapped in a razor wire lot should something come to pass was enough for us to move on.

After asking a couple old men sitting on park benches where we could find a hotel with a parking lot, we were directed to the only place in town with such a service – Fiesta Casino and Hotel. The structure was mammoth – an eight story hotel with a sizeable casino and a strip bar attached. A high cement wall surrounded the extravaganza and the parking lot was filled with the cars of the wealthy. Upon inquiry, a hotel room cost $75, so we went next door to ask at the casino if it would be possible to park in the parking lot for the night. The night guard was happy to accommodate as long as we visited the casino during our stay. We knew that whoever owned this casino most likely owned most of Colon and anyone who tried to mess with anything on his property would surely end up at the dark end of the Panama Canal. We parked with a lovely view of the festive Fiesta casino sign and strip joint and finally took a deep breath, releasing the tension of the day.

Serge and Manon showed us the terrace they had built on top of their truck, with folding side bars and a ladder leading back down into the heart of the vehicle. They had even a folding room-like mosquito net so they could sit on top of the truck above ground and enjoy whatever view might present itself during stops along the road. They decided to sleep on top of the truck to escape the heat and we left them and the yap yap dog to an unquiet rest in the ceiling of Colon. Jonas and I ventured inside the casino to find a bathroom. Inside, skinny Chinese sailors and fat Panamanian businessmen with large gold watches sweated over the small card tables. I went to the ladies bathroom and inside the stall, on the urine-soaked floor, found a wadded-up dingy dollar bill. Someone had been too drunk or too agitated to notice when it fell, which was not a surprise since she had also failed to aim efficiently into the toilet. A bit disgusted, a bit intrigued, I took the dollar bill by the corner and washed it and my hands in the sink. I decided to try my luck at the slot machines. I changed the bill for quarters, slowly chose my machine, and promptly broke the thing. When we called the attendant over, he opened the machine and dug out the quarters from their hideaways in the belly of the slot machine amongst thousands of dollars in tokens. Apparently, the machine only accepted tokens - the attendants glared at me for such an irritating inconvenience over one dollar. So I kept my four quarters and we left the casino with my winnings, hoping it would prove to be a sign of good luck.

Posted in Travel | No Comments »

The Case of the Missing Bureaucrat, Part 1

May 3rd, 2006

April 29

Happy Birthday Mamacita….!

The last three weeks, well, are almost impossible to explain. For the sake of the record and because I am sure my mind will block them out as soon as possible, I will attempt an explanation of the process of shipping two large vehicles between continents. Get ready – it’s long, painful and boring. Too bad.

Chapter 1 Panama City

When we arrived in Panama, we were somewhat worn out on sightseeing and meandering; the focus of shipping the truck had become very clear and bright in our minds. We did not stop, therefore, at the Caribbean coast or the national parks. After passing through the border of Costa Rica and Panama, we headed straight for Panama City and the canal which splits the hemispheres. The border should have been a foreshadowing in its chaotic dysfunction and ridiculous lines and archaic bureaucracy.

We arrived at a campground, the only one anywhere near Panama City, called XS Camping. The owners were helpful, emaciated ex-pat Americans. He had been in the military and they were obviously trying to create a haven for American sports fans, as their bar was covered from wall to wall with basketball, football, and hockey stars from the US. They had also created, however, a lovely campground with a swimming pool (which unfortunately had a broken pump part and was covered in green slime most of the time we were there, despite the gallons of chlorine the frustrated fellow dumped into it) and a huge palapa style covered area with a thatched cone shaped roof, tiled floor and couches. They were just the kind of hosts we like – helpful when needed but otherwise they left you the hell alone. No sheets of rules or curfews or weird fees – just a nice, well kept space. We spent much of our first days calling shipping companies from the pay phone near the freeway and hanging out under the palapa with a hilarious, towering 50 year-old black guy named Thutmose (after the Egyptian King) who was what they call in the US a “conspiracy theorist.” We just called him interesting and we spent hours in the evening discussing the struggles for global domination, the cracks in the 911 story and the Black Pope. He reminded me a bit of my uncle Hunter, who would have found him highly amusing and worthy of evenings around the slimy swimming pool, as we did. Thutmose had a story full of tragedy and overcoming, and was one of the few who actually learned from the buckets of crap life likes to dump on one’s head. He was traveling alone through Central America, on a journey and a quest – a refugee from North America, as we were.

The only other couple in the campground was a French Canadian couple named Serge and Manon, with their tiny froo froo dog named Theo and an enormous American King Cab truck which they had fitted with an even more enormous metal camper on the bed. The camper held a motorcycle on a hydraulic lift behind its back doors and could extend one side wall at the touch of a button for more living space inside. It weighed 8 tons. If broken into while the owners were absent, the truck would call Serge and report to him what violation was being done to its body and engine. Serge could then tell the truck by telephone to shut off its engine. Just like Kit! On the outside the couple had painted all the places they intended to go with the truck – Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe and Australia. Their plan was to travel eight months of the year, leave the truck in a secure place at whichever point they ended, then go home to work for four months. They intend to follow this plan for five years, after waiting ten for their kids to reach adulthood. Serge and Manon were extremely friendly Canadians and were happy to find a French speaker and a Spanish speaker among our group. They, too, were attempting to ship their truck to Ecuador.

And so the whirlwind saga began.

For the next couple days Jonas called everywhere in search of ships which would take a truck as large as theirs. Apparently, this service had been stopped as of a couple months prior and no one would offer a space on a ship onto which they could drive the truck. Seems that now you must purchase a container - the truck goes inside it as cargo. There are two sizes of containers, which we had checked out before buying the dolphin to make sure it would fit inside. We had to purchase the largest of the two, a 40 ft “hi cube” container which cost us $1300. This was considered a bargain. The “Desearther” (the name of their truck and their website), unfortunately, would not fit in a container. Jonas finally located a woman named “Mixie” who agreed to try to help. Over the next week we spent days going back and forth to Panama City (1-2 hour drive each way) trying to get paperwork completed for both trucks. Mixie finally located a special cargo container in Miami which was open on both sides and the top, in which the truck would fit. Once on board the flat rack, it would be wrapped up in plastic like the victims in Killer Clowns from Outer Space and put on a special cargo ship to Ecuador. It would cost them a hefty sum but appeared to be the only option. So we went with Mixie.

Unfortunately, it was a Tricks-y Mixie kind of week and she screwed everything up, lying and cheating the whole way along. Jonas became convinced that she was part of a scam and would steal their truck as soon as they left it. Mixie, day one: “It will cost X.” Next day: “Oops, looks like it will cost the triple of X” (Jonas demanding a lower price – “They could drive back to Canada and ship from there for that amount!!!”). Next day: “Ok, it will cost half of what I said yesterday. The boat leaves Tuesday.” Ok, done. We drive to her office in Panama City for the paperwork. Mixie, in person: “Oops, the boat is full. Can’t leave until May 2.” WHAT??? “But don’t worry, I have a secure place in the customs lot at the port where it won’t be touched, so they don’t have to wait here.” GGGRRRRR. No choice. Give her the HUGE amount of money IN CASH, as requested, and she writes out a paper receipt. Why only a hand written receipt? “Oh, wel

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. ~Lao Tzu

Recently Posted

Categories

My Links

Travel Links

Archives

Cuzco on My Mind

WE MADE IT UP THE HILL!!

Lima and Lines of Mystery

Pooben del mio cuore

Northern Peru

Guyaquil Ports

Chapter 4 Ecuador

Colon Ports

Chapter 2 Colon, Panama

The Case of the Missing Bureaucrat, Part 1