My last Panamanian blog entry came shortly after our arrival in the city of Panama; since then we've been to Santiago, Las Lajas, David, and Santa Fé; we're now in Bocas city in the province of Bocas Del Toro, and about to cross the water to Bastimiento to see what it's like over there. In addition to many kilometers in buses and taxis, we put about a thousand kilometers on a rental car, and spent a fair amount of time traipsing around a handful of promising farm properties (fincas).
During this time I've managed to learn a thing or two, so here's some interesting tidbits in no particular order, which I may edit into something more logical a bit later.
First, on the subject of driving. Panamanians use the entire road, but are usually good about sharing it with you. They will execute a passing move any old place they feel like it, and generally speaking everyone will make room for everyone else, although sometimes the environment is somewhat competitive. Vehicles are extremely poorly maintained in most cases, and the total lack of emissions regulations results in the vehicles spraying enormous amounts of unburned fuel out of the tailpipe. There's lots of diesels here, but they are not half as bad (even when black smoke is flowing freely out of them) as the poorly maintained gasoline vehicles. Government vehicles all seem to have terrible exhaust, and it has been suggested to me that this is a result of adding two-stroke oil to the fuel to improve engine life. Driving in the country is similar to doing it in the USA, albeit with people spending more time in your lane, but the people in your lane in the USA are probably several orders of magnitude less likely to get out of it before they get to you. Driving in the city is more of an "experience", and timid drivers would do well to avoid it entirely, and take a taxi. Taking a taxi inside a city will almost never cost more than five dollars. Panamanians seem to be allergic to downshifting, and lug their vehicles up hills making them run like crap. I spent a lot of time poking at our Almera's "recirc" button.
On food: even though fish costs basically nothing here, they will still try to pass off yesterday's fish as mixed seafood; never order it. Most of the bread in the country has all the character of Wonder, or if you are lucky, Roman Meal, which is to say that it's limp and pathetic. Occasionally you'll find something better, but unless you know that it's worth eating, don't order any French toast. Steak is hit and miss; though Panama has fantastic native grass for forage, many cattle ranches have planted Brazilian grasses for their higher production. A horse can die of malnutrition eating grass like that; cows simply do not produce the same grade of beef on it as they do on the native stuff. Steaks are likely but not guaranteed to be cooked one shade too dark in this country; It is usual to order a steak medium (or "medio") and get it back medium-well. The most highly-reviewed steak houses in the country are Martin Fierro in Panama city, and the Panamonte in Boquete. The Panamonte deserves every bit of its good reputation; Martin Fierro was beyond pathetic. Price is not a useful indication.
Seafood is almost universally fantastic and almost everyone can cook it properly. Even calamari is usually tender, though certainly not always. Sea Bass (corvina) is probably the most prevalent fish, and it is well worth eating. Another pervasive food is bacon (toscin) which so far I have found to be universally well-cooked and delicious. Many restaurants offer "American" food like hamburgers (hamburguesa) but botch it badly; the only fantastic burger I've had came from the Las Lajas Beach Resort, a gorgeous but moderately expensive spot on the beach in Las Lajas. With that...
On hotels: The most difficult thing to find in a hotel in Panama is a good water system. Many hotels have no hot water system, and even more have one that does not work properly, usually involving a propane-fired on-demand water heater. Speaking from personal experience (we're on our second one at home) these are touchy beasts which can shut off for up to a minute after just a second or two of low water flow. Electric units work much better, but electricity is fairly expensive here due to a distinct lack of generation facilities; it seems to cost ten to fifteen cents per kilowatt-hour, or about what it costs in California. Also, as bad as the plumbing systems are, electrical systems are often much worse. In country hotels, the risk of being consumed by bugs all night is fierce.
An even bigger problem is mold. Our hostel in Boquete had a bathroom seemingly made of the stuff. We moved to The Oasis hotel, which was a much higher class of establishment, and seemed relatively mold-free. The Skanalati resort between David and Concepcion had a mold spot on the ceiling, and when I wiped it with a cloth with tea tree oil, I poked straight through it and was rewarded with a shower of mold-blackened fragments of sheet rock, luckily having put a towel down beneath where I was working. You should inspect every hotel room before staying in it, breathing deeply and inhaling critically. Many hotels utilize some sort of plug-in air freshener, which should be disconnected before performing this test, also permitting time for the air to clear. These are generally toxic to some degree in any case, and if your hotel room requires one to smell good, you should definitely look elsewhere.
Internet access from hotels is problematic at best. The Puerta Del Sol hotel in David has a somewhat pathetic registration system to control access, yet uses no encryption. You have to get a new code from the front desk every four hours, and the codes are hand-written. If you can't tell if you're looking at a 0 or an O, it's probably a Q. The Oasis in Boquete has a 2.4GHz cordless phone next to their 802.11g access point, so any time the phone rings (or of course, is used) I lost my connection. At the Caribbean view on Bastimentos, it seems to fail whenever the blender is operated, which as you might imagine is fairly often. Speeds are fairly good here, and access to the US is excellent... when your connection works at all. Internet cafes are moderately ubiquitous however, and it is not unusual to find eateries with free WiFi (with purchase) in heavily touristed towns. Prices tend to be reasonable, and they often offer WiFi for the connection of your laptop.
On bugs: Panama doesn't seem to have much of a mosquito problem, though Panama city used to be a swamp and still bears some of the hallmarks thereof. Even though most of is is paved, the rain can bring both sand fleas and mosquitoes. In cattle country, chiggers are a major problem; it is reputed to be possible to remove them with the juice of a fresh lime rubbed on the body during a shower if you accomplish it soon enough after exposure. There is a fernlike bush with big black thorns which seems to always harbor swarms of small, red ants which cause an extreme allergic reaction in most invididuals, raising inch-diameter welts on the skin, though I am lucky enough to only develop small red bumps. Any pharmacy can provide you with an effective cream for bite control, which would require a doctor visit in the states.
On phones: The dominant phone company is Mas Movíl, from which I bought a basic Nokia phone for $21.99. I spent $20 to charge the phone up with credit, and so far I've managed to use about two and a half dollars of it, including over half an hour of calls to California. Land lines in Panama have seven digits, while cellulars have eight. Land lines cannot call cellular phones, so if you want to actually talk to people, you need a cellphone. Panama is of course a GSM country like everywhere but the USA, so you can just buy a SIM card and slip it into your unlocked GSM phone from anywhere in the world.
More will follow, but it's time to check out of Hotel Limbo and move over to the Caribbean View...
...okay, here we are. The Caribbean View is a wood-paneled spot with steep stairs and a small, water-facing restaurant area. The rooms have small balconies, and cost about $50/night. Internet access is pretty flaky upstairs, but it's here; also, the proprietor speaks useful English. People seem markedly less friendly over here than in Bocas city, and of course prices at the Mini Super are higher though restaurant prices seem to be about the same.
On beaches: Panamanian culture does not appear to include any conscientiousness about discarding garbage. In general, beaches are decorated with substantial quantities of garbage (basura) which can be a bit off-putting. In Las Lajas for example, the only part of the beach not trashed up is in front of the Las Lajas Beach Resort, which is owned by a couple of Californians. They clean up the beach a hundred meters in each direction; everyone else seemingly lets it lie. In the city there's trash pickup, but in the country people tend to burn everything including plastic. There is a a recycling center on the road to Santa Fé; it's the only one I've seen so far. There are some recycling cans on the street around the park in Bocas city, but there are no trash cans next to them, so people just put trash in with the recycling liberally. Bastamientos seems to be cluttered with trash all around the walkway, but this island is fairly car-free due to a lack of a good place for a roadway, leaving walking and bicycling. Most of the beaches around the island have heavy surf and thus are more attractive to surfers than swimmers; in addition, the vegetation comes right down to the water in the islands, so there's a lot of churned-up bits of it in the surf near shore. There's plenty of end-of-the-pier outhouses around the islands as well, so you need to be careful about where you swim.
About people: The friendliest people so far have been in Santa Fé; Bocas city is a close second, followed by Panama city. People on Bastamientos are so far the least friendly, most of them looking downright offended if you try to say hello. The most offensive people, though, are other tourists. This is clearer nowhere than in the sea-facing restaurants, where smokers are lighting up in the midst of people trying to eat. People who come from states where this is now prohibited seem to think nothing of sitting down and smogging you out. On the relatively rare occasion that you see a local smoking, they are usually careful to be well away from others, even walking out to the end of the longest piers to avoid giving offense. In general, people seem to regard others (foreign or not) with distrust, but most people around the country will smile back and exchange pleasantries. The most common greeting is "Buenas", but in some towns you'll hear buen dia ("good day") or at the appropriate time, buenas tardes (good afternoon/evening) or simply a run-together buentardes.
About cars: I discussed this a bit under driving, but I guess it bears mentioning that there's few laws which seem to govern what you can drive on the street. In towns the use of ATVs (mostly quads) is fairly common; there's also a few dunebuggies and the like around. There's a few old Ladas and number-only VWs around, as well as any modern luxury car you could name, although in extremely limited numbers and dominated by Mercedes. The most popular brands here are Toyota and Nissan, primarily due to the generally low cost of ownership. They are usually the most reliable cars in the country, and they certainly have the cheapest parts. Most rental cars are Toyota Yaris or Nissan Almeras (tenth-generation Sentra, no longer sold in the US) or Toyota Prado SUVs, but there are numerous exceptions.
There are far more diesels here than in the US; cars famliar to Americans like the Corolla were sold with small diesel engines as an option. At times the fuel costs have been over ten dollars and rumors about that these days will return, so there is great appeal to a vehicle which can be run on vegetable oil, or on a mix of the same with diesel fuel without any modification. The temperatures never get low enough to worry about your oil solidifying, so it seems like veggie oil conversions could have a lot of traction here. I haven't got to know any restaurant owners well enough to say for sure what the supply of oil is like, but most of the fried food has been excellent, so they probably have fairly good oil.
Numerous vehicles from familiar marques which are not sold in the US are also here; Instead of the Titan, Nissan sells the half-ton Patrol pickup here, as well as the full-frame SUV based on the same platform. This is a far more rugged vehicle than anything they're selling in the states. Toyota, likewise, has a half-ton pickup here. Both are offered with three liter diesels, with or without turbocharging. Practically every commercial truck is a diesel, as is every official vehicle but ATVs that I've seen so far.
Only experienced mechanics should consider buying a used car in Panama; It would be better to import a vehicle you know. As of the beginning of this year, import tariffs are based on the declared value of the vehicle when it was purchased, rather than the locally assessed value, so it has become much cheaper to import used vehicles. Bringing in a $3700 Mercedes resulted in a fee of $1200 for one expat, on top of the $500 transport cost (for drive-on, drive-off, as opposed to container shipping. Having seen prices higher than this combined cost for body-damaged, poorly running vehicles of inferior marques, I will definitely say that immigrants should bring their cars with them.
On immigration: Panama has a broad variety of available Visas; some of the most popular include the Pensionado (or retireeO) visa, which requires only that you be able to demonstrate $1000/mo income, often easily achievable for those retaining a retirement plan, or even for many Social Security recipients; and the reforestation visa, which reflects a $40,000 investment in planting of desirable trees. Teak used to be a significant moneymaker in this country until it was all cut down, and putting in those trees is one way to get your Visa. Better still, the investment doesn't have to come out of your pocket, though you do have to somehow have your land certified as a reforestation project. You can also just come into the country without any proof of future income if you can put a big wad of money in the bank; right now this is $300,000, the same as Costa Rica, but there is a push to reduce it to $200,000. Many ordinary US citizens could accomplish this if they sold their home when it was still worth money.
All bitching aside, there are many fantastic things about Panama. Barbeque (from parilladas) is plentiful and fantastic. Sazon Latino Bar & Parillada in Santiago (across from the Hotel Gran David) is only open after dark and only has the best food, plus national beers (a bit like a less-disgusting Budweiser) for a dollar. The ten dollar plate will serve two people; the fifteen dollar plate probably serves three. Bigger plates come with more sides, starting with roasted Yúca. This theme is repeated across the country, but that's been our favorite so far. Food and booze are both cheap, so long as you shop and eat where the natives do. This is usually the way to find the tastiest food anyway. City dwellers will find a lot to love about Panama city; it may be a bit hard to breathe there, but it's got an interesting mix of neighborhoods and almost any kind of goods you want to buy are found there. Country dwellers will love the fact that fifty percent of the country's population lives in Panama city, with another twenty-five percent distributed throughout the other major cities, mostly David and Santiago. It doesn't take long to get away from the bulk of the population, even given the small size of the nation. And the islands are something of a surfer's paradise, with good surf sprinkled liberally about.
That's it for this episode, stay tuned for more information and adventure. There may even be a trip to Costa Rica in our near future, as Bocas is so very close...