Partying with the Parents in Panama

            It's been far too long... The title might be a little misleading, because I consider "partying" now to be enjoying the comfortable life, such as good food, a nice bed, and few extra touristy destinations. This past April was dominated by a whirlwind road trip of Panama with my parents. Starting in Panama City, we both cruised through the locks of the Panama Canal and watched other boats cruise across the Canal from the Panama Canal Museum. Most people would only do one, but then again they probably were not traveling with two civil engineers and one very obliging wife and mother. After a few nights in Casco Viejo, the old part of Panama City with the colonial architecture, my parents and I rented a car and headed toward the Azuero Peninsula, the heartland of traditional Panamanian culture. En route, we stopped in La Pintada, Cocle, where rolling cigars and weaving sombreros pintados (painted hats) are good sources of income. We visited Joyas de Panama and learned about the cigar making process, and we learned about the variations in quality and designs of sombreros pintados from a local artisan. One hat had a price tag of $300, and supposedly the finely woven hats can be flipped over and will hold water.

Arriving late at night in El Puerto in the province of Los Santos near Guarare, we found a gem at the Casa del Puerto. The owner, Bonnie, is an Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) from the late 60’s who worked in the neighboring town with the artisans. She has now returned to the area where she runs a hotel and leads personal tours to homes of pollera artisans, some of the same women she worked with some 40 years ago. The pollera is the traditional dress of Panama for big cultural celebrations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollera).

After extending our visit to El Puerto for an extra night, we loaded up the car and headed on to Boquete. Now, a very, very popular town for tourists and retired ex-pats, Boquete is a town with a cooler climate, set among the mountains of Chiriqui, the main food-producing region of Panama. Among the highlands of Chiriqui, many coffee farms produce high quality coffee beans. As I sit here writing this in my hut, I ‘m enjoying the coffee given to us at the end of our tour at Casa Ruiz.

After Boquete, we had a small adventure taking a “shortcut” across the mountains, or rather the continental divide of Panama, to the province of Bocas del Toro. Dropping the car off in Changuinola, we arrived in Bocas in the early evening, and the moment we stepped back in Bocas Town on Isla Colon I felt as if I were home again (despite the impressive amount of tourists that walk the streets daily). The tour of Panama, while only skimming the surface, still showed the great diversity of Panama and its various cultures. Having visited all the key beaches last year with my parents, we opted to enjoy one day of walking around, one day in my site, and one day at the Örebä Chocolate Tour. Again, my community loved seeing my parents and as my dad’s fourth visit, he had an extremely hard time saying goodbye. In the end, he admitted that he hoped to return yet.