Ever heard of the movie groundhog day??? We awoke again in our little 8x10 room, 2 beds, tiny bathroom with a shower but no showerhead, and no windows. We took a dip in the pool last night in the dark and Dan hung is suit in front of the Air conditioner to dry. By morning the room had took on a smell that can only be described as panama sewage tainted swamp water. Later that day we saw the pool in the daylight and we understood where the smell originated….
We made some calls and followed up on some info we got yesterday about shipping companies. We were told by almost everyone that Carnaval would prevent anything or anyone from doing anything involving getting the Motobrothers out of Panama City.. Today is the last day of Carnaval and everyone was either not at work and drunk or at work and not working at work.
We decided to get some fresh (but damp, humid, and stagnated) air so we went for a ride on the bikes. On our spin we were stopped by a Military Dude who was not happy to be working or just plain not happy. He was the equivalent of a Panama version of Barney Fife. He held us in the hot sun for what seemed like 45 minutes looking at our documents. He asked us the same questions over and over. He even called it in on the radio to check our passports. We both just smiled, acted stupid (which comes naturally for both of us), and smiled -answered his questions again and again. At one point he just put our passports in his pocket and started checking other folks in their cars…. While we waited and waited. He finally decided that we were no threat and we might actually outlast him… and he released us. We rode on down this road that followed the coastline. The road went about 20 miles and ended in this little crappy town. On the way down there we ran several guantlets of maybe 8 or 10 kids who were loaded with water buckets, water balloons, or hoses. They would dose the passing cars with water. At first they weren’t throwing water at us – but Dan egged them on because he was hot and inadvertently caused them to bomb John who was following… When we reached the crappy little town, we just turned around and headed back the way we came – only to run all the gauntlets again – only this time, they hit us both with everything they had... All this time we were wondering what the checkpoint was protecting?? and what Barney was busting our balls about….
After maybe 20 miles of riding past the Barney Fife checkpoint, we headed up to the canal and found this spot at one of the locks. We parked, got some Lemonade for a street vendor and watch this huge ship go through the locks. We were about 20 feet away from the locks and no checkpoint, no security, no military protecting the biggest asset in Panama…. Go figure!
Back in town we went out for dinner and met a gal named Michelle North. She is a Panama gal who spent quite allot of time in the states and spoke perfect English and Spanish. We decided to hire her for tomorrow to help us figure out the crazy maze of catch 22’s and carnaval dead ends we seem to continue to run into.
Tomorrow we hope to catch some people working and who might be interested in doing their jobs….
Cheers
Leave a comment