Wherever you go, there you are

After 7 hours on the bus, a breakdown, a chiva ride and then a scary boat ride, I am in La Palma. After all that, I'm not sure it was worth seeing. But how do you know until you go? I was a little nervous about the bus station but it turned out to be pretty easy. The ticket booths had the names of the regions/areas for which each sold tickets, and all I had to say was "a Metiti". The bus was what is commonly referred to as a 'chicken bus'. Not that there were any chickens but it appears to have seen another life as a school bus. It has been painted in incredibly bright colors and designs that incorporated religious figures/symbols, sexy women and graffiti, all combined in a way we'd probably describe as lurid. But I saw many buses decked out this way, each with its own individual designs. We left the main bus station in Panama City with few passengers but by the time we got to the outskirts we were full with quite a few people standing. I thought we were squeezed in tight but little did I know! Later it got a lot cozier. When we got to the Darien region, there was a checkpoint that everyone else seemed to know about but me. The Darien is the southern-most region of Panama, contiguous with Colombia. As a result a large part of the Darien is a no-go zone, because it's a hiding place for guerilla fighters, terroristas and various ne-er-do-wells. The likelihood of being killed or kidnapped if you go alone is only exceeded by the likelihood of getting lost in the jungle. So I noticed that everyone else had gotten off the bus (no announcement) and was thinking I'd get out and stretch my legs, maybe even find some food, and a soldier got on and eventually made it clear I needed to go to the checkpoint with my passport. There were many well-armed soldiers about, and a couple of them talked with me, asking me where I had come from, where I was going, for how long, etc. Either I misunderstood some of their questions or they asked the same ones a few times. They seemed to question my plan to go to La Palma and made it very clear I should go no further than here. One of them seemed to be trying to figure out if I was a terrorista. All the rest of the bus was done and back on the bus and I started to wonder how long they would wait for me. Eventually they extracted one last promise from me to go no further than La Palma and gave me my passport back. If their goal was to make an impression, they did. Then again, not enough to stop me going further if I thought it was safe. The goal (for me) was to take the bus to Metiti, from there a chiva to Puerto Quimba, where I would catch a boat to La Palma. I had thoughts of getting a guide from here to visit an indigenous village upriver but I think I'll forego that unless I run into other tourists I can group up with. I see no other tourists in town at all so far. The bus broke down at some point early afternoon, but the driver and the "guy who gets passengers" got it started again. Alas, not for long, it broke down again. This time they told us to transfer to a chiva (a large van) which had pulled up behind us. I have attracted attention here, a woman just walked up and looked over my shoulder at what I was doing. She said something but for once my poor spanish came in useful. I told her "No hablo mucho espanol" and she accepted that. Still she lingers, along with a boy on a bike. Anyway, the chiva ride was cozier still, but I met a young woman who is here with the Peace Corp, and she was helpful. We stopped at another checkpoint, she used her Peace Corp ID but I had to go through the questions again, this time in the van with dead silence and everyone listening. At last Metiti. Hmmm...no chiva and time was going fast. The last launch was to leave Puerto Quimba at 4, or so I was told. But there were several others waiting too, so I hoped for the best. Besides I didn't see any hotels in the vicinity. At this point I had not eaten since breakfast and no bathroom either. I don't know how people who take frequent long bus rides here handle going without a bathroom. The bus didn't stop for rest breaks. The chiva to PQ was similar to a 15 passenger van, but there were at least 19 of us. I was wedged so tight that I literally could not move. Our composite smell was rather rank. Quite a few of the other passengers live in La Palma and know each other and they rearranged passengers to get the last few in. Two had to stand crouched in the door area, but they got in. No boat...in the middle of nowhere, oh, but there was yet another passport check for me. Somebody knew somebody with a boat and it appeared like magic. And so we all clambered into it. I do not know how many it's supposed to hold. There certainly were no life jackets. I should mention here that I have a great fear of deep water and drowning, and it took some effort to climb into that boat. But everyone else seemed ok with it, and so I decided it was the best alternative. I got a little wet from the spray but no worse. Whew! I hope, I hope the regular launch is larger than that little outboard motorboat. More about the town a little later. I am going in search of food and something cold to drink.