BW: Consider me gone.
 Everybody's talkin at me Getting laundry done in Panama currently seems about as easy as getting it done anywhere else in the world, but I won’t be able to comment on the quality for a few more hours. Mailing something home from Panama? Infuckingpossible. For starters, the post office is not where the Lonely Planet claims that it is, neither is it where the woman who works here said it would be, and it’s not really even where the map that I got at Luna’s Castle said it would be, though it might be if you just wanted to drop a post card off. When you show up with a plastic bag full of alpaca socks, receipts, a fedora and broken camera equipment, you need to go somewhere else. So, you wait in that line, too, only to find that the two used boxes they have on hand there are too big by about 20%, so they will not let you have them, instructing you to go to a supermarket and buy your own box. Rather than riding the Diablo Rojo, their multicolored buses, I opted on walking and it was not an unpleasant walk per se. It was kind of hot, though far from Cartagena hot, it rained off and on, and you never know really where the hell you are as street signs are infrequent, you can’t see the store fronts because the sidewalk are all lined with booths selling sunglasses, watches, magazines, lottery tickets, hairbands and clips, batteries, baseball hats, a million types of fruit, playing cards, Rubick’s cubes, bootleg CDs & DVDs, and ratchet sets, and the crowd that assembles makes making good time very hard as you are often stuck behind the very old, the very young, or people who suddenly just stop to shop, with no room to get around them. This is usually when the beggars hit, “You can give me a quarter” seeming to be their standard line, “Didn’t your mama teach you to say please” seeming to be my standard reply, but lots of people saying Hello or Hi, often with Friend thrown on at the end, a sales clerk informs me from her storefront that I am the world’s most beautiful man, a woman selling cigarettes calls out to you “Mi amore!” the old, the insane jabbering at you in Spanish, one beautiful girl gives you a Buenos Dias and a smile as your eyes meet in passing though she never looked back over her shoulder, crazy people dressed in Barcelona jerseys and rags wander up to you as you wait to cross the street trying to engage you in animated conversation, wanting to shake hands or bump fists. So now I got a plastic bag full of crap that may or may not be part of my luggage for the next few weeks. I’m supposed to be going to the canal with the crew on Mark’s last day in an hour. I’ll worry about the post office tomorrow. Or not. II I just returned from The Panama Canal. Wikipedia lists several lists containing 59 separate Wonders of The World. This is one of them, and the 16th on that list I’ve seen. Boooooring. The American Society of Civil Engineers List should be ignored, or you really ought not go out of your way to seek out their wonders. Marbella for dinner. We boys all in shorts, the only other diners in jackets. It was a fiesta of great food a few hours before Mark had to catch a cab for the airport. I had their signature seafood soup, and the best red snapper ever grilled. The lads got steaks, the girls got surf & turf. Rebecca, Sandra and I split a bottle of white wine. There was nonstop service of huge baskets of fantastic garlic bread. Riccardo took great delight in splitting up the check on his calculator watch. Cab back to their hostel. Rebecca and I stuck our heads into Lady’s which we assumed was a strip bar or brothel, but appeared to be nothing other than a sullen bar, so we passed, I grabbed a bottle of Chilean Cabernet for $4.75 and I’m sitting back here, sweating through my shirt.
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Diary Photos
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Not all stop signs say Pare |
 These were under my bed when I checked in |
 A big boat going through the Panama Canal |
 Panama Canal traffic |
 Panama Canal: BW was here |
 OK, God, I get your hint. |
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