Panama
Masked marchers (Drive Day 120 minus 14 years)
We pick up our masks from Darido just in time for the big parade in Chitre. Which puts every parade I’ve ever seen, including St. Patty’s in NYC, to shame.
Little boys take gleeful pleasure in chasing and charging toward every camera, and the mothers of the little beauty queens dart in front of Gary to fix lipstick before he snaps pictures of their daughters. Guaro flows freely from flasks, plastic cups and carved gourds and the music is irresistibly danceable.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Altar restoration (Drive day 119 minus 14 years)
As Darido Lopez is to mask making, the Lopez brothers are to colonial-era church repair. Which is why they live in the tiny Azuero town of Parita, home to more than a dozen crumbling churches dating back to the 1700s. Jose Sergio Lopez kindly autographs my Lonely Planet and lets Gary wander around taking photographs. Sadly, he tells me, his own kids aren’t interested in the craft so he’s not sure who will continue the tradition.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Will brake for museums (Drive Day 118 minus 14 years)
The best part of killing time while waiting for a ship to separate you from your home-on-wheels is the chance to wander aimlessly. Which, for us, means stopping any time we see evidence of a town museum. Panama seems to be covered in them — and even if they’re closed there’s usually a note with directions to the house of someone who has a key. Actually tracking down the keeper of dusty museum keys makes more sense that it might seem. Because in these municipal, part-time, all-volunteer museums we discover how deeply Panamanians treasure their collective story. When we find one featuring Darido’s masks, we take it as a sign our commissioned pieces of Panamanian culture are ready for pickup.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
The Darien Gap (Drive day 117 minus 14 years)
One thing that hasn’t changed in the thirty years since I last drove through Panama is that you can’t really drive through Panama. At least not all the way. The famed Darien Gap is impassable — unless you’re the National Geographic expedition type and plan on hacking your way through by machete. The end of the road for the Avion will be Panama City or Colon on the Caribbean side of this skinny country, depending on where we find ocean passage.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Vegetarianism abandoned (Drive day 116 minus 14 years)
Hamburger was a greasy, smelly treat the first time down the Pan-American Highway. Cooking it meant we were at least camped somewhere level, with enough money to buy ground beef. Which is why my parents never could understand why I gave it up, along with all other red meat, when I went to college.
Fast forward two decades and it is my birthday. I can’t face another bowl of rice and beans. I am a carnivore again and have Panama to thank for coming to my senses.
Growing mold between my toes (Drive day 115 minus 14 years)
While we’ve been away in the city, the Avion settled into Santa Clara. Literally. It rains so much the truck wheels sink into the soggy earth. We move to a less rutted spot in the RV park and discover that the camper’s interior is coated in a fine layer of green slime. We hose it down with bleach and spend the day before my birthday hanging every article of clothing we own out to dry. With any luck.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
All bark, with a bite too (Drive day 114 minus 14 years)
Halfway back to Santa Clara is a village called El Valle, nestled under the protection of mountain in the shape of a sleeping Indian Princess. But we’re more intrigued by the small bark figurines carved by indigenous artists.
We’ve seen them before — life-size costumes worn by men summoning their animal spirits in the Azuero. Which is just the remedy for a weekend in Panama City and a reminder of how far from “America” it really is.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Sweaty setbacks (Drive day 113 minus 14 years)
No luck booking passage for our rig on a container ship to South America — we’d have to separate the truck from the camper to fit inside one, and wait until a ship has enough freight to warrant sailing.
So we do what everyone else in Panama City seems to do — drown our sorrows in Atlas beers. But then Gary almost pokes his eye out on an air conditioner inexplicably head-level in an interior stairwell. When we return, this story leads to only laughter from the expats at the XS Memories sports bar. Turns out that’s how Panama works — no regulations, no codes, no protection for the average citizen. If you fall into an uncovered manhole on a city sidewalk, the saying goes, the judge will give you a fine for not watching where you’re walking.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Panama City (Drive day 112 minus 14 years)
It’s less than a two hour collectivo ride to Panama City and we’ve decided to pay a visit to some shipping companies. I’m not prepared for how modern and American the city seems. I know, of course, that the Canal was only reluctantly turned back to Panamanians around the time I first passed through. But cab drivers have accents straight out of LA or Albaquerque and every known fast food franchise has staked a claim. Which is lucky, for those drivers who need to feed a hangover.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Our neighbor Noreiga (Drive day 111 minus 14 years)
A few miles from XS Memories the Pan-American Highway dissects an old military base. Rio Hato was the pride of General Manuel Noriega in the 80s, conveniently he built a beach house practically on the end of the runway.
Which didn’t work out so well for him in 1989 when the US bombed it. Nothing much has been repaired in the decades since and the empty base is a haunting, weeded-over testament to greed and corruption.
There’s even a drug twist to the story. The 50 kilograms of cocaine that US soldiers claimed they found on site turned out to be tamale flour.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
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