Panama
Fellow travelers (Drive day 110 minus 14 years)
We are camping alongside the younger, Swiss version of ourselves: Karen and Silva bought their camper in Canada, drove it from that country’s east coast to west then down I-5 through Washington, Oregon and California. And somehow they’ve arrived in Panama less than three months later. They’ve got a schedule to keep, meaning jobs to return to. Which surprises me. But apparently bosses there actually value the life experience travel brings to their employees. Language skills, maybe, but more importantly the diplomacy, flexibility and resourcefulness that come along with fabulous stories.
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.
Memories in excess (Drive day 109 minus 14 years)
I could stay on the Azuero for weeks, but we have to head further into Panama to start looking for passage to South America. Hooper and Betsy send us off with the greatest gift imaginable. They know the owners of Panama’s only RV park near the beach town of Santa Clara.
That it’s attached to a sports bar and called XS memories is incentive enough. But then Hooper drops the clincher. It’s owned by another expat who used to live in South Carolina — who happened to be on the same rugby team as about half of my male friends who still live there.
We pull in and park under a sky seven degrees of separation spectacular and meet unforgettable characters: Dennis and Sheila.
You’ll meet them to, if you 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 roofs of Parita (Drive day 108 minus 14 years)
A town’s roofing says a lot about the people living under them. In Parita the shallow red terra-cotta overlapping tiles are a throwback to Spain and a nod to the craftsmanship that might be the only good thing to come out of colonialism.
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.
Masks and risks (Drive day 107 minus 14 years)
If a man came to the door of a house in America with a nightmare-inducing mask in his hand, I would hope it’s Halloween and run. But here in the Azuero mask makers are ambassadors and master artist Darido Lopez’s fanged creatures are so fearsome we order two and promise to return when they’re ready.
If I were strolling through a small town anywhere in the North American Southwest and a stranger pulled up in a white pickup wanting to know if we were lost, I’d be on edge. If he offered to give us a ride in the back and go get a beer at his house, I’d pretend not to hear and shuffle out of range of crazy. But here in the Azuero it seems stupid not to say yes, especially when the driver of the truck is American and I could really use a cold beer.
Which is where this story gets even more pinch-me. The man’s name is Hooper and he used to live on Hilton Head Island. His wife Betsy knows a woman I call one of my other mothers. They’re building a hotel resort, just like my parents are trying to do in Nicaragua. Only Betsy and Hooper have the good luck, or smarts, to take their pioneer spirit where its actually welcomed and any guest lucky enough to stay at Mangofish someday will never want to leave.
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.
Peace like a peninsula (Drive Day 106 minus 14 years)
We are listening to the audiobook version of Peace Like A River as we glide through tranquility unmatched so far. I can feel my pulse slowing, my blood pressure easing. The colors are magic hour every hour and the views around every bend more jaw gaping than the last.
I realize, after a day’s drive, that I have felt this peace before. The Azuero washed over my worries as a child and floats my spirit again in gratitude.
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 highest bidder (Drive day 105 minus 14 years)
We are taking a detour off the Pan-American, winding through a peninsula called the Azuero. But we could be time traveling into 1950s American cowboy country. We stumble onto a cattle auction and vegetarian me is shocked to see that a side of beef on the hoof costs more than most Panamanians’ cars.
But its the bidding’s intensity, the scrutiny of heft, horn, hoof that is most unnerving. Not to mention kids glueing auction numbers onto the flanks of writhing, muscular animals that could skewer them in a heartbeat.
When we return to the camper, men are waiting to ask us about the stickers down the back of the camper we’ve collected in every country along the route. What seems ridiculously dangerous to them? Driving through Nicaragua.
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.
Twisted, weird Boquete (Drive day 104 minus 14 years)
In the years since the first road trip down the Pan-American, this mountain outpost has become something of a retiree-darling. But we head to Boquete for the temperatures: cool 70s after Costa Rica’s stifling rainy season heat. Clearly there’s something in the water — this park features yard art gone psycho. Lewis Carroll couldn’t have dreamed up crazier.
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.
Frontera fears (Drive day 103 minus 14 years)
E
Entering Panama was a disaster back in 1973 — I watched my dad getting tied to a chair by his belt in a border jail and had to turn on the water works to get corrupt guards to let him go. It’s all in the book The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan-American Highway but for today’s purposes, let’s just say I really needed a drink on the other side.
- ← Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
"TeresaBruceBooks" 