Devils, Deviations and Deviants

Bocas del Toro, PANAMA
Feb.16-19, 2015

It is Carnival in Panama (the beginning of the Catholic season of Lent), and while this means fantastic leaping and athletic antics of red devils in the streets. along with loud music, food stands and no vehicles on the main street, it also means every place to stay is booked.  Why am I here???

Marvelous homemade paper-mache masks, and real live whips

A devilish representation of Spanish colonialism and Black
enslavement, with liberation celebrated on Ash Wednesday
when the devils are finally pacified and excorcised

My new friend Jeannie, one of the ladies running the writing retreat a couple weeks earlier, lives in Panama.  When she heard I planned to make my way down to Panama City (I couldn't come this close and not see one of the greatest engineering feats of the 19th-20th centuries, the Panama Canal), she said let's go together.  She had been here months and still hadn't made it there, and her roommate had lived in Panama City for a few months and would probably want to come too and could show us around.  What fantastic luck!

In the meantime, Jeannie lives in Bocas del Toro province, on Isla Bastimentos, just south of the Costa Rica-Panama border - why not stay a few days there on my way, and then head off together.

By some additional stored karma in my back pocket, Jeannie's friend works at a hostel in the main town, also confusedly called Bocas del Toro, on Isla Colon, and had just had a cancellation the morning of my arrival.  I would not be sleeping on the curb.

I was not, however, excited by the thought of staying in a hostel, although noted right away when I checked in that the grizzly fellow in the kitchen meant I wasn't the oldest one there.  I spent my first night in a dungeon on the main floor with no windows and three full bunkbeds.  I nearly suffocated, and had to go out into the night for some air.  As soon as reception opened in the morning, I secured myself a new spot upstairs, with windows.

Bigger map:  MAP II

Bocas del Toro town is a small town contained on the tip of land jutting out the bottom of Isla Colon.  Like Puerto Viejo, it is a bit of a backpacker-surfer ghetto, the main street crawling with tanned shaggy-haired young North American and European surfers walking barefoot around town, young backpacker couples renting bicycles to ride around the island, gangs heading off on boat tours to other islands to see animals or snorkle.  The main street is a mix of local and expat-owned restaurants, cafes, hostals, souvenir shops and food shops.  The rest of the town contains locals and real life.  And luckily my hostel, which was a couple blocks off the main street.

Carnival means business is closed for three days at the beginning of the week.  On Monday, the only bank machine in town ran out of money.  My hostel is next door to a house with a work shop out front, where strapping young lads have been working daily cutting, sanding, varnishing and putting together bunkbeds.  I've seem them subsequently dismantled, boards stacked and carried over a shoulder to the small speedboat dock, where they are loaded along with passengers onto the boat-bus to Isla Bastimentos.  Most places here don't bother with credit cards.

With only my emergency American cash (which, more luck, is mainly what is used in Panama), I was reduced to budgeting for the necessities of life (food, shelter and wine) until the bank opened on Wednesday afternoon, and my activity was limited to soaking in the town, going for early-morning runs, seeking cheap meals with Jeannie.

Jeannie at La Buguita Cafe on the water, one of my
favourites (next to the speedboat docks)

My kind of beach

My kind of brew pub

Starting with a ginger soda on tap - so fresh when it's 99C out!

One evening, I brought a few groceries home from the store, and perched myself up on the small third floor balcony of the hostel, on my own.  The thing about hostels is that everyone is so damn friendly and wants to know where you're from, where you've been, and tell you where they're from, and where they've been.  And they are at that age where it's about "what did you do", but not necessarily "what do you think" (I know, because I was there once too).  Sometimes, I really just don't want to talk to anyone.

My cup of luck had runneth dry it seemed, and the hostel owner landed on my balcony, chasing off tomcats come to deflower his young lady kitten.  We started chatting, and I found myself with a beer in hand discussing Panamanians and Panama life.  There was a bit of a special relationship between Panama and the USA during the 20th century, while the US fought off the Columbians, and completed and ran the Panama Canal.  As a result, a number of Panamanians served in the US Army, including Stefane the hostel-owner.  Retired now, with a good pension (his Afro-Caribbean roots naturally hide his age - I was shocked to learn he's 51, not the 40-ish I though he was), Stefane moved back to his Panamanian community and now runs a few businesses...

Smart, insightful and a love for sex, he's the town's sole sex shop, hidden in back of the beach clothes shop in the corner of the hostel.  When the local police conduct their rounds (as they did this particular evening), they often stay for an hour or two, each in one of the hostel's private rooms - Stefane charges a minimal fee, and asks only that they are considerate of his cleaning staff.  When Stefane started showing me pictures of himself on his phone (in the pool with his kids, in his army uniform), talking about his girlfriend, describing how they go about exercising their fantasies with a third party, and then asked if I want to join him and his friends later on for some Carnivaling, I decide it was time for me to go to bed.

People are fascinating.  This random conversation would not likely have taken the path it did where I come from.  We are a society of rules and "properness", although we have certainly relaxed over the years of my lifetime.  But no matter where we are from, I can't say that I've ever met, read about or heard of someone who doesn't like good sex.  Yet through "civilized" history, enjoying sex has been turned into a devilish evil.  Slavery is an evil.  The things that make each of us tick are as broad as the colour spectrum.  And rather than making us deviants from what in one person's eyes is normal, as long as it does not hurt or disrespect another it simply makes us one of the infinite shades on the spectrum.