Jeff on the Camino de Cruces

Jeff and I hiked a very, short distance on the Camino de Cruces. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Camino de Cruces was the road that the Spanish carried all their loot from South America across the Panamanian isthmus and on to Spain.

Castle San Lorenzo and literally Driving through the Panama Canal

Andy Terry at Monkey Island in Sobrania National Park

Kellee and the Winner of Latin America IDOL

Kellee Farmer and Margarita (who won Latin American Idol). They met at the Presidential Palace in Panama while First Lady Laura Bush visited the First Lady of Panama.

Marine Ball 2008

We attended the annual Marine Ball which is always a good time. You can see it degenerated pretty fast. Pictured here is our friend Robin and my favorite MSG Ruben, who never looks this serious except in photos.

Jana and Nikki's Wedding

We attended Jana and Nikki's wedding on November 1 in Washington. It was a really, really beautiful wedding, and they had their reception at their new (gigantic, newly renovated, beautiful and perfect) house in Petworth. I was honored to light a candle at the ceremony.

The weather in DC was perfect, and it made us miss living there - we love enternal summer, but we miss the changing of the seasons too. We also gorged ourselves on Thai and Indian food, virtually unknown in Panama, and JB got his good beer. We returned home to Panama to nearly non-stop national day celebrations.

Diablo Rojos Near Colon

We can't help but love the pollution-spewing, dangerous, hot and crowded Diablos Rojos, because we don't have to commute in them to work. Did I mention that the drivers are often drunk and compete with each other for riders by speeding down the streets and cutting everyone off? As you can see, the best ones are brightly and cleverly painted. The back doors in particular are interesting - lots of times they sport pictures of wives/girlfriends or kids, but also sports figures, singers, actors (we recently saw Bruce Willis) and politicians. We have also randomly seen Osama bin Laden and Matt Lauer. We see lots of Disney characters and other cartoon-type pictures on the sides of the Diablos. These aren't the best, just the ones we've been able to get pictures of as usually I am trying to take a photo while Jim B is swerving away from the Diablos trying to spare our lives. These were parked in a lot near Portobelo.

Caribbean Boat Ride to "Pupy's Beach"

Our friend and coworker Colombia invited us out for the day to their favorite beach spot near Isla Grande. We drove toward Colon to the Caribbean side of Panama, through Portobelo and then rented a boat - we cruised around Isla Grande, a huge beautiful island in the Caribbean that hosts the resort Bananas and some others. We stopped at the restaurant of Pupy, a Panamanian with a Bob Marley fixation. Pupy's staff made us the best garlicy patacones and coconut rice ever. I mistakenly thought we were going for "lunch" so I didn't wear my swimsuit, but Colombia's husband Edwin was nice enough to offer his extra swim trunks. I was stylin, and there are no pictures, unfortunately, of that. The pictures you see here are of 1) the resturant next door to Pupy's; 2) a resort (I think Bananas on Isla Grande that our friends can visit with us; 3) all of us on the boat; 4) the Caribbean and 5) Pupy's place. You all want to see this place.

Survey of San Miguelito

Both of us visited the district of San Miguelito with their local Diputado (congressman). He wanted us to get an idea of his vast and electorally important district. Panama doesn't divide up their districts generally evenly as we do, they sometimes have huge districts like San Miguelito where they have seven representatives who all represent the same large area. We started in a middle-class neighborhood where they were holding an exercise class. We had several more stops and by the end we were trekking up muddy paths to meet people who live in tin shacks without electricity (ok, the manage to steal some from the electricity lines that run through their neighborhood), running water or sewers. It is strange to look out at prosperous Panama from these desperately poor areas.

Kellee in Kuna Yala (aka San Blas)

Kel visited Kuna Yala, a semi-independent area run by the Kuna people, occupying a strip of land bordering the Caribbean. She accompanied some guys from our Defense Attache's Office who were going to tell the Kuna leaders (sylas) that a planned medical mission to Kuna Yala had been cancelled because the ship had been diverted to help hurricane victims in Haiti. She took the opportunity to familiarize myself with the area - as beautiful as a National Geographic magazine photo - and meet the sylas to talk with them about the relationship with the national leadership. If you can find it on a map, she flew to Corazon de Jesus airport, which is near Nargana, and then took a succession of boats to Mulatupu. Pictured here are: 1) a typical Kuna house (with political party flags in this case) seen from the boat; 2) the Corazon de Jesus airport seen from the boat; 3) the taxi line outside of the airport; 4) a photo of the Kuna dugout boats with an island in the background - a common sight, it is said that there are 365 islands in Kuna terrority, some teeny tiny with only a couple of palm trees and others big enough for a community; 4) me at Corazon de Jesus airport; 5) a typical Kuna community, seen from the boat.

The leaders of the Kuna: sylas

The Kuna people are led by caciques, who control large areas of land, and sylas, who are leaders of local towns. They are all elected, and while they hold a lot of power, they can be removed anytime. Kuna communities have large grass huts where the men of the community come together to chew over issues. The sylas (usually 3 per community) represent individual communities in the Kuna Congress, and also the Kuna of Panama and Colombia get together in an international Congress. Here I - the giant monster on the right, am pictured with the sylas from one of the communities (the guy on the right is also a gringo). I love, love, love the hats the sylas wear. The other pictures show the inside of the meeting house - the sylas recline in hammocks while other leaders sit closely by. We visited a lot of these meeting halls and met with sylas who seemed to be sleeping at times. The painting pictured here is of three famous sylas from Kuna history - you can see their unpronounceable names. Also note that many, many Kuna have names like Smith, Jones, Anderson - because of their long-time contact with English-speaking merchants, pirates and others in the Caribbean, many at some time in the past adoped English names. I met only one female syla - she told me she was an "administrative syla" (whatever that is) - generally women can't be leaders except of the cooperatives that make and sell the iconic embroidered "mola."

daily life in Kuna Yala

This hodgepodge of photos shows: 1) a school bus/boat - some of the islands aren't big enough for schools so the kids are transported to other islands for school; 2) Kuna women buying groceries from the Colombian boats that come chock full of groceries and trade for coconuts; 3) the Colombian grocery store; 4) just a nice photo of rice in a bowl with a pretty green bird.

our hotel in Kuna Yala

I was in heaven in this hotel, which included three guest huts, a restaurant and a service hut on an island about 50 feet long. The place was called Dad Ibe lodge and cost about $60/night because it was low season. Here you see: 1) the restaurant and service hut; 2) the murder of our lobsters for dinner (i guess they need to be stabbed before going in the water; 3) the restaurant; 4) sunset at the pier; 5) my hut. Just in case you think we were too fancy on this trip, you should know that the next night in Mulatupu we stayed at a hotel that cost $5 and included a bunch of cots lined up in an open area over a bar/nightclub.

the Kuna people

Many, but not all, Kuna women dress as you see here, with a red cloth on their heads, bright cloth as a wrapped skirt, and they wear "molas," which are brightly embroidered pieces of cloth, covering their torsos. They cover their lower arms and legs with red, green and yellow plastic beads.