26 Diciembre 2012 – Chitre : To, In, and Around

Ola —

We awoke in the clouds at Cerro La Vieja… and after a fairly good breakfast, we walked the grounds which are truly spectacular. This would be a fantastic place if they could get the food act together. I think the problem is that the chef leaves at 6 pm which is why they needed to know what we wanted to eat by 6 pm… although we weren’t going to come to the restaurant until after 8. He must cook it and then it sits around until you come to eat .. at that point the young server re-heats the meal.. and voila.. it appears at your table like a piece of rubber… At least breakfast was simple and freshly prepared.

After a nice stroll, with the sun coming in and out, we headed to the next adventure. We thought we’d take a small road (they are all small, but this was more of a dirt road) to see if we could circle back to Penonome in the opposite direction… toward Tubare and La Pintada (towns on the map, about which we know nothing since we no longer have the guidebook — left in Panama City on that black shelf and the Internet brings up just about nothing)… so we headed out on the dirt road, but as the road got increasingly difficult we asked some people if it was the right road, and no one seemed to be able to give us much information… Two people said to go the other way — back to Penonome and then to head to these towns.. So we decided to take the more direct route.. to Chitre through Penonome. By the way, driving includes going over quite old bridges that have unsecured small metal plates that bounce up and get out of place when you drive over them.

Along the way we saw a few life-sized stuffed dummies which looked a little like Richard Nixon.. with a Pinocchio nose.. carrying a full size brief case with a dollar sign. Naturally, I stopped to photograph and the people in the house came out.. I asked who it was and found out it was Martinelli, President of Panama — From what I have read, Martinelli ran for President in 2004 as the candidate for the Democratic Change Party and lost badly. But in 2009 he ran again and made promises to decrease corruption and violent crime.. He also spent about $35 million on his campaign (obviously learned a lot about elections when he was in the US where he went to military school and college). So, he won by double digits — defeating the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD)-People’s Party coalition. Their candidate was accused of having some affiliation with Noriega and was also called a Chavista (supporter of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez). I gather his popularity has declined significantly.. and thus a little protest is unfolding — way up in the mountains! Nice to see political involvement… and I gather the people I chatted with are left-leaning.

Eventually, we made it to Penonome.. and on to Chitre.. Not much to report on the drive or about Chitre… But we did have an interesting experience as we attempted to locate a restaurant that people raved about on the Internet — Bistrot Paname — GPS is only working intermittently on both iPad and iPhone.. so there’s a lot of “mmmmm… maybe this road..” and “maybe that one..” Fortunately all of these places are really small so generally you can’t stray too far afield.

We are staying at the Gran Azuero Hotel, which is not quite as grand as the name. It’s on the main drag.. and basically it’s fine. Our room overlooks the hotel pool and we are on the second floor. It’s fairly new. The hotel has three floors, but somehow they are only now installing an elevator, making the lobby area a bit of a mess, and also making it difficult to get to our room with our bags… But otherwise all is well.

We asked at the desk when we arrived about the Bistrot Paname (Internet descriptions rave about the food and atmosphere).. but they never heard of it. I showed them the location on my iPad, but they were unsure.. then we tried to call, but even in my poor Spanish I understood the recording to say it was a wrong number. We asked the desk to call, but they have no way to get phone numbers so they dialed the same number and got the same response.

After we toured Chitre… getting stuck in traffic and a maze of commercial streets, we decided to try to find the restaurant ourselves, to see if it would be open tonight.. Naturally we got very very lost but got a good sense of different neighborhoods here in Chitre.  We thought we were following the blow up map of the city that Google Maps provided… but alas we got nowhere…

What makes things really difficult as I mentioned earlier is that there are NO street signs.. unless people make them themselves and hang them up, but that is pretty rare and also totally inconsistent, so it’s hard to know what a street sign would even look like (shape, color, size, font).. I think we’ve seen just two street signs all day  (both handmade).. We sort of gave up… but when we got back to the hotel at about 5 pm decided to ask again at the front desk… This time the woman said while she didn’t know the restaurant she could explain from the Google map how to get there.. so she drew her own map with little local landmarks — a mosque, a store owned by someone from China, a school, etc. — and we followed that little hand-drawn map to a T… and lo and behold there was the restaurant.. or at least the remains of a restaurant. ..on a little residential street. Talked with a neighbor and apparently they moved the restaurant to Las Tablas.. a town about 30 miles from here.

So we will head to dinner at a little local hangout close to the hotel called Memories! We shall see.

Tomorrow we have the longest driving day of the trip… from here to Boquete, in the coffee growing region. The drive should be pleasant and hopefully it will be cooler than it is here in Chitre.

It’s evening now.. so I’m going to do a bit of work before dinner.. and then we have a long day.

Just finished dinner at Memories which was actually good, but we never ate so much meat in one sitting. Portions were huge.

The elevator installation people are back at work, along with the guy applying stucco to the wall. It’s 10 pm, so I assume union rules don’t go over too well here. Also OSHA watch out — His “scaffolding” is an empty paint can on which he is standing… no protection.. But lots of onlooking “supervisors”…

More tomorrow from Boquete, if there is Wi-Fi.

Fern