December 25, 2012 – Casco Viejo a Cerro la Vieja en las montanas

December 25, 2012: Casco Viejo a Cerro La Vieja en las montanas (Sent on December 26.. due to absolutely NO connection at Cerro La vieja)
Ola y Feliz Navidad de un locacion remoto (lejano) en Panama —

First — apologies to all Spanish speakers… I’m doing my best.. and I cannot find tildas or accents in my email program.. so .. le ruego me disculpe (??)

Today got off to a difficult start. Had breakfast at our W-wannabe hotel… stuck my toe outside the door to find it was about the same temperature and humidity as yesterday.. and quickly pulled my toe back inside. Actually, we needed to get on the road because we knew that today’s drive might be a bit complicated.. But first things first. My iPad was not connecting to any signal, although it showed a clear and strong signal on the screen. Blackberry and iPhone and computer all worked fine, but I was relying on the iPad GPS to guide us seamlessly (??) to our destination in a remote area up in the mountains about 20- kilometers from Penonome (which is like being 20 kilometers from nowhere)…So, getting my iPad back in service (it didn’t connect when I arrived in Panama City, but then after more than an hour on the phone with AT&T –voila!); worked and tracked fine on Monday morning, but I didn’t really use it after that.. so now here we are on Tuesday and — nada! So I called AT&T again, and if you can believe it… I got the same service guy that I had the day before (!!) which made things a hairline better because he knew that it had been connected and he knew that I was on the data plan for all these devices (Don’t start asking me why I travel with all of these communication devices… I’d be a real basket case on these trips if I was not connected… but that’s another issue.)

To make things just a wee bit messier, Mike has not been able to connect at all since he got here.. He can use his phone and text, but no email on his Blackberry. He was pretty pissed, so he had already decided that he was calling AT&T about his problem. So there we both were, for at least 75 minutes on cell phones standing out on the little deck of our room in Panama City… talking to some guys in “who knows where” trying to get connection. About an hour later, I was reconnected on the iPad, but Mike was still in limbo. (and a bit more agitated than at the start of the morning, when he had high hopes of getting online)..

So, late start to begin with… including the unbelievably slow service for all meals in all restaurants. Panamanians have a lot of time… Except last night at dinner when they “speed-fed” us our 13 courses.. because we were the last customers at the restaurant on Christmas Eve.. As soon as we sat down they hung up the “cerrado” sign… So they let us in, but they were anxious to get out for the evening.. Can’t say I blame them.

OK.. finally, around noon — on the road! Or so we thought.
Turns out that Google seems to have completely changed the map formats.. and plugging in our coordinates proved way more difficult than it had been just two days earlier… Once I got that little blue dot to function on the map we were way off course… So, lots of u-turns and more u-turns… and remember – no street signs, so it’s impossible to follow any kind of directions or even a print map. Eventually we were cruising… over a bridge and through national parks as well as through Panama style strip malls.. And on a road with views of the Pacific.. Everywhere there is construction — some that appears to be really happening… and elsewhere where it seems as if it’s been stopped for some time. And while billboards are infrequent, when they appear they are mostly advertising new condominiums that are popping up anywhere with access to the water.

The drive was supposed to take about three hours… After about 90 minutes we decided to stop for lunch and thought taking a side road to the beach would be fun. First try did lead to a beach, sort of. A real “people’s beach”… with lots of garbage.. and no restaurant. So a few miles further west we tried again… in a little area called Santa Clara. Again a “people’s beach” but far less trash, many more people, little thatched-roofed beach sitting areas, and a little open air restaurant. We had lunch – not exactly four-star – but decent (I had calamari; Mike had corvina (bass)). Service was very slow, so this set us behind a bit more… And then we were off to Penomone where we needed to find a small road to get to Cerro la Vieja. We had a faxed, hand drawn map sent by the “hotel”… and we could see that same map more clearly on the iPad… and we had the iPad’s own map which located the hotel through GPS… in a totally different place than where the hotel was… After a while, still on the main road, looking for the clues on the hotel map… (we knew that the hotel was 30 km from Penonome, and we needed to find a small road at the location of some hotel on the main road)… we realized we had gone way too far on the main road… Pulled over, talked to truckers and used the very helpful “retorno”… Ok.. retrace the steps and now the iPad was helpful since we could plot the name of the “hotel” where we would turn left.. to go uphill to our hotel

Forgot to mention that somehow one of us .. both of us .. (not going to mention who asked whom if “everything” was packed).. left the Panama guidebook in the Casco Viejo hotel.. which also didn’t help in guiding us to the region.. Mike says it was the fault of the interior decorator of the hip hotel, because the shelves were all black and there was very poor lighting in the room, so he never saw the book (although the cover was yellow!).

Did it.. and then stopped several people because again we could see we had made a mistake. No one knew Cerro La Vieja.. but people knew other clues on the hotel map. Eventually, about seven people later, we were fairly certain (not positive) we were on the right small road.. (The hotel map could use some help.. no scale, the points noted are all evenly spaced on the road but in reality they are of vastly different distances.) About 40 minutes later (fortunately just before it was getting dark) we were there!

Cerro la Vieja is delightful, although for me about 24 hours will be quite enough (and in reality we will only be here about 18 hours).. It’s high in the mountains, beautiful views of dense forest .. There are 22 rooms in bunch of cottage like structures.. and a main building where the dining and ping pong take place. No phones, no TVs, no nuttin’… We have a little deck off our room with a hammock .. and it is totally pitch black at night… Actually it is incredibly pleasant and a nice respite from Panama City and from the drive. Mike says he’s in heaven and can consider this for his retirement location (but he says that every time we travel anywhere).

We are headed to dinner soon. We’re not expecting much; maybe we’ll be surprised.
We had to make our dinner choices as soon as we came.. Maybe they need to go to the market or defrost things… Pretty basic choices.. Dinner is about $8 and glass of wine is $3.. so can’t really complain.

If you get this note on Christmas night (December 25) you’ll know that the Wi-Fi in the open air “lobby” works, since I cannot connect in the room. If you get this on December 26 you’ll know that it didn’t work. We had a power outage about an hour after we checked in.. but all seems back again.

No CNN; no connection on computer or iPad. This could radically change me as a person.
Best…
Hasta luego –
Fern