Champagne Backpacking
After six weeks in Costa Rica, my buddy Josh has two more weeks until he flies home and wants to check out Bocas del Toro, Panama. Josh and I befriend a quartet of friendly Irish lads and we make a fine sixsome. I learn to scuba dive in between power hours and costume parties at the local bar Mondo Taitu. We take a bus along the skinny country to Panama City and sip champagne while we watch ships transit the Panama Canal.
But mostly I travel on my own. Most days I am the only foreigner for miles.
I ride horses in a rural mountain town in Panama where the air is pure and crisp. I hike through two national parks in a single day in search of the elusive quetzal. I am lulled to sleep by the sound of the ocean in a barebones cabin on an empty beach at the end of the road. I go to an authentic rodeo and watch traditional Panamanian dancing and macho vaqueros corral 800-pound steers.
I splurge on $6 lobster dinners in Nicaragua as a South African surfer gazes at me and feeds me a new line: “I’m trying to think of the best compliment I can give you.” In a small town called La Salsa, I visit a friend in the Peace Corps who helps local women start their own businesses.
The next week I find myself on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala in a waterfront town with a church that some claim was built with drug money. The local drug dealer is – who else – the pastor’s wife. I buy a gorgeous necklace made of Guatemalan jade, the only mirror I have to look in belongs to a motorcycle parked nearby. The French hippie who made the necklace tells me he would marry me right then because the necklace looks so beautiful on me. At $20, it’s a big purchase, but he cuts me a deal because he needs the money for rent.
I sandwich myself into an old American school bus between grandmas with chickens on their laps and set off to study an ancient Mayan dialect in the Guatemalan highlands. My teacher, a local Mayan woman, is no taller than 5 feet and is adorned in beautiful, colorful embroidery from head to toe. She takes me to a nearby village where I witness a Mayan ceremony performed by a local shaman.
I keep pinching myself because it’s all so amazing.
