THE PANAMA CANAL

Twenty years ago I spent a year traveling from Los Angeles, California to the southernmost end of South America. Most of the journey was taken on local buses, traveling from town to town, through Mexico, Central America and South America. During that time I wrote a series of stories, which were published in a California newspaper. Here is one of those stories.

It was raining that morning in Quepos, Costa Rica. After a month in country, Will Bowman caught a bus for the three hour ride to the Panama border. Bowman was seven months into his year-long journey from California to Argentina. At fifty-seven, he wanted to fund his old age with fresh memories of “a really big adventure”. The plan was to ride on local buses all the way from Los Angeles to the Strait of Magellan. There would be one exception, the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia where no roads existed. For this he would take his one plane ride.

Arriving at the Panama border station in Paso Canoas, Bowman beheld a carnival of ragged humanity. Like a Fellini-esque extravaganza, it was at once squalid and colorful. A cacophony of peddlers and hucksters of all kinds could be heard feeding off the daily traffic of countless souls in passage. 

At the customs window, a corpulent immigration officer toyed with Bowman, deciding whether or not to let him into Panama. Will had learned from other travelers that things could get dicey at this station. He remained calm and kept smiling. As it happened another passenger on the bus was a Panamanian man who lived in Los Angeles. He stepped up and finessed the rotund border guard, who then grudgingly stamped Will’s passport and waved for the next pilgrim to come forward.

That evening Bowman arrived in the central highland town of Boquete, Panama. Months earlier a German woman whom Will met in Guatemala spoke of her time in Boquete. Also a seasoned wanderer, she assured him this was a place not to be missed on his journey south. Since that time, Will regretted that Ingrid had been traveling north. He would like to have gotten to know her better. But this was the life on the road.

Will wasn’t disappointed. At an elevation of 4,000 feet, the small mountain town was nestled in a lush, forested canyon. The Rio Caldera, a swift running river, passed through the town’s center. The Panamanians Will encountered in the town were the opposite of those he had encountered at the border. They were polite, considerate and possessed of quiet natures. The town contained one main street about eight blocks long and fronted with commercial buildings. To the north and south were other residential streets with one and two story homes. They presented with neatly trimmed lawns, colorful gardens, and a general sense of cleanliness. 

A fellow traveler on the bus ride from the border recommended a lodge at the west end of town. Bowman shouldered his pack and walked the six blocks to find a modest, one story building with a sign by the front door that read “Pension Caldera”. The proprietor was an older woman who spoke fluent English.  She showed him a tidy, spacious room with a private bath that he found sufficient. After he checked in he fell on the bed, exhausted by the events of the day’s journey. He slept the night on top of the bed with his clothes on.

Will spent three days in Boquete. He rented a bicycle and found his way up and down the roads and trails in the steep hills of the surrounding area. Outside of the town he found the countryside to be a colorful tapestry of coffee and flower plantations. Old colonial farmhouses mixed with modern architecture on both sides of the river. He saw that this was the kind of paradise people dream of finding to get away from it all. Had he not been filled with the purpose of his southbound journey, he might have stayed in this place. Probably for a long time.

Leaving Boquete, Bowman took a bus back to the coast and another bus on to Panama City. It was an all-day ride through an emerald world. Just after sunset, the bus crossed the Bridge of the Americas and over the Panama Canal. Massive docks and huge cranes filled the harbor on the left. They were all brightly lit with floodlights. In the dark waters to the right, Will saw red and green running lights on the water in two separate lines. These marked the shipping channels leading to and from the Canal and out into the Pacific Ocean. 

Big and bustling, Panama City presented a stark contrast to the small towns and villages of Central America where Will had spent many previous months. He decided to splurge on a fancy fifth-story hotel room with air conditioning, cable TV and a view of the ocean where ships waited to enter the Canal. For the next few days Bowman did walkabouts and taxi rides, seeing many points of interest and most of all, visiting the Miraflores Locks. There he spent an afternoon watching huge ships rise and descend in the locks chambers. Then the great steel miter gates would open, letting the ships proceed on their passage. Watching it all made him feel like a kid again. 

Will booked his first airline passage of the journey, a flight to Bogota, Colombia in South America. On his last day in Panama he decided to take a short bus ride to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, and the city of Colon.  

There was nothing about the ride to Colon that was memorable. Will had hoped the road would skirt along the Canal but it didn’t. It ran overland through a series of small towns that were rough and unfinished. When the bus rode into Colon, Will was shocked by what he saw. Everything in this city appeared to be in shambles. There was a darkness about the place. The buildings, the streets, everywhere he looked from the bus windows seemed fetid and decayed. The streets were inhabited by angry looking people. When he got off the bus at the depot he felt in fear for his safety. Bowman had traveled in over forty countries in his lifetime, many of them in the Third World. But he had never experienced anything like Colon, Panama. 

Will walked around the dark, crowded bus depot looking amongst dozens of run down buses for an express back to Panama City. He found one, bought a two dollar ticket and promptly got on it. For the next half hour people streamed onto the bus, filling it up. Just as the driver started up the engine, a well-dressed, middle aged man took the seat next to Bowman. As the bus pulled away, Will said something to the man in Spanish and they continued to speak for awhile in that language. When Will asked  the stranger where he was from, he replied “Irlanda”. 

“Ireland?” Will remarked, “I’m from the United States. Maybe we should speak in English.” 

“Right you are,” he said. “That’s more like it.” 

His name was Tommy Flanagan and he was from County Cork. 

“I graduated from Trinity College in Dublin with a degree in Geography,” he said. “Not that it did me much good. I’ve been a bricklayer for 20 years. Mind you, I’m probably the best educated bricklayer in all of Ireland.” 

Tommy spoke of a life of alternating construction work with traveling the world. 

“I’ve stuck with this trade because it’s episodic. It pays well and I can pick it up or leave it anytime I want. I guess I’m also the best traveled bricklayer in Ireland.” 

He recounted some of his travels in Asia and Africa. He preferred the remote areas, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Chad, Niger, places most people never heard of much less traveled to. But Tommy also expressed a fondness for the man-made wonders of the earth. That’s why he was in Panama. “I’m two weeks out on a six-month run,” he remarked. “I wanted to start this time at the Panama Canal.” 

“Why’s that?” Will asked. 

“It’s a great intersection on the earth,” said Tommy. “Both physical and metaphysical. It’s where North America meets South America, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Pacific Ocean.” Tommy thought for a moment. “And it’s where I’ve come to meet my destiny.” 

“That sounds poetic” Will remarked. 

“Well I am Irish.” 

Bowman spoke for awhile about the seven months he’d been traveling through Mexico and Central America. He spoke of his plans to continue taking buses on to the bottom of South America. 

“You must dearly love to ride on buses,” Tommy said. “I don’t favor them myself.” 

“How do you travel?” Will responded. 

“I walk, hitch-hike, take trains when I can. Sometimes I bicycle, and I’ve done a fair bit of sailoring.” 

“But not buses,” Will said. 

“Growing up in Ireland, I had my fill of buses,” Tommy replied. 

“But you’re on a bus now.”

“Oh I’ll ride a bus,” Tommy said, “on short runs. You know, when it’s expedient. I’m not a nut job.” 

The bus passed over a bridge with a wide deep river running below. 

“You see that river?” Tommy inquired. “That river provides the fresh water that continually replenishes all the water that drains out through the locks at both ends of the canal.” 

“Is that right? Will said. 

“With every ship, 50 million gallons of fresh water gets flushed” he declared. “Just like a big toilet.” 

“Goodness,” Will said. 

“That’s the principle,” said Tommy.

“But what happens in the dry season?” Will asked. “From December until April, doesn’t the river dry up?” 

“There is no dry season in this part of the world.” Tommy replied. “It rains all year ’round here. That’s part of the wonder of this whole contraption.”

“Wonder indeed,” said Bowman.

“You know Will, if they had to pump sea water in to refill the locks every time a ship went through, it would be very costly. The fees they charge the ship owners would be doubled or tripled.” 

“What’s it cost to run a ship through the Canal?” Will asked. “Do you know?” 

“Oh, it depends on the weight and size of the craft,” he replied. “The average transit fee is around $50,000 dollars.” 

“Wow!” Will remarked. 

“Yes!” Tommy replied. “But here’s a little tidbit for your fact book. A man once paid 36 cents to swim through the Canal.” 

“Seriously?” Will said.

“In 1928, a famous world traveler named Richard Halliburton spent 10 days swimming the 48 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” 

Bowman remembered reading Halliburton’s adventure books as a boy. He wrote wonderful stories about his exploits that gave Will a desire to travel the world when he grew up. But Halliburton travelled a much wilder world in the 1920s and ’30s. He was eventually lost at sea on a ship in a typhoon off the coast of China when he was 36 years old. 

“So where do you go from here, Tommy?”

“I don’t rightly know,” he said. “I feel like taking to the sea again. I’m trying to get passage on a sailing ship of some kind, working as crew. Maybe down the coast of South America.” 

“Which coast?” Will asked. 

“Either one,” he said. “Or maybe I’ll find a ship bound for the South Seas. That might be good. Time’ll tell.” 

“Do you worry about the dangers of an ocean voyage?”

“I worry more about a palette of bricks falling on my head,” Tommy replied. “It’s all relative, don’t you know. And besides, no one lives forever.” 

There was a break in the conversation, a long silence. The bus came into the outskirts of Panama City and started making frequent stops, letting people on and off. At one of the stops, Tommy said, “Here’s where I get off.” 

A little surprised, Will said “Well I’ve certainly enjoyed our conversation.” 

“And I have too.” He declared. “I hope you have a safe journey, Will. Farewell.” 

“Farewell Tommy,” Will said. They shook hands and Tommy exited the bus. 

Bowman rode the bus the rest of the way to the central depot in Panama City. From the depot he took a cab back to his hotel. He was glad he met up with Tommy Flanagan. He was glad he had come the distance to see the Panama Canal. It was worth seeing. The experience belonged to him now and it had meaning… something Will dreamed about when he was a kid. The next day Bowman would arrive on the South American continent where his adventures would continue.