Although Consorcio San Lorenzo received Colon's France Field airport in a sorry state, the weekday afternoon commuter flight from Albrook is cheap, one of the best ways to see the Panama Canal, and at least as safe as the drive. Ah, but the bus is cheaper, and if one is heading out from Perejil after six on a Friday night, the planes and trains have all come and gone. My Saturday morning picture taking, and my delivery of some of the last copies of the special print edition of The Panama News for distribution to cruise ship passengers, couldn't wait until Monday. The economic circumstances of The Panama News dictated my choice: the bus.

Actually, more than one bus. While I could walk to the Albrook bus terminal in 15 minutes, taking the shortcut and crossing a couple of streets where the traffic can be dangerous, it's something I don't like to do while darkness is falling and I'm carrying several hundred dollars worth of photographic equipment. Taxis are much quicker and the possibility of robbery is reduced almost to nil, but taking the red devil city bus to the terminal is a dollar and a quarter cheaper.

So it was onto the diablo rojo --- one that displayed an unofficial 25¢ sticker inside. Seated behind me was a cop carrying a backpack and wearing jungle fatigues. He'd be getting off before the public bus terminal, at National Police headquarters, probably to board a bus and then a boat that would take him to some remote Darien border outpost.

But as we made our way down Avenida Central, traffic slowed, Tourism Police on bicycles passed us, and we saw Transito Police delaying buses to check papers ahead. The driver told us to disembark, which we did, boarding the air-conditioned but crowded new bus behind us, a vehicle that had its official 25¢ seal. Without passengers aboard, the red devil's driver would get a cheaper ticket when nailed by Transito for operating without a permit and whatever other offenses they would cite.

I was carrying my camera and lenses in a handy woven fish basket, concealed in a plastic grocery bag that in turn was inside a cloth tote bag, under some clothes and a science fiction paperback I was reading at the time. I was dressed down for the occasion, both to express my grubby hippie nature and to look the part of somebody who carries nothing worth stealing.

Being that it was standing-room-only, I grabbed the railing above with one hand and held onto my basket with the other. But the woman seated next to me offered to hold my basket, which is a common courtesy in Panamanian bus riding etiquette. The advantage to her is that with me holding on with two hands, sudden stops, swerves or bumps wouldn't send me stumbing onto her. And thus a little help from a stranger made my canned sardine imitation so much more comfortable.

At the terminal, the next Colon express bus was just beginning to fill. That gave me a good selection of seats. These are big, comfortable, air-conditioned buses, equipped with video screens at the front and in the middle. My preference is a spot near the front for an easier exit, by a window for the aesthetics and because I know I'll be one of the last people off and would rather not be climbed over, and at a good distance and angle to enjoy the movie.

Colon bus movies are almost always pirated in the context in which they are shown --- legally rented from a video store, but illegally shown to customers who paid bus fare for the privilege of seeing them. Sometimes the movies are good, sometimes they are Oscar-nominee Hollywood productions, and on these buses you get to see some genres that never make it on cable here, things like independent black productions from the USA and Israeli action thrillers. Mostly, however, what you get is grade B softcore sex and hardcore violence.

(With Colon bus movies, there is a way to distinguish the "action thrillers" from the "psychological thrillers." In the former, the victims tend to be male, and often meet their maker in multiples, usually in a hail of bullets or an explosion. In the latter, the victims go one by one and are much more likely to depart this world by way of stabbing or strangulation. The bad guys in action thrillers are almost always dour, strident fanatics, but sometimes the psychological thriller antagonists giggle while practicing their craft.)

On this evening we had one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time, "Radical Jack," starring Billy Ray Cyrus. If you're a radical, you won't be impressed. Yeah, yeah, there's a CIA triple-cross, the US government is portrayed as a bunch of thugs in league with bloodthirsty gun running Latin American death squad types, and the good guy has long hair, takes on misogynistic racist rednecks and crooked cops, and wins the heart of the foxy downtrodden waitress. But yuck, Jack ain't radical enough to replant the roots of anything, whether in the fields of American politics or of Hollywood stereotypes. If "Radical Jack" comes onto your cable TV screen, switch the channel.

After letting people off in Sabanitas, the bottleneck around Four Corners, a couple of stops in Rainbow City and the major disembarkations in front of Colon city's phone company offices and public market, there were just two passengers left, a yachtie headed for the terminal and then the short walk to the yacht club in Cristobal and yours truly. I got off at Calle 11 and Avenida Bolivar, smack dab in the middle of the red light district. The driver may have thought me oddly dressed for a visit to the whorehouse, but my destination was across the street. The pimp on the street corner took one look at me and didn't even try to steer me toward a visit with the ladies, as he generally tries when I pass that intersection more stylishly attired. My camouflage worked well that night, even though there was very little deception about it.