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Also in this section:
On the road to the Darien
Ngobe kids
Gas woes
 

If it's this light when you set out, the bus won't go all the way to Yaviza

The road into and out of the Darien

story and photos by Eric Jackson

Surely you have heard the old adage that "the early bird gets the worm." However, if you are reading these words, there is a high probability that you are not a bird, and almost as great a chance that you would be most displeased if you were served worms for breakfast. And it just might also be the case that you don't care to be awake before the birds in order to board the day's last bus that goes all the way to Yaviza.

Two buses leave the national bus terminal at Albrook every day, bound for Yaviza. They leave at 4 and 5 a.m. respectively. My traveling companion and I missed those, albeit that our destination was to Yaviza and beyond, in the Embera-Wounaan Comarca.

Instead we arose at a more reasonable hour and boarded an 8 a.m. bus that would get us only as far as Meteti. That meant that we'd have to switch to a chiva in Meteti to go the rest of the way to Yaviza, and that we'd be lucky to make it to the river we would navigate on the following leg of our journey by nightfall.

This being a Saturday morning, we boarded the bus early and got our pick of seats, and when we pulled out of the terminal the vehicle was not crowded. We picked up a few passengers in San Miguelito, a few more in Tocumen, 24 de Diciembre, then got nearly full in Chepo. The stops seemed to outnumber the passengers boarding while we were still in the metro area, and then from Chepo eastward we became the local rural transport system, with most passengers getting on and off the bus at points within a few miles of one another.

The further east we went, the more cops we saw. No khaki city uniforms here --- they were decked out in their green combat fatigues, toting AK-47s and wanting to see our ID. In the course of years past I had run into such screenings at the Bayano Bridge and at the border between Panama and Darien provinces at Cañazas, but now the heavy scrutiny has at least tripled, and starts before you hit Chepo. Those, like the woman with whom I was traveling, who show passports rather than cedulas are pulled aside to be registered and sometimes questioned.

"Are your papers in order? Nein! Take him away!" Such are the thoughts that come to the mind of someone of my age and cultural background when stopped in such fashion, but this actually wasn't Nazi movie stuff. Graying Panagringo hippies will get the double take on the cedula, and maybe an innocuous sounding question to listen to the way that Spanish is spoken in response. An American accent won't set off alarms, but heaven help you if you sound like a Colombian. And Canadians? Highly suspect, like all foreigners, but not to be stopped for that reason alone. Foreigners with expired visas or other defects in their papers will not be allowed to continue the journey. And this is not the place to wear a FARC-EP t-shirt, ELN bandana or AUC armband. The police are looking for fugitives, illegal immigrants, drug traffickers, gun runners and agents of Colombia's warring factions. Sometimes they find someone from the first two categories on a bus, but the latter three groups are much more likely to use private transportation. But let's not hear any whining about class discrimination in violation of the Panamanian constitution. Whether you drive a Lexus or ride the bus, you will be scrutinized.

The two objects of special attention on this trip were an American Peace Corps volunteer and my Canadian traveling partner. At Cañazas the latter was the subject of a phone call to some Central Scrutinizer in another place, but this was as severe as neither Abu Ghraib nor the Miami International Airport. But given the history of guns and drugs and irregular armed forces, they do try to keep close tabs on all foreigners.

A little after three in the afternoon --- what with the many stops, including a leisurely lunch break, we didn't make very good time, even though the road is now paved except for a spot here or there all the way to the Aguas Frias-Santa Fe area --- we got to Meteti, where we were inspected by cops again and piled into a chiva.

The chiva, according to its contemporary meaning, at Meteti's transport terminal

"Chiva" means something different today from when I was a kid. Then it was any little old bus, but now the word signifies a converted pickup truck, generally four wheel drive, with a roof and benches in the back and dedicated to rural transport. These tend to be crowded and uncomfortable, but they go where ordinary buses and cars often can't. This time we had people hanging on the back to start and cargo ranging from farm seeds to ordinary luggage to tanks of outboard motor fuel. The passengers included farmers, students and a few rural teachers. As we proceeded, we let off some passengers and picked up some others, ending up slightly less crowded in Yaviza.

Being crowded together in this fashion is conducive to conversation, assuming you speak the language. My Canadian friend did not, but I occasionally joined into the discussion that ranged from what's wrong with the way that Panamanians think and act, who has bought or sold which properties along the route and whether Martín Torrijos will or even can meet his aim of keeping the highway between Meteti and Yaviza open.

I use the word "highway" with qualification. We're not talking about a four-lane job, or even in many places a two-lane road. Forget about blacktop, unless and until the Inter-American Development Bank-funded improvement project gets around to completion. Don't even think "gravel." Pulling out of Meteti it was dirt with a few wet spots from the season's early rains, and then as precipitation began to fall the road surface oscillated between mud and mire. But here and there Ministry of Public Works bulldozers, stilled for the weekend, were deployed for further work, usually with piles of gravel to scrape into the ruts.

About halfway to Yaviza, at Canglon, the road gets really bad and the chiva drivers get to demonstrate their skills. We finished this leg of our journey as darkness fell, and were met in Yaviza by our guides and hosts for our voyage upriver to the comarca.

Ah, but before an outsider boards a piragua to head upriver in the Darien these days, a prolonged examination at the local police barracks is required, even for Panagringos with valid cedulas, and certainly for foreign nationals. We got that formality out of the way rather immediately, so that we could then grab some dinner, pay an outrageous $20 for what passes for a hotel room in these parts, bathe in most rustic fashion and get some shuteye before going onto the water the following morning.

While a few adventurers have with great effort and substantial economic backing crossed the Darien Gap on motorcycles or four wheel drive vehicles, Yaviza, on the banks of the Chucunaque River, is as far as the road goes. You can cross the river on a footbridge, but from this point Darien residents get about the province by water, via the two main rivers flowing into the Gulf of San Miguel, the Tuira and the Chucunaque, and their many tributaries. The trip upriver and back, and what we did and saw in the comarca, are other stories.

After you get as far as the chiva takes you, you go the rest of the way in a piragua

Being the end of the road, such as it is, Yaviza is a ramshackle and rowdy frontier town where the missionaries, the drug dealers and the bars compete for souls. The Assembly of God dance hall seemed as loud as the bar up the street from the hotel, and the young men in gangsta duds appeared to be of yet another cultural milieu. No doubt the characters and lifestyle options were different in the days when Yaviza's most infamous native, one Manuel Antonio Noriega, was growing up, but those would be mostly little details of form rather than substance. This is and long has been a rough little town, the last important intersection of the long-established black and indigenous populations, the somewhat later colono farmers, and Panama's national institutions, before the Darien jungle.

The door to the room where we stayed the night was secured with but a flimsy latch and bore the clear signs of having been broken down on more than one occasion. Ah, but there were three beds for the two of us, one of which we shoved against the door for that extra little measure of security.

The room's only decoration was a cheaply framed photo portrait of a woman standing in a white negligee. I suppose that if that sort of entertainment was desired, it could be easily arranged. I didn't ask.

*     *     *

Travel pages are generally about round trips and this will be no exception.

As it was still light when we boarded the piragua for the village and about halfway to Yaviza the clouds burst open upon us, it was to be expected that the last bus all the way to Panama, which leaves Yaviza at 7 a.m., would have left promptly before the road got any worse.

And so it was. On this Monday morning we thus jammed ourselves into the next chiva, a motley collection of middle aged  farmers and professionals and three young men headed to their high school halfway to Meteti.

We lucked out by missing the bus. Rainy season was definitely upon us and a few miles out of Yaviza we encountered the bus stuck up to its axles in the mud, having failed to negotiate its way around a truck that was similarly bogged down, and tipping close to the point where it would have fallen over onto its side. Ah, but our driver was good, and got around that obstacle and several other stuck vehicles en route to Meteti.

Surveyor Pastor Mena Torres, who was born and raised in the Darien, observed that the mud season had begun, having displaced the dust season that prevailed a month before. While the chiva made its way through the slop, the Spanish-speaking elders maintained a lively and wide-ranging conversation and the high school boys kept their silence.

"Back then you had to keep your dogs upstairs with you at night, or else the jaguars would eat them," Mena reminisced.

The 50-something independent businessman is, however, forward-looking and disparages "conformist" thinking. To wit, he's among the minority of Panamanians who think it's a good idea to not only pave the road all the way to Yaviza --- everyone in the Darien's for that --- but to extend it through the Darien Gap all the way to Colombia, adding the final link in a Pan-American Highway that would get you all the way from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in an ordinary car. "They have to corral the guerrillas, but once they do that and finish the road, the opening of international commerce across the border would change the way that people in the Darien live, for the better."

A couple of hours later we pulled in to Meteti, where we were duly scrutinized by police and piled out to wait for the next bus to Panama.

Headed the other way we noticed a tall white man in a green fatigue jacket bearing a Panamanian flag patch, worn over civilian clothing. He was carrying a green US Army-issue backpack and discussing road conditions ahead with the police. A few minutes later he was at the nearby police station with his jacket off, wearing a holster that carried a pistol that appeared substantially more powerful than your .38 police special. So who was this guy?

A few minutes later he was back at the transport terminal and introduced himself. The conversation began in Spanish, and as soon as he realized that the Canadian didn't speak the language, shifted to English. It was Carlos Espino, President Torrijos's cousin, a European-educated lawyer and one of the Darien's two country judges. (That explained the sidearm.) He was bound for Yaviza and had apparently failed in his attempt to hitch a ride with the police, who were wary of getting one of their few available vehicles stuck in the mire between Meteti and Yaviza on this rainy day.

Espino said he was familiar with The Panama News, and opined that we ought to tell our readers more about what the construction of a highway through the Darien Gap would bring to Panama. "Do you know what a road would bring us?" he asked. "FARC, the AUC, cows with hoof-and-mouth disease..." I replied. "Precisely," he said. Hizzoner, who hears penal, civil and family cases, doesn't particularly relish the extra work he expects that a road to Colombia would add to his criminal docket.

Meanwhile, frustration had set in among those of us bound for the capital. The time for the next bus to Panama City came and went without the bus showing up. It was getting close to noon, the bus we had hoped to take was getting on an hour late and the following departure wasn't until late afternoon. Most of us, myself included, wanted to be in the city before sundown.

In Meteti separate bus and chiva syndicates operate out of the same little transit center, and the chivas were about to grab some business by offering a ride to Aguas Frias, where capital-bound buses of a different syndicate could be boarded. So the lady from the bus syndicate called in another bus to substitute.

Then, just ahead of the substitute bus, came the one that should have come and gone some time before. Everybody boarded that one and we pulled out, but the substitute bus and another had blocked off the road. After some confusion everyone got off and boarded the substitute bus, which set out with the regularly scheduled bus tailgating in hot pursuit. A passing police pickup was summoned and both vehicles and their drivers were obliged to return to the Meteti police post to resolve the dispute.

Ultimately it was held that the original bus had lost its turn by being late and we were allowed to go on our way in the substitute.

Ah, but in Santa Fe the police stopped us, as the driver who had lost his turn called ahead to that police post to complain and the argument was run all over again while we waited. (Here we had a little microcosm of one of the main things that's wrong with Panamanian justice. As is the case with the courts, jurisdictional lines are blurry and this is exploited by those who don't get their way in the first instance to shop around for another authority, so that nothing ever seems to get promptly and definitively settled.)

UItimately we were allowed to continue in the substitute bus. Ah, but we got an inkling of just why it was a substitute bus. It had to be push-started, with the assist coming from a truck.

So wouldn't you know that we'd have further problems. No, not as in more surprise encounters with the police. Rather, as in running out of gas somewhere just short of Chepo.

The situation was, as one might expect, not much fun for those with urbanized concepts of time or for those more laid-back types who nevertheless had appointments that would be missed. But for this reporter it was an opportunity to stand up and stretch muscles cramped by too much sitting in buses, chivas and piraguas in too few days.

Help was summoned, fuel was purchased and delivered and the little fire that broke out when the carburetor was primed with a little gasoline mercifully did not engulf the bus. So on our way we went, albeit with stops at roadside stands so that some of the passengers could buy cheese, ice cream beans, plantains, or watermelons.

Finally, and a bit before sundown, we arrived in the city, each of us more or less in one piece.

(Why the weasel words? Those are mainly due to the uncertainty about whether to count the little pieces that the chiggers ate --- yes, the half-dozen of the critters that infested me very palpably took their bites out of my flesh, but it is the nature of the things that I still carried them and their meals around in my body. And what was a hand-to-mouth reporter left momentarily without even the means to buy some clear nail polish to do? If he's the son of a mad doctor he'll experiment, as I did. It turns out that white-out correction fluid works in such situations as well.)

*     *     *

So is there a more convenient way to get from Panama City to Peña Bijagual in the Embera-Wounaan Comarca and back?

Indeed, it seems that one can fly in and out of El Real, about an hour's piragua ride from Yaviza. From the sightseer's point of view the extra mileage on the Darien river system is a bonus, as are the chance to see the area from the air and the vastly reduced overall travel time. But flying to and from the outer boonies in small planes is a risk that some travelers won't care to take.

Also in this section:
On the road to the Darien
Ngobe kids
Gas woes