We started with a walk down to find the “Flecha Roja” Bus Station where buses left for Puerto Escondido, our next destination. We found it just off of a road with a drainage ditch running down the centre. Local taxi drivers were washing their cars in the dubious looking water.
On the way back we bought some monkey nuts in their shells and ate them on a bench before having a good breakfast of Mexican omelette with many peppers in it. We drank a carton of cold milk on the seafront, but the heat was getting fierce, so we retreated, dripping with sweat to our room for a shower and a doss about.
We spent a while washing clothes and arranged them on the central raised patio to dry in the hot sun. We laughed as we read the Lonely Planet guidebook explanation of the Darian Gap crossing from Panama to Colombia, imaging ourselves staggering through dense steaming jungle and swamplands with our backpacks. At this stage we were happily considering tackling this route into South America.
The Darien Gap is a break in the Pan-American Highway with a length of 60 miles (96 km) without roads. It makes that overland travel across Central America is pretty much impossible. This gap has been successfully crossed a handful of times, usually by expeditions equipped with off-road vehicles and staffed by special forces types, a near-impenetrable jungle that guerrilla fighters and drug runners call home.
The geography of the Darién Gap on the Colombian side is dominated primarily by the river delta of the Atrato River, which creates a flat marshland at least 80 km (50 miles) wide. The Serranía del Baudó range extends along Colombia's Pacific coast and into Panama. The Panamanian side, in stark contrast, is a mountainous rainforest, with terrain reaching from 60 m (197 ft.) in the valley floors to 1,845 m (6,053 ft.) at the tallest peak (Cerro Tacarcuna, in the Serranía del Darién).
The Governor (hotel manager) was in his usual position reclining on a sun lounger by the lobby. By 15:30 hrs. the jeans that I had washed were dry and the day was beginning to feel a bit cooler. We went out for a couple of cold cervezas at 16:30 hrs. in our usual haunt.
The mad shoeshine man was back with his headband and shades (sunglasses) but this time he had acquired some roller skates and a military helmet. We got through several bottles of “Dos Equis” and tried the “Superior” lager whilst chatting to an English-speaking local who gave us his phone number and offered all manner of invitations.
We warded off beggars and buskers until 17:00 hrs. when we staggered back to the hotel quite inebriated. At about 19:00 hrs. we got up and set off into the town for a meal. We ate in the clean restaurant where we had had breakfast.
I was surprised to find that when I ordered fish, I got a large flat fish finger affair instead of the expected freshly caught fried fish. Sobering up now we sat glumly in the zocalo and watched yet another series of religious processions to the cathedral. Some hard-bitten elderly Yanks groused under the banyan trees and the odd poor busker came passed with his skiffle wash board wooden animal.
We returned to the hotel where our mate on reception, the Governor, immediately pressed a large bottle of cold beer into my hand. We sat on the balcony outside our room overlooking the patio with our feet up on the railing passing the freezing beer bottle between us.
We had scarcely finished when our mate scampered upstairs with a new bottle for us. He told us of his plans to vastly improve the hotel and we noticed that he was wearing a gun in his belt. “It’s to keep the banditos away”, he explained and gleefully boasted of the other three guns in his armoury as Declan bummed a fag (cigarette) off him.
He returned to his post on reception, and we went back to peaceful contemplation and drinking. Suddenly a shot rang out. We looked down at the reception desk where it first appeared that our host had shot himself and lay slumped over the desk. Then, suddenly he got up and scurried round to examine the bullet hole in the wall opposite.
We watched with amazement from our perch above the patio. He had previously explained that he had poor eyesight and we wondered if he had accidently shot someone! We finished our beer and sneaked off to bed.
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