Day 2

Saturday, day 2: We wake up at 5:30 am to get an early start on the day. After breakfast, we head back to the Santiago bus terminal to board a small bus… large van that is headed north to the end of the road in the mountains of the continental divide. (I know you’re thinking “continent?” but anyways…). We arrive at the end of the paved road in a small town named Santa Fe. From here, there is a 4X4 trail that they are planning on paving soon that goes to the real end of the road, a town called Guabal.

One of the students’ dad is our guide for this adventure. His name is Demesio. Demesio tells us that we might be in time to catch a ride with one of his friends with a four-wheel-truck if we make it to Santa Fe in time. Unfortunately, as we arrive we discover that he is already gone. The truck turns a grueling 6-hour hike in the hot sun with no shade into a short but very bumpy pick-up truck ride.

Now to pay any old random truck to take 8 people (our group) it would run us around $200, Demesio tells us. “Oh well, I guess we’ll have to start walking”. Then, my make-it-happen-Western-gringo mindset kicks in. I’ll just start asking around. Sure enough I find a truck willing (after some negotiating) to take us all the way to Guabal for $60. We split it half and half with Demesio, because Alex and my goal is to get in and out as fast as we can back home to be involved in the new Discipleship Training School that is starting in a few days and also to not be gone too long from our families.

We board the truck around 10:00 am. We start on one of the bumpiest rides I have ever been on. We cross rivers, traverse boulders, drive up and down mountains peaks, and every big rock that we pass by Demesio points out to me and explains that the chief of the Buglere people has painted, in their native language, yellow writing demonstrating the border lines for their “comarca” or reservation. It comprises a large portion of this part of Panama, many thousands of square miles of steep, mountainous jungle, impassable by Gringo or Latin legs.

We arrive in Guabal, which is little more than a government-built elementary school, a clearing, and a few houses. We are now at least a few thousand feet high in elevation, yet the sun is still blazingly beating down on us. We pay the taxi driver, who wonders what the heck we plan on doing all the way out here where only a few farmers and poor rural Panamanians try to eek out a living on these mountainous slopes.

We start hiking, just a little ways down to the river and a little co-op or mini mart that sells things like a package of 4 cookies for 18 cents, or a bag of chips for 37 cents. The people here carry nickels and dimes here as if they were 1 and 5 dollar bills. (In case you didn’t know Panama uses American currency).

Demesio tells me that we are going to wait here a little while for a few more of the students’ parents to arrive to help with some of the little girls’ backpacks and bags, or “carga”, which is literally cargo in Spanish. That way we can make better time in our 2 day hike which lay ahead of us. We also shaved a day off our trip by hitching a ride with the taxi, which made me pretty happy.

I take the opportunity to go swim in the river that is right next to us. It is the most beautiful river I think I have ever seen! Crystal-blue water that you can see 5 feet down to the bottom! It was refreshing, but not too cold like a lot of high-mountain rivers in the states. I played a while in the rapids and tested out our new waterproof camera. I took a little video of myself floating down a section of rapids to show off to Kristina and Natalie when I got home. The river was so beautiful, and I wished I could have shared it with my family. It just really impacted me how clear this river was compared to all the other slow-moving, chocolate-colored Amazon-like rivers of the Darien province that I have seen before.

Now after waiting about 4 hours at the co-op, Demesio tells us that he thinks there was some miscommunication about the meet up with the other parents. So we decide to hike to the next town, which is the last Latino settlement before the land is fully taken up by native Buglere people.

I soon realize how heavy my pack really is. I start thinking about how I will be able carry it in and out of this place. I was told to pack all my drinking water because every outsider who has hiked this trail before and tried drinking the water, even with iodine drops, has gotten Giardia. We are also packing all of our food because we will be traveling the whole time and there is no place to buy more food. Demesio tells us that this leg of the trip is about a four-hour hike. Distance is measured in time and not length out here apparently.

It rounded about 5 pm as we arrived this small settlement which boasts a government-built elementary school, the last radio tower connected phone booth that serves the entire area as the only means of communication with the outside world, and a soccer field that doubles as a helipad in the event of a medical emergency. I take advantage of the payphone and call my wife to tell her I’m o.k. and won’t be in contact with her for a few days to a week, depending on many things.

This community is mostly made up of the grown-up children of Buglere people who have been absorbed into the Latino culture and have never learned their indigenous language. A wonderful Christian family who is very influential both in this town as well as in the Comarca welcomes us into their home for the night. We have rice mixed with some of the canned tuna that I brought for dinner. We talk in the dark with one candle lit. It’s amazing how much you can talk and share with people whose faces you have barely seen. In fact the next morning I didn’t even recognize the people I had spend hours talking with the night before.

To be continued...