Perfect for Fishing

I spent most of my days in Panama at a four-star resort, a two-hour drive west from the capital Panama City. By most accounts, it is a typical resort destination designed to cater to people seeking sun and relaxation without the worry -- but all the comforts -- of home.

My hotel room oversees a small garden with palms and teak trees that shade a well watered, well coiffed lawn that get the attention of an army of uniformed gardeners. From my bed, I watch the men place the dried teak leaves into a basket and haul them away. I slide open my door, the air conditioning spills out, and I awake to my first humid tropical dawn after months of Canadian winter. My lungs open up. Being near the equator, the sun is high and scorching. The welcome breeze carries the smell of the ocean, of earth, must.

The resort is a massive complex that sprawls several acres of the pacific coast with 800 rooms, six restaurants, two buffets, eight bars, five pools, a Hard Rock Cafe (a derivative of it anyway), a casino, a golf course, horses for riding, ATVs, and two grouchy peacocks with long trains that roam the gardens and run from the guests who try to pin them down for a photo. The buffet is served non-stop from 7am until 2 am.

The beach on which it fronts stretches kilometers to the west, lined with coarse sand where purple and white shells wash up with every wave. The guests rent SeaDoos and rip about, or swim into the waves and return to the pool. The tide changes are dramatic with the level of the sea rising and falling at least 20 feet from noon to midnight - at one moment you must walk twenty paces to the water, at the next moment the waves are washing under your beach chair. Most guests spend their days under the umbrellas, smoking, sitting in the sun, and working out their tan lines, with the smell of lotion wafting in the breeze. The blenders are constantly abuzz crushing ice and pineapple to make Pina Coladas.

Of note in this area is the deep-sea fishing. The guests can charter a boat for the day and come back with tunas, red snappers (I caught two). A a small island just offshore attracts a large populating of good eating-fish.

Why visit Panama? Not exactly a tourism destination for most. It's a country known for a) the canal and b) cocaine trafficking. Apparently, tourism is now only starting to take off. It's the Costa Rica of the 1990's. Everyone from the North is buying up the beachfront property, ranches in the hills. In Panama City, condos are selling for $1-million USD. This resort is one of the oldest resorts, even though it is four years old, giving it a prominent position on prime beach.

But hotel developers were not the first landowners to eye the beauty and potential of this area. One of the first, most prominent residents to settle on this little nook on the Pacific was a man named Manuel Noriega. Not 30 paces from the resort, he established himself a fine villa overlooking the sea and surf. His house is also a sprawling complex with a main home and guest quarters. The three-storey villa is designed with a bar on every floor. Step in the front door and you enter the Playboy Mansion of Central America. Look up to see a massive domed skylight, large windows looking out to a garden with palms and flowers, beyond the sea. A long chandelier hangs low. A grand spiraling staircase takes you to the second floor with large bedrooms, lots of closet space, balconies and windows all facing that sea. Pink paint. The top floor is a grand terrace where you can see in all directions...

...Or that's how I imagine it looked. Today, his home is in ruins and Noriega is in a Miami jail. To enter this house I had to leave the beach, climb up over his crumbling sea wall, past the barbed wire (rusted), past the guard towers (empty) and walk through the gardens (overgrown, dead and filled with garbage). All the windows have disappeared, shards of glass mix with the human shit, plastic cups. Bees nest in the bathroom. The staircase is rotting. The paint is peeling; the visitors to this battered place have scrawled their names with pens on the wall.



Certainly not the place Noriega would have called a home when he ran the country as his persona fiefdom, dealing in anything that could be dealt: drugs, prostitution, military hardware (while his CIA salary helped supplement his mortgage payments). When the US deposed Noriega, they stormed this house, on this beach. They sprayed bullet holes on the front facade. Later, the locals ripped out every fixture from the toilets to the light sockets.

Up and down the beach, where new condos, new homes are being built, this property has not been touched. It's dark spot on the spotless beach, a curiosity for the resort guests who've downed enough drinks to brave the threat of typhoid.



I stood up on that terrace for a long time, relishing in the house. I looked out, as Noriega might have looked out. In perfect sight is that small island. Squint hard enough and you can see a cross stuck in the rock. It was there that Noriega, according to locals, that Noriega dumped the bodies of those he murdered - for whatever reason. He would drag their bodies from this villa, down the sea wall, over that beautiful beach, load them onto boats and dumped on the far side of the island into the water where he (or his people) disposed of the evidence.

Noriega knew there were lots of hungry fish out there.

Panama Poutine

It's good to see Quebec has an edge into the burgeoning Panamanian economy.

Panama, the beautiful

 

Back to reality. Back to toronto. But lots of stories to come when I get through a pile of work backup.

Isn't Panama Beautiful?

Got to the airport at 6:30 a.m. I'm in line for my package tour to start to Panama. I feel like I am in line for Tim Hortons. But anyway, can't wait for those beaches. But I am standing there for a while and noticing a lot of people seem to be arguing with the people at the check-in. What princes and princesses, I think. They are probably angry that they have to pay extra for the 40 bags they want to load onto the plane. Because, as everyone knows, you need a lot of things to go to a beach resort. But like a domino moving down from person to person, I hear whispers. "I should have just gone to work," "will there be a limo back to Ajax?"

Oh yes! The flight has been delayed. Not by weather. No no. The plane isn't even in Toronto. Apparently. Yay, an 8-hour delay. I am SO LUCKY!!! I get my chance at the counter. Being trained as a journalist, I ask: "So, where is the plane, anyway?"

"It's still at its other location,"
"Where is that?"
"That's all I was told sir."
"Oh, ok. The other location."
"But here's a travel voucher for a limo to take you back home."
"When do we come back for Panama?"
"7:10 (she means PM)"

So as you can see in my photo above, of my backyard, that Panama is still waiting. And I wait for it.

(ps. don't ever fly Air Transat)

Picking Panama

After more than three years, I am going on a vacation. I have one precious week off from work. I was going to stay in town to catch up on my laudry, read some books. You know, save some bucks, stay close to home and relax. And then a very good friend said, "can you afford not to go away?" Very true. I decided I could do a little backpacking in Mexico.

I made some calls, did a little asking around. I tried to find a nice bungalow by the beach somewhere in Mexico. I left message on crackling aswering machines to no avail. On my way to work, I popped into a travel agent and started asking about where I might go and how much it might cost. I realized that with only a week, I didnt really feel like packing my bags, heading to some southern country and find accomodation on the fly or dealing with rip-off artists at the airports who are just so eagre to take you to "a really beautiful place." You need a month, and patience, to do that. I don't have that.

Reluctantly, I considered a package tour - something I loathe to admit - because the word "package" implies that the plane, the food, the hotel, the drinks and music come in one small capsule that you just pour water on and POOF, there's your vacation. Boring. Packaged tours built for rich white folks who want the comforts of home, just warmer. I like to rough it.

But, alas, roughing it means expending extra energy. And that is something I don't have.

So the travel agent types a few of my criterion into the computer: no casinsos, no clowns, no salsa lessons, no discos, no goddam bus tours, no Ricky Martin, and as few 24-hour drunkards from college who like trance music. None of that crap. She comes up with a package in Costa Rica. It's $1,300 for a place including drinks and flight. It's on a beach, apparently, and it's all inclusive. Right on the coast. She swivels the computer over and I see a few nice photos with bungalows. No picutres of the beach. But a Good deal, she says. Yes, I agree. I'll call later with my card info.

I'm sitting at work mulling over the merits of going - and finally I call to purchase my package. She faxes over the documents. But just as a precaution, I Google the hotel. Here's what I read from the website:

"Located along the North Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, in the heart of the exuberant Golfo de Papagayo and on Playa Chorotega, you find El Nakuti Resort, a beach complex with 40 rooms under an all inclusive system and 19 luxury villas. To delight the most discriminating of guests, each unit is magnificently furnished to blend with the stunning tropical surroundings."

Then I check out another review site:

"The resort is a dump. The food is not fit to eat. You would have to pay me to stay there again. The flies were in the food in the drinks and all over the buffet. This is the only time I ever lost weight at an all inclusive. Angele told the truth in her review. There is also raw sewage draining onto the beach."

or

"The pool was murky and you could not see your feet if standing in it. The edging around the pool was dirty and in places, it was falling off. The "gym" next to the pool consisted of a Pepsi tent and some old weights."

So I nixed that hotel quickly. I'm used to staying in dumps in Thailand and Tibet... but not on a week when I dont want to wake up with ants in my bed. No thanks.

So I went online and picked Panama. Cheap. Good reviews. And Panama just sounds exciting. It's a big hotel with a disco. The reviews say the locals don't appreciate the place too much - being massive and taking up a lot of prime fishing space. So I feel bad in a way. But that is the last I am going to complain. I'm on vacation as of.....

now.

Canada's Next Great Prime Minister

If you play the video above, you can see what I've been working on for the last few months: Canada's Next Great Prime Minsiter. We have four ex-PMs judging four young people who would like to someday lead the country. The the winner gets $50,000. A good show for political junkies. Watch it if you want: March 18th 7 pm.

My highlight as a producer: Kim Campell was running to catch a flight out of town and I had to pack her bags and bring them to her limo. Yes, I packed the bags of an ex-PM.

Hindle's Hardware

For weeks, I've wanted to buy a Bodum coffee maker for cheap. I decided to try my luck at Hindle's Hardware in Clarksburg Ontario. It is one of those few remaining family-run stores in small town Canada that sells just about everything. Walk in the door, and there are three aisles with shelves stacked with flannel shirts, floor wax, polypropylene rope. Along the wall racks hang stove-top elements, mouse traps, fly swatters, fuses, fishing line, extension cords, drill bits. At the back you buy screws, nails, nuts and bolts in bulk by scooping them out by the pound from the worn wooden boxes.

On the floor, the identical black rubber boots from size 7 to 13 are lined up side by side. Dangling from the ceiling you must duck around the kerosene lanterns, hoops. Some of these things have been on the shelf for ages.

Hindle's is curiosity shop, museum and hardware store. It's an outpost of sorts in the days when small communities relied on a store to have everything on hand, when there were no cars, no big stores outside of town.

In the corner, there is an "office," where they do the paperwork. It's a desk stacked with loose papers, some spilling onto the floor. As you walk, the wooden floor boards creek. The store smells of fresh rubber and old wool. As I walk through the store, Mr. Hindle is adding up someone's purchase with a hulking steel register with keys that need to be punched with the force of a boxer. It chugs and cranks through the numbers. The till opens with a ping of a bell. The entire time I've been in the store, he's talking with a customer.

"Quite a storm the other day"
"Wasn't it?"
"I was driving right behind another car, just so they'd clear a path. Then this other car passed us both like a bat out of hell.""Some people....""Ya. Tell me about it."

Mr. Hindle turns to me. "Help you with anything?"
"Nope, just looking around."

With all this stuff, there is no Bodum to be found. I go to the front door to leave, I say to another customer, a friendly man, and mention how I love just looking around in here.

"Yep, well, if you don't find it here then you don't need it," he says with a chuckle. I laugh and get in my car and continue my quest for that elusive coffee maker.

Finally, on the edge of Owen Sound, I find a Bodum. It's on a shelf, beside 20 different kinds of coffee makers, beside, 20 kinds of microwaves, beside 12 kinds of toasters, beside a line of juicers. In the distance I see rugs, boots. I'm bathed in fluorescent light. There is no smell. The floors are solid. I am in Wal-Mart. A different kind of outpost. The Bodum costs $20.

Customer comes first, right?