Casco Viejo

Take me down to Panama City

I left Eleuthera. After 9 months on the little island, with many beautiful moments, learning curves, and plenty good times. Everything cool, as they say.

I travelled intergalactically, through time and space, bending geographical space to my will, and arrived in a new universe.

Panama city, the biggest metropolis in central america, home of a massive cut through earth and rock, home of sky scrapers, and to vultures circling above the city.

 Travelling into the city early in the early morning after landing, I saw massive glass and metal structures clawing, twisting and fighting there way ever upward. Many are being built, and many look as though they are falling down. The architecture in the city centre is the type that quickly becomes dated, modern monstrosities, spiraling towards the heavens.

In contrast, massive contrast, the neighbourhood I headed towards couldn't be more different.

Casco Viejo is the oldest standing neighbourhood in  Panama city, built in the early 1600s after Henry Morgan, a pirate and a rogue raised the previous city to the ground.

The architecture is Spanish, and beautiful. Buildings are falling down, collapsing in on themselves, their regal arches remaining after the roofs cave. Some are beautifully restored, with many terraces, and curved balustrades and wrought iron fences. 

Massive, heavy dark wood doors bar the entrance ways. 

The rich and the poor live door to door, and an air of transition, and more contrast fills the streets. 

Casco Viejo is home to massive churches, with massive arches, stained glass and  incredible alters. One alter is carved entirely of mahogany and plated in gold. It is at least thirty foot tall and intricately detailed.

The power of belief has built much of this city.

The Panama canal is a fine example of belief carving the landscape in mammoth ways. I visited the Miraflores locks, a key stage in the transit of ships through the canal and was blown away by the scale of the place. I cannot fathom the motivation and commitment to build something of that size. 

The French tried in 1880, but after tens of thousands of workers died of diesease they gave up the ghost. Then, between 1904 and 1914 engineers operating under the United States managed to dig through millions of tons of rock to accomplish the gigantic engineering feat.

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Yes, its a mind twist being here, and I am really living. 

Soon I will be leaving for the coast for to reunite with the ocean and its energies. For today I will have a brunch and a dinner somewhere nice before changing my diet to rice and beans. 

I need to lighten my bag, though I don't have very many things its still too heavy.

The hostel I am at is called Luna's castle, and its a transient place. Youth and older people travelling to and from Colombia, or north, like me. 

An old colonial house with three levels, massive doors, many rooms, a large dining room, free pancakes, bearded people, people with dogs, people from Israel, France, Germany, Australia wherever. 

Stimulus overload. mind crash. must go. drink coffee. eat crouissants. drink cheap beer. pack. sleep. leave. 

Eleuthera: Part 2

I arrived on Eleuthera at the end of the semester, a time of decompression, transition and departure for island school staff. It was near Christmas and the campus was a relative ghost town with only 5 or so people hanging around. 

Everyone was going home to see there families, and I had just said goodbye to mine for who knows how long. 

A long road lay (and still lies) ahead. 

I was excited to be there, and would go adventuring and exploring every chance I got. 

The Bahamas are made of limestone, a rock created from the skeletons of countless organisms and chemical reactions deep below the sea. The chain of islands arose from the sea, and the sea dominates the landscape. The earth on South Eleuthera is rocky and hard, resilient and often times uncomfortable. Along the coastline, where weathering eats the rock slowly and steadily, its razor sharp and harsh. The locals call it death rock, which is no misnomer. 

One side of the cape I lived on had a shallow sound that stretched for tens of miles across a bay without ever getting deeper than 10 feet. The shore was a mixture of sandy beaches and deathrock, and the institute sat on the shoreline, spanning a restored mangrove swamp with a curving bridge connecting the Island School and the Cape Eleuthera Foundation. 

The other side of the cape was a more adventurous landscape, with deathrock cliffs and submerged reefs with a bounty of fish.

I remember taking many missions out to that part of the cape. Sometimes we would bike, sometimes we would hike and a couple times we took a boat. We would bring spears and a lighter and some seasonings, catching lionfish and lobster and cooking them up right there, as fresh as is possible without the fish still being alive. 

We had such good times out there on the deathrock with the sun beating down and the water so clear and warm and good friends just relaxing, fishing, hunting, eating, being a little bit primal.

So long and thanks for all the fish

My time here on Eleuthera is rapidly drawing to a close, and I have just finished working with my last group this morning. During two of our days out in the field doing research, we had the honour of being deemed suitable playmates for a pair of dolphins. I shot this video while swimming with them, it was one of the greater experiences of my last 9 months.

My friend Peter says dolphins exhibit four main behaviours: eating, travelling, mating, and milling.

That's true wisdom.

Eleuthera: Part 1

Arriving in the Bahamas 9 months ago with very little idea why I was there, or who I would meet, or really anything at all was one of those experiences that can neither be described, imagined nor recreated. Since my arrival I have come to know myself, others, and the earth a whole lot better.

I flew in, low, in a small plane over typical gorgeous turquoise seas dotted with the shadows of clouds and small fishing boats. Brushy, low vegetation and an old grey airstrip greeted me. A one building airport. The baggage collection passed through a chain link fence. Bahamians lingering, chatting. Almost impossible to interpret their dialogue at this point.

I met the person who was giving me a ride, Gabe, and we loaded up a Toyota surf , before driving the forty minutes to the Cape, location of the Island School, and my new home. From Cape town to Cape Eleuthera it took me something like fifty three hours of travel, and I felt like I had arrived in another universe.

Its interesting how my first persective of a place always changes once I spend some time there. Even the geographical orientation seems to spin around in my awareness and my memory as I become wired to the new directions and landmarks around me. I have trouble find North, South or anywhere at first. Then, over time, my compass stops spinning and I find direction.

Meeting people for the first time in the dining hall, after finding Lissa- short, curly haired, vaguely eccentric- my new boss, was an interesting experience. They were crowded around pots in the kitchen, eating standing up. Now that I think about it was certainly because that’s how Chris Maxey, the founder and director of the islandschool was eating, and people tend to follow his lead. He is a man that influences others through his actions.

I sunk into bed that first night, in my new dormitory with a vaulted ceiling, exhausted and excited for the unknown, that which always gets me feeling nervous and alive.