Encountering Interesting People

Reflecting on the year and my encounters With Interesting People:
 
For instance the American lady visiting Panama with her husband and 6 year old son who was on a mission to find her biological Panamanian parents.  She had been given up for adoption when she was a baby and had been raised in the US.  In the week that she was in Panama, she located both her parents and at the time, had met her mother and was about to meet her father. 

The English man whom I met in Havana.  He had finally been able to travel after some time.  Both his kidneys had stopped working and his wife's colleague/friend had given one of her kidneys to him. 

The Cuban luggage porter in Havana who said that his father had been high up in the Cuban army but was now working for the government.  This guy was sick of hearing that there was no crime in Cuba so he stole crime files from his father's computer onto a memory stick.  He wanted to show them to me or to give me a copy of the memory stick.  I said I neither wanted to see the information nor handle the memory stick, for my own protection.   

I met an American lad in his late 20's when I was in Panama.  His dad was very high up in the FBI.  This lad showed me a badge in a leather wallet with FBI Agent's Family written on it.  If he got into trouble with the traffic police back in the US, he would always be let off after showing them the badge. 

In Panama, I kept bumping into an English girl with her boyfriend, once by a waterfall, then in Boquete, and then on the other part of the country in Bocas Del Toro.  Finally, I asked her what she did back home and we discovered that she is the colleague of a barrister friend of mine back in London.

It was meeting and connecting with the wonderful and fascinating people from all parts of the world that made my trip so special.

Havana Good Time

Havana, Cuba

I got on the TACA plane in San Jose, bound for Havana, Cuba but it turned out to be a time machine and transported me back to another era.  With Michael J Fox it was in the DeLorean, but in my case it was an Airbus 319.  Not sure what year I had gone back to, there were 1950s American cars (Buicks, Fords, Pontiacs, Chevrolets, Cadillacs), 1970s Soviet style clothing stores (I was in Russia a couple of years before the Soviet Union collapsed so was able to compare first-hand), and crumbling beautiful colonial buildings from the 1700s and 1800s.  The whole place reminded me of the Twilight Zone tv programs.  And it is the only country I have been to with 2 official currencies running side by side.  I saw dustmen/garbage men smoking cuban cigars whilst pushing their dustcarts throught the streets in the mornings.  It was all very surreal.  There were no recognizable stores or restaurants that one would find in other parts of the world.  No one had ever heard of McDonalds, not that it matters, but as a global brand for the past several decades, it was funny that it had not been heard of in Cuba.

The supermarkets are really small and have hardly anything in them.  Every shopper has to put their bag in a separate room to prevent shoplifting.  I just walked in, not wanting to leave my bag full of valuables in another room.  They started yelling at me but I told them I didn't understand Spanish.  They let me look around for water, etc but 2 women were following me everywhere to make sure that I didn't shoplift because that is what they expect when a person walks in with their bag.

The local butcher's shops have a display of chopped up beef and pork laid out on a slab of concrete or tiles, with flies all over them.  There are queues/lines for absolutely everything in Havana.

Most people have not left Cuba and have a very limited knowledge of geography.  The whole island is like in a bubble or cocoon.  There are images of Che Guevara all over the place and quotes from Fidel Castro.  The people there are mostly living from hand to mouth.  A doctor earns 25 US Dollars per month, a nurse 8 US Dollars per month, a bus driver 10 Dollars, a waiter 6 Dollars. One doctor I met said he had quit his job as a doctor and was now a masseur, making more money.  Every citizen has a food ration card, much like Britain during World War 2.  The meagre rations only last a few days.  For example, each person can have 8 eggs per month, a couple of pounds of chicken, 6 pounds of beans, 6 pounds of sugar, 6 pounds of rice, etc.  The only meat on the ration card is chicken.  No beef, pork, or any other meat.  Milk is only provided to children from 0-7 years.  No butter either.  The prices charged for the ration food are subsidised so quite affordable but once these small rations run out, people have to use their salaries to buy food from the stores.   On their low salaries, the food they buy would not last for more than an extra week.  Therefore, as it stands, they would go hungry in the 3rd or 4th week of each month on those salaries alone.

Nearly all people do a second job or find ways to make extra money so that they can eat for the rest of the month and to have a basic living.  A waiter I spoke to sold clothes to neighbours and friends, sent over from relatives in the US and Europe.  A luggage porter in a bus station turned his living room into a restaurant to make extra money to supplement his 6 Dollars monthly salary.  Most families have relatives who live abroad and send money to them monthly to help them out.  As mentioned, they also send clothes over so one can see younsters with clothes worn by American and European youths.  Most couples have just one child as it is too expensive for them to have any more.

The majority of the people are hustling to make a buck, and if you are a tourist, it is impossible not to get approached by people wanting to sell cheap cigars, rent a room, or pimp a girl, or just to beg.

Tourists come to Cuba, but in Havana a lot of them stay in 5 star hotels or 3 hours away in the resort of Varadero.  They don't therefore get to really absord Cuba fully.  I stayed at a Casa Particular, staying with a family who rented a room to me and prepared breakfast for me every day.  This is about the only private enterprise around in Cuba but the government is hitting them very hard with crippling taxes.  A third of the month's intake would go on paying taxes and in low season, they would still have to pay this tax each month.

I met a number of American tourists in Havana.  They had managed to get through the loophole and given permission by the US government to go to Cuba because they were doing charity work or participating in cross-cultural educational programs.  Perhaps my family in the US can get visiting clearance to Cuba by creating a society for the impartation of knowledge to the Cubans of making Persian Chelo Kebab.



Havana is a beautiful city with grand architecture, a faded grandeur.  However, over time, everything is falling apart.  The streets are cut up and pot holes all over.  There is smell of urine pretty much in every street and rubbish just thrown in overflowing skips.  Dogs and cats are all over the place and doing their mess on the road and pavement.  I wasn't surprised to see a dead cat one time or a dead mouse.  However, people's homes are very clean.  Like two different worlds.  Nearly all dwelling places have very basic furniture and not very large spaces.  But, every household has a television and stereo.  Somehow they manage to buy these things and keep the same tv and stereo for years.  People love listening to latin music. 

There is a real sense of community in Havana, with neighbours sitting outside their apartments every night and talking to each other or playing various games with dominoes or playing chess.  There is no violent or aggressive behaviour by anyone.

Each apartment has around 3 generations living together.  Where I was staying was a woman with her husband, her daughter with her husband, and their 8 year old son.

Partagas Cigar Factory

This is the most famous cigar factory in the world.  I did a tour of the whole place and was amused to see that the room where around 300 people sat rolling cigars had a large tv screen in the front with loudspeakers everywhere.  On the screen they were showing the early music videos of Michael Jackson such as Don't Stop Till You Get Enough, Rock With You, and Billie Jean.  Everyone was moving around in their chairs as they made the cigars.  Who would have thought that in death, Michael Jackson was having such an influence on the making of the finest cigars in the world.  Downstairs in the cigar store, where there is also a bar for people have a puff and some rum, there were pictures of Hollywood stars with the manager of the store.  People like Arnold Schwarzenegger before he became governor, Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson, Gerard Depardieu, and Matt Dillon.  I became friends with the manager of the store, and he invited me to his father's house where I had lunch with the whole family.

2 tickets And My Left Sock

I bought a ticket to the Grand Teatro in Havana one Saturday to see the Cuban National Ballet that evening, choreographed by the world famous ballerina of her time, Alicia Alonso.  I then bought a round trip bus ticket to a beach around 30 minutes from Havana where everyone went to on the weekends.  Having arrived on a beautiful white sandy beach with emerald water nearby and turquoise water further out, just absolutely fantastic scenery, I decided to go for a dip.  There were loads of teenagers around.  I put my ballet and bus tickets in my left sock and put it in my left shoe.  When I returned 10 minutes later, someone had stolen my left sock with my tickets in it.  The person obviously had seen me put some paper in my sock and assumed it was money.  I got the bus back by explaining what had happened and back in Havana, the ticket office guy remembered me and even my seat number so he said he would be around that evening when the show started.  That night, when I arrived, he ushered me to my seat.  The ballet was spectacular, and not done in the traditional style, but with a Cuban, Latin, Caribbean flavour in the music and clothes.  I also saw Alicia Alonso after the show.  She was quite old but very elegant.  I was quite pleased that a rather bad start to my day ended well.  On the Monday, I bought a bottle of rum and gave it to him, which lit up his face as if it was Christmas.

Vinales, Western Cuba

This small town of 11,000, 3.5 hours west of Havana by bus, has beautiful green valleys and rolling hills.  This is the area where tobacco farmers grow the finest tobacco in the world, which is used to make Cohiba cigars.  I visited a farmer who showed me the barn where he was drying the thousands of tobacco leaves that he had harvested.  However, he would have to wait for the rainy season in order to finish the process since the dampness would make the leaves easier to roll.  I stayed with a local family in their Casa Particular and it was very pleasant.

Panama to Costa Rica : What a load of bananas!

El Valle De Anton

Around 4 hours north of Panama City is a community which is nestled in the mouth of a giant inactive volcano.  The small town is pretty spread out and there are a lot of Americans who live there in retirement.  I found a place to stay and called the owner called Juan when I was in Panama City, informing him that I will call him when I arrive there by bus, so that he could pick me up from the bus stop.  When I arrived, I called him from my Panama cellphone (I bought a cheap cellphone in every country that I visited).  This is how the conversation went....

Me..    Juan, I have arrived, can you please pick me up ?
Juan..  Yeah sure, where are you ?
Me.. I am at Yin supermarket (one of only 3 in the village, owned by a Chinese family)
Juan..  OK, that's good.
Me..  I will wait for you, how long will you be ?
Juan..  Where are you ?
Me..  I am at Yin supermarket, do you know it ?
Juan.. Yeah.
Me..  OK, I look forward to seeing you then.
Juan..  Are you still in Panama City ?
Me.. No, I just said, I am outside the Yin supermarket ?
Juan.. Oh ok. 
Me.. So when are you coming ?
Juan..  Are you in El Valle De Anton ?
Me (getting quite frustrated by now and finding it difficult to contain my calm)...Yes, I have mentioned a number of times that I am at Yin supermarket and you said you knew it.  YIN, do you know it ?
Juan.. No, I don¨t.
Me (trying to keep my sanity)... Y-I-N
Juan.. Oh, yes, I will be there in 10 minutes.
Me...What type of vehicle will you be using so that I can look out for it ?
Juan...a yellow 4x4
Me..Oh good (as I had my big backpack and small backpack which took a lot of space).

Ten minutes later, I see Juan (a tall, skinny guy, late 50s, with thick glasses and looking like a farmer who has just ploughed a field) there with a yellow quad bike (ATV).  I couldn't believe my eyes.  I don't know how I got to his house with my bags.  The helmet he gave me to wear was around 5 sizes too big so my head was banging around in it the whole time.  His house was like a farm, with all sorts of animals including a horse and loads of chickens who decided that the best place in the several acre garden to make a lot of noise was right outside my door.  So, it was my daily ritual to run after them so they scattered to the other end of the garden.  The garden was amazing, containing a cashew nut tree, mango trees, and lots of other fruit trees.

This area is known for its hiking and fresh air.  Visitors hike to the rim of the volcano so that they can see the crater.  There are many trails and waterfalls around.


Boquete

This place is very close to the Costa Rica border, near the town called David in Panama.  Boquete is a beautiful hilly town, with rivers and waterfalls surrounding it and lots of wildlife.  It is famous for being the coffee growing region of Panama.  There are thousands of American retirees there and the Panama currency is the US Dollar so at times I felt like I was in Napa Valley.  I went white water rafting on a grade 3 plus river with an American family based in the Bahamas.  In their group was a 75 year old grandmother and a 6 year old girl which was quite brave of them.  We had a picnic on the bank of the river, half way through the trip.

I developed a foot infection because I had picked some dead skin on the bottom of my foot which went deep and then I was walking around on the beach at San Blas.  By the time I got to Boquete, I could hardly walk.  I was trying to find a doctor in town to see it so I randomly walked into a store and saw a couple of American women and asked them if they knew any good doctors in town.  One of them said that she kept the town's medical database up to date and knew all the doctors.  She drove me to the best doctor in town and he was great.  I was put on a couple of courses of antibiotics which did the trick. 

I found a lovely room in a house with a fully equipped kitchen, a dining room, and bathroom with hot water.  The landlady was very nice to me and only charged 10 Dollars per night.

Alajuela, Costa Rica

I flew to Costa Rica from David, Panama.  The airport was very small and only had around 3 flights per day.  I was checking in for Air Panama and the guy checking me in was called Elvis.  He said that I had to pay around 25 Dollars for exit tax so I said I would pay it if he sang Blue Suede Shoes.  He said that he only sang in the bathroom so I paid up anyway.  Wasn't the last place they found Elvis in the bathroom back in 1977 ?

I went upstairs and sat down and had a cup of tea in the restaurant with a good view of the runway.  The owner of the restaurant was an Iranian guy who had lived in the UK and the US.  He could have written a book about his life, he had done so much.  Unfortunately, he had developed tongue cancer so most of his tongue had been cut out, which made it hard for him to speak properly.

Alajuela is a quaint small town, around 25 minutes away from the capital, San Jose, Costa Rica, which looks quite rough and unattractive.  Alajuela has colourful buildings and nice green squares, as well as traditional eateries and cafes.  It is a lot more expensive here than in Panama.  I stayed in this town for a few days and visited a nearby active volcano called Poás, which was quite awesome.  The local bus from Alajuela took around an hour to reach the Poás volcano.   The entrance was around US $10 for foreigners and around US $2 for locals.  This double pricing happens everywhere in Latin America. 

In the mid afternoons, it would suddenly rain cats and dogs, with thunder and lightning.  Rivers would be flowing down roads in a matter of minutes.  One day, I was trying to book my flight to Cuba in an internet shop and just as I was about to click on the pay button, having filled all the forms and info required, lightning struck and the computers went down......grrrrr

Arenal Volcano

I took a bus from Alajuela to Arenal Volcano.  It took around 6 hours, with a 20 minute stop somewhere.  The volcano is massive and is still active.  The last time it erupted was in the 1960s and is due to erupt again soon.  The locals are nervous about the prospect of it erupting again because last time many people died.  The lava has stopped flowing so that is a sign that something is about to happen.  The town at the foothills of this volcano is quite sleepy and doesn't really have much character.  There is a trail that goes to a nature reserve with a wonderful waterfall which is worth visiting.  The main square at night is nice as well.  It is best to stay a couple of nights and then to move on.

Bus-Boat-Bus to Monteverde

I took this combination transportation to get to Monteverde.  The intial bus ride was good in terms of being able to see Arenal Volcano from the other side.  The boat ride was quite nice as well, but the best part of the journey was the 2nd bus to Monteverde, which drove over mountains and through valleys, through lush green vegetation and beside streams.  A truly beautiful site, which I would recommend to everyone.

Monteverde

This place is a village that looks more like a ski resort and the nearby Monteverde Cloud Forest is truly breath-taking.  It has a circular trail that takes around 6 hours to complete.  I did the whole trail and was quite tired by the end of it but so exhilarated and happy.  The trees are so old and so huge, and the birds are beautiful.  It was like walking through Jurassic Park....so ancient!  I highly recommend it.  Take a pair of binoculars.  At one high up vista, on a good clear day, you are supposed to be able to see both oceans.  The coffee in this region is the best in Costa Rica.  It is exported to all corners of the world.

From Colombia To Panama

Cartagena

I flew to Cartagena on the Caribbean coast of Colombia from Medellin via Bogota.  In Bogota airport, I had a couple of hours to spare so I walked around a bit.  I found a place where they did massages but the charge was very high.  I persuaded the girl to let me massage her for 10 minutes and then to massage me for 10 minutes without any money being exchanged.  Well, it worked and I felt much better for it.  Cartagena is a lovely colonial town which is one of the oldest in South America.  It has been a major port for centuries and had to build a fortress around itself because of pirates.  Some time before my arrival, there was a Brit who was a bit of a trouble-maker in this town which led them to increase their security.  He was Sir Francis Drake.  I was eating at a local restaurant when I started talking to a couple of guys at another table.  They were both American but one of them was an Iranian jew who had escaped from Iran with his family in 1986 with fake Iranian passports. 

Taganga & Tayrona National Park

I was staying in a windy and dusty fishing village almost 5 hours up the coast from Cartagena, called Taganga.  I bumped into an Italian guy called Paolo (29 years), from Avelino, near Naples.  I had met him in Trinidad and just saw him walking down the road here.  The same day, in the evening, I bumped into another guy from Trinidad who had hosted me via Couchsurfing.  So, it is a pretty small world.  Paolo seemed to talk to anyone and everyone in the street, and he wanted to know everyone´s name.  But he soon tended to forget what people´s names were and started calling them by other names the next time he met them.  We went to a beautiful coastline, surrounded by jungle.  We hiked for miles and finally stayed at a campsite with loads of other foreigners, sleeping in hammocks. 

Santa Marta

Just next to Taganga is the coastal city of Santa Marta, which is famed for being the place where Simon Bolivar was killed in battle.  I had therefore seen his birthplace in Caracas and his place of demise, Santa Marta.  This city has a nice waterfront promenade where the locals go for walks or just sit down and watch the sunset.  It has nice squares and good eateries.  Outside of the centre, one can see rundown residential areas.  Overall, it is a low key town and perennially hot and sunny.

Minca

A lovely little hamlet nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains around 45 minutes drive from Santa Marta.  A lovely river runs through this village and there are lovely restaurants beside the river.  Along the river, locals or visitors from Santa Marta go swimming in the pockets of deep fresh water which are surrounded by large rocks.  Romantic couples also seem to love this place.  Best way to get here is to negotiate a fixed rate with a taxi driver from Santa Marta, who will stay with you and bring you back.  There are guest houses to stay at if you want but they are quite simple.

Barranquilla

This is probably one of the ugliest and scariest cities that I have seen.  A lot of the roads are unpaved and dusty and people look quite rough.  It is famed for its annual carnival which takes place around March.  It is one of the biggest carnivals in the world.

Flying to Panama City from Barranquilla, Colombia.

Barranquilla airport is apparently a major port for drug smugglers who want to take drugs to other destinations, including Central America.  There are numerous police checks from check-in to boarding the flight.  There are police and police dogs everywhere.  Passengers are eye-balled by Colombian police the whole time.  You really need a lot of patience in this airport.

The police decided to open my bag as a random spot check, even though I was running late.  After the bag check, they wanted me to sign a form but I said I wouldn't as it was in Spanish and I couldn't understand it.  They said in that case, I could not take my bag with me as I had to sign the form before they would release it.  I asked an airline official and an airport security guy to look at the form and they assured me that it was a simple sheet that people signed as a formality when their bags were checked randomly.  I told the security guy that I would sign it only if the chief police guy there said sorry for causing me so much grief.  To his credit, the policeman did apologise, so I signed the form and was on the flight.

Panama City

A noisy hustle and bustle of a city, with very impatient drivers honking their horns at the slightest delay by anyone in front.  The old quarter, or Casco Viejo, is a lovely place and worth a visit.  From time to time, they have festivals in the main square there.  The architecture is lovely and the area is very civilized compared to the rest of Panama City.

Panama Canal

I took a cab from my hotel in downtown Panama City to Miraflores Locks, which took around half an hour.  I negotiated with the taxi driver beforehand and paid around US $3 one way.  These locks are the last ones that ships encounter before crossing into the Pacific Ocean.  It consists of 2 lanes of ship traffic and gigantic tankers and passenger ships come by within minutes of each other.  Each ship has to be lowered to sea level before going off.  The average toll paid by a ship is US $250,000.  Some pay as much as US $400,000.  It takes 8 hours for a ship to cross the Panama Canal from the Atlantic side to the Pacific side.  There are locks are either end and a man-made lake in the middle.  The canal was started by the French, then taken over by the Americans and completed, then handed over to the Panamanians on Dec 31, 1999.

If you want to visit the Miraflores locks, they have a cafe and a restaurant there and bathroom facilities.  They also have a viewing area to watch the ships.  There are 2 entrace fees, a cheaper one for Panamanians and a more expensive one for tourists.  This policy is applied in many Latin American countries.

San Blas Islands

A group of stunningly beautiful Caribbean islands numbering around 400, off the coast of Panama, and stretching all the way to Colombia.  Fifty of them are inhabited by the Kuna people, who own these islands and charge people for setting foot on them.  They have been living on these islands for 200 years, having come over from Colombia.  I flew there from Panama City and landed on an island with a small runway on a 20 seater propeller plane.  From there I took a boat to one of the islands where the Kuna tribal people have a large community of a few thousand.  They live in a very primitive way in wooden huts and only have electricity for a few hours at night.  The infant mortality rate is relatively high.  They have their own language and costumes.  Quite a number of them can be very awkward about foreigners visiting their islands, and don't allow pictures to be taken of them, unless they are paid a Dollar or even more.  If a person lands on any of the inhabited islands, the locals charge anywhere from a Dollar to 5 Dollars.  I once swam from one island to a neighbouring one, and there was a hut there with a couple of people.  A man approached me as soon as I landed on the beach and demanded a Dollar.  I told him that I did not have my wallet on me.  I rested for a short while and swam back.  The fish and corals were incredible. 

It was at my first accommodation, Carti Homestay, on the island of Carti, which I believe I had my money stolen by the owner. This guesthouse was recommended in the Lonely Planet book so I thought that it would be ok. My money was in my small backpack which I always kept locked with a padlock.  One day, I went to a remote island by boat, and left my small backpack on my bed, after the owner told me it would be safe. He must have picked the lock and taken the money, which was around US Dollars 130 worth of Venezuelan Bolivares and a 20 UK Pound note. He didn't take anything else from my bag, locking my bag again. I only discovered the theft when I reached Costa Rica.  The Bolivares wouldn't have any value to him because it is a non-convertible currency.  He would need to go to Venezuela.

I transferred to another island and stayed there for the majority of my stay.  I slept in a straw hut on the beach with sand as my floor and no electricity.  The shower was a huge bucket full of well water and a small bucket used to pour the water over my head.  The toilet had no flush, only a bucket to pour water down it.  At night I could see small fish with lights flashing, swimming in the large bucket that contained the water for the toilet.  Neighbouring huts had other travellers from the US, Canada, and Europe.  During mealtime, we would all sit down around a wooden dining room table on the beach and eat the daily catch of fish, lobster and crab. Lobster was contstantly on the menu.  There were daily trips to nearby islands for snorkelling and looking at starfish and conches.

Price Fixing Cartel on San Blas

One day I visited an island inhabited by 2 families, so a total of less than a dozen people.  Each family was at the opposite end of the island.  It took around 5 minutes to walk around the whole island, covered with cocunut trees, hundreds of them, each having dozens of cocunuts.  I found a coconut on the ground and asked the man of one family if he could cut it open.  He said that the cocunut belonged to him and that it would cost me 1 Dollar to have it.  I couldn't believe it because in Panama City, a coconut in a store cost around 60 Cents.  I decided that he was trying it on with me so I went to the other end of the island and picked up another coconut when I was approached by an elderly women from the other family who mentioned that the coconut was hers.  I asked her how much it would cost to have it and she said 25 Cents.  I agreed and was about to pay her when the 10 year daughter of the other family ran over and said something to the elderly woman who then informed me that the price was no longer 25 Cents but 1 Dollar.  So, I was the victim of a price fixing cartel on a paradise island in the Caribbean with less than a dozen people on it.  Apparently, the Kuna people sell tons and tons of coconuts to Colombia each year for 25 Cents per coconut.