Panama
Mind-Dump, sans edit — Stream of consciousness -- written in snippets since Saturday
This is a mess-of no edit. I beg forgiveness, but I guarantee you will learn a lot. Am afraid this is too large. If you don’t have time, just push through images. Have a great weekend!
Begin:
Never get so drunk that you lose your canoe on a crocodile river at night. Man and canoe swept downriver, deeper into the dark jungle. As if he could get any deeper. He started in a remote village, and there was no civilization downstream.
Tipped the canoe and drunk man too. Dark. No light. Into the jungle wild. Crocodiles. Save that story further down.
Did you know about the island dispute between Colombia and Nicaragua? While tracking a midnight flight of a small airplane on FlightRadar24.com, from Bogota to San Andres, I looked up San Andres and read about their island dispute.
If you check FlightRadar24.com now, you’ll probably find no airplanes flying over the Darien Gap area. This corner is forgotten even for overflight.
Did you know that the Panama Canal is East of Florida. But the time zone is one hour behind Eastern Time. Six in the morning in Florida is five in the morning here.
And like Florida, when many gators get up and walk during April and May, a few nights ago we came across this caiman crossing the PanAm highway during a great lightning storm.
There is only so much a handheld phone camera can do with lightning through a wet windshield on a bumpy road. I was videoing the truck with no taillights, much like moonshiners in Appalachia. The whiskey runners installed switches to turn off taillights, making harder for law to chase through the mountains and country roads.
Last Saturday, I was with Embera Indian friends. Many of those who have been to America seem to prefer to return to Darien.
We drove from Meteti area to Yaviza. The end of the PanAm highway. The beginning of the infamous Darien Gap. A jungle so filled with ghosts they scare the fog onto the rivers.
Large numbers of seekers and runners have been daring to cross Darien since the California Gold Rush in the 1850s. When the sparkle was found in 1848, the rush was on. Like today.
Human Osmotic Pressure: HOP.
Three main routes from Eastern United States to San Francisco:
The Plains across America — brought adventures such as Comanche.
The Horn around South America included joys such as vanishing forever. Well, all three routes brought the “vanishment” prospect.
Or Panama. Bringing new adventures such as Chagres fever found on the Chagres River.
When a Navy mission including 27 men, under leadership of Lieutenant Isaac Strain set off to cross Darien Isthmus — well, you know what they say about Lieutenants and navigation. He got lost.
But he did make it.
Forty-nine days later.
Weighing 75 pounds.
Only seven died, and some of the surviving apparently went at least temporarily insane.
And Lieutenant Isaac Strain died later at the age of 35, presumably as result of navigational error that included not listening to Indians who told him the Chucunaque River was the wrong direction. Strain thought the Indians were lying.
But they told him the truth. Strain thought the river took a direct route to the South Sea — the Pacific. The map above reveals that Strain was just going deeper into darkness. Strain would eventually get to the Pacific if he had an extra cat-life or two, but this was no route for a canal.
The Indians who tried to help Strain are, possibly, progenitors of Embera Indians who have been taking me safely all over Darien. You should see the places we have been. Wild as ever, but mapped at least. Mapped wild is still wild.
Back in the 1850s, those seeking the gold of the Sierra Nevada kept coming through, much as today. And many still heading to the same place: California:
Not much different now. The cows are still there. The pole,man is still on the front. Only now there are outboard motors on the same boats. I probably ate part of a descendent of these cows last week.
Painting from Charles Nahl in 1850 on Chagres River. The piragua boats are but slightly different from those today. Today, they still use poles, but also motors. I made this photograph a couple weeks ago in an area where migrants were emerging and bathing in the river.
But last Saturday, before reaching Yaviza on the Chucunaque River, we visited a hot-water spring closer to Meteti.
The most unmarkable hotwater spring in history. Smaller than jacuzzi, and cooler. The nearest farmhouse was beyond an arcing rifle shot. Ten minutes by horse. Horses are the motorbikes of Darien Province.
And this horse, somewhere far out near Sambu on another day, was carrying a truck tire, appropriately, through an Embera village. Horses can go where 4 wheel drive bog.
But horses and mules meet their muddy match in Darien:
When Spanish came with horses, Indians were afraid. Having never seen horses, or Spaniards.
Indians thought horses may be vicious creatures. The Spaniards surely were, and the Spaniards learned the sting of Indian poison darts, exciting new jungle diseases, the joy of local mosquitos, wonderful new snakes. While Indians learned about exciting European diseases such as measles, muskets, and more.
And the slave trade brought the wonders of Yellow Fever with the first know epidemic in nearby Yucatan in 1648. No study of history since the introduction of Yellow Fever is complete without a historical study of Yellow Fever which, without any doubt, more influenced United States and France than the revolver.
And today, many Embera trot around on horses, still the best four-hoof-drive in these parts.
After the hot spring, we tread through mud back over a stream.
Lincon, my Embera guide, who loves birdwatching and can imitate calls of various birds, bugs, and frogs, saw a vine, saying it's medicine.
Lincon snapped out his pocketknife. Cut and stripped the vine from a smaller vine, coiled it like a cable. Then we headed to Yaviza.
Down the Pan Am highway. An Army truck full of migrants passed at Lajas Blancas. Darien Peninsula is more a crossroads of the world today than ever before. Another day, Cuban migrant shows me his feet after emerging from the adventure of Darien Gap, on the modern day Gold Rush to America.
Another Cuban migrant to America sports a tattoo:
A pregnant migrant survives the Darien Gap but can hardly move.
When you jungle your way through Darien Isthmus on any sort of gold rush, there will be casualties. Just as there were casaulties when my family shipwrecked on Berbda in 1609, and finally reached Jamestown in 1610 only to find colonizers eating each other, and Indians. (Dampening the relationship.)
Read the blue part:
And when SpaceX goes to Mars, casualties are a sure bet. And when things go wrong — they will go wrong at times — Marstronauts may be barbecuing each other on Red Planet. Scientifically, of course. Calculating caloric value vs. living value, and burn rate. Donner Pass. The story never changes.
Mud devours all.
While China devours the fish around Panama, and virgin jungle within, leaving the seas naked as the land:
Driving down PanAm highway to Yaviza, we stopped at a roadside restaurant by Lajas Blancas.
Birds.
Darien Province is birds, birds, birds. Those who love birds love trees.
Pendulum nests swung from a nearby tree.
I asked Lincon if Embera eat those birds. Lincon said no, we do not eat that type. But that is the bird that made Iguana smile.
I eat iguana, said I. Lincon laughed and said I like you, you eat like Embera.
I asked Lincon, "How did this bird make Iguana smile?"
Lincon said the birds and people of the jungle were unhappy because Iguana never smiles. Iguana never seems happy.
Iguana is Eeyore of the jungle, and Pooh is not making anyone smile.
How to make Iguana happy?
All birds, beasts and creatures of the jungle met, discussing how to make Iguana smile. They decided on a competition.
The jaguar tried, the crocodile, the many birds, the peccary. Iguana never smiled.
Even the monkeys could not pull a smile across Iguana face.
The bird with the pendulum nest said I will make Iguana smile.
In Spanish, the bird is called Oropendola, said Lincon. In Embera language, Cumbarra.
The Cumbarra is a funny bird. Funniest creature in the jungle. Famous for its voice, conversation, and song.
The Cumbarra came low, landed, called, sang, danced for Iguana. Iguana refused to smile.
And so Cumbarra flew to the top of the highest jungle tree.
Almost to the sky.
Frighteningly high.
And Cumbarra called down to Iguana.
Iguana stared up.
Cumbarra, perched on a branch, leaned forward as if falling.
Iguana gasped!
Cumbarra might fall and die.
But Cumbarra held to branch, like monkey, upside down, opened its wings and sang a beautiful song.
Iguana smiled.
And then Lincon showed me how to use the medicinal vine. Splice the vine into filets and push into water bottle for a day, and then sip from bottle next day until bottle is empty.
We left the restaurant near Cumbarra that made Iguana smile, driving another thirty minutes to Yaviza.
End of the Pan Am highway. Edge The Darien Gap. The blue dot was our location. The red key is another place I happened to pin a few weeks ago while boating up river with Embera on piragua canoe.
Crossing the footbridge at Yaviza, we need advertisement for a fortuneteller or spell-caster. Maybe it does not dawn on anyone that the Indian depicted my be Cherokee from the area of Appalachia.
And we came to the footbridge over the Chucunaque River. The same River Lieutenant Isaac Strain had followed after Indians warned him he was heading wrong direction — and would spend 49 days realizing the Indians were right. Maybe it’s that thing about refusing to stop and ask directions. I have no idea.
But I do know there are many Embera, Kuna, and Waunan Indians here, and black slave descendants, descendants of Spaniards, and probably an American bankrobber or two has passed through here on run to South America. This is not a tourist spot.
Yaviza is a dangling end of PanAm highway that picks up about 60 miles later in Turbo, Colombia. To be clear, Yaviza is not a spot where migrants emerge from Colombia. Those spots are in Comarca Embera-Wounaan. Reservation for Embera and Wounaan Indians.
And these are but a small number of the places I have been in the past ten weeks learning about the migrant trail, and other matters concerning U.S. security.
Colombia is on verge of civil war. Possibly three million homeless Venezuelans are in Colombia subsequent their experiment with communism. If Colombia goes to civil war, United States could be staring at massive influx of Colombians and Venezuelans through Darien, or bypassing by boat and airplane.
And so, Lincon and I spent a few hours walking around Yaviza talking with people.
And we came to the old Spanish fort guarding confluence of Chico and Chucunaque Rivers.
A Spaniard must have done something terrible to get stationed here:
Something terrible enough not to cause execution, but almost.
And there by the fort, a man approached us and we spoke for about half an hour. I spotted a flood marker higher than the fort and asked if the river really floods so high. The man said the river will go above the fort walls.
We talked more and I asked if he saw any migrants here. Never. Other than Colombian migrants who live in the Yaviza. Maybe 600 Colombian migrants of the 4,400 population. I am unclear on the numbers. I talked some of them on a previous trip to Yaviza.
We talked more, and I asked questions that I ask around the world, such as what do you think of police and Army. The man said Senafront is good. The people have good relations with Senafront. Nearly everyone has told me same.
I asked if he ever sees jaguars. Not often, but yes.
And then I asked the question that occasionally brings surprise answers.
What is the most interesting thing about this place, or that you have found around here? Always ask such questions when you have time. Ask people what is most interesting. Why they find.
The man said his father, 92, found ancient pottery. I asked if there is a museum around here. No. Can I see it? Yes.
I asked what else is out there. The man said his father came to Yaviza in 1959 and worked on boats, and that is father had seen an airplane crash in the jungle in an area his father used to hunt.
I asked many questions about the airplane. The jungles, lakes and seas are filled with disappeared airplanes. Florida lakes are famously full of airplanes.
I asked if we could visit his father. The man said his father is across the river. I said let’s go. And he called on his phone and a relative brought over a piragua of the sort the explorers were on — but with a motor. This one, to be specific:
And so we boated across the Chucunaque River, scrambled up the muddy bank, and sat down with 92 year-old Mr. Martinez.
A relative showed some pottery. I know nothing about such things. It could be twenty minutes old or 2,000 years, but I took many images in case some expert alerts.
We talked about the airplane a good while. He said it had been shot down while trying to attack the canal. And he saw the airplane and a dead white man who had been flying it, but this was a different part of Panama. After many questions, all of which I made video, I was persuaded that the juice was not worth the squeeze. He probably saw something but the facts were so confused that nothing made sense.
So I asked why he had so many roosters. Why didn’t he eat more of these roosters? His Rooster to Hen ratio looked like about one to one. He said he should eat more roosters. I asked Mr. Martinez why do people like eat hens more than roosters? He laughed and said he didn’t know, but he wondered the same thing.
I asked Mr. Martinez if he ever swam across the river. Because, you know, that’s how a Florida Man thinks. Sees a river and wonders if he can swim that thing, or if the gators or crocs or giant snakes or piranhas or other monsters are in there.
Mr. Martinez laughed. Said, in fact, yes, he did swim the river. Once.
Said he got drunk one night and got in his piragua canoe. He fell out and lost the boat. He got swept downstream and came out in the jungle and had to sleep in the jungle. Never saw the boat again. Said it took him three months to chop down another tree and make another boat. Said he stopped drinking.
Mr. Martinez went on to say that a drunken friend tried to cross the river at night. They found him drowned under his capsized boat. He stopped drinking, too.
Mr. Martinez said he used to have 300 cows. Put his daughter through law school. I asked if jaguars ever came to his place. He said yes, and pointed nearby, saying a jaguar killed a deer over there. And I went out and stole the deer from the jaguar and ate it.
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Well, that’s enough for now. I gotta go. Some things are cooking. I really need a black budget. Thank you for all financial support. I greatly need it. Patreon is great, and there are many other ways here: https://www.michaelyon-online.com/donations-new.htm
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