PANAMA: where oceans (and dreams) meet.

Buenos everybody,

I have experienced the last 10 days with different feelings. I had my first lonesome crisis (03/09) since I left Belgium. At a certain point I didn't want to talk to anybody anymore because of the same superficial conversations every single time (where are you from, where are you going, etc... ). The next day each of us would go different paths anyway and the story would repeat itself again with other travellers. Out of experience I can tell you it is very difficult to find people that share the same interests as you do. Because of this small crisis, my dreams were becoming stronger and stronger. The theory of the opposites says that what you are missing consciously will be compensated by the unconscious. Because dreams are a pathway to the unconscious it looked like my unconscious was trying to tell me something. Jung's book learned me somehow to analyze those dreams and in that way it could help give me more insigths in my deeper self. I even started analyzing my dream inside the dream itself what was a very strange affair, I can assure you. I knew perfectly well how to analyze and explain them but finding a solution for them is something completely different. Anyway, this little crisis faded away after a few days but undoubtly is still present in the depths of my mind.


Back to reality... the 4th I arrived on the island Isla Colon where the touristic town of Bocas Del Toro is located. There is not so much to do there but 'party' and going to the beach. My state of mind didn't allow me to party a lot though. During daytime I had some fun with a German guy Eric with whom I could have normal conversations once and a while. The first day in Bocas I did a tour where we were supposed to see dolphins but did not see any, we snorkeled on a place just to see sand (major setback compared to Belize) but nonetheless finally arrived on the idyllic beach of red frog island. There I saw a sloth (Sid from the movie Ice Age for those who don't know the animal) just at eye level. I tried to give it a cookie but it started sissing like a snake and lifting its arms (in an ultra slow pace) so I wisely decided to stop. Who knows what this animal is able to do even at this speed.

After 3 days on the carribean island I had had it with Bocas Del Toro and headed straight for the Chiriqui highlands. Here I stayed for 3 days in the beautiful town Boquete biking and hiking in the mountains. The high season is almost finished and you can feel it on the number of tourists. Each day it is diminishing exponentially (as a figure of speech).


Next and last stop in Panama after the mountains was Panama city from where I had to visit the Panama Canal also known as the Big Ditch. Any self-respecting engineer visiting Panama should do whatever it takes to see this constructional phenomenon created by man. I knew it was a tiring journey on the chicken bus but I did not want to take a taxi because I was on a very tight budget. Being the only tourist on that bus, I arrived at the Miraflores locks after 1 hour and 25 c$ . There I learned something more about the history of the Panama canal and how the canal works. Just in short it is an artificially built canal aging from 1914 that connects the Pacific and Atlantic ocean. It takes 8 hours to cross this canal and some ships pay 200000 $ to cross it. From either oceanside the ship is lifted to a higher level by water that comes from the higher located lakes, which are formed only by rainfall. When the ship is lowered again the water is just wasted away in the oceans (so no pumps are used). In panama, it rains 9 months a year and this large amount of rain is controlled to serve different purposes in the canal area. 58% is used for lockages (procedure described above), 36% for hydropower and 6% for human consumption. If there is too much water (rain), it is just dumped into the ocean through dumplocks. Seeing the locks, there were unfortunately no huge ships passing by but with a little imagination ... (little men can do great things).

Because I am ahead of schedule and there is not so much to do here anymore I changed my flight to leave sunday the 13th of September instead of the 26th what was planned (I am a flexible guy; my boss(es) at work (should) know this :-) ). It only costed me 30 euro extra and South America has certainly a lot more waiting for me. Voila everybody, this was the first big part of my journey: in short I travelled from the USA all the way to Panama in 82 days. From Sunday the 13th of September on I will find myself under the equator and in springtime.

See you from Peru
Dreamanalysing engineer Clint