Planet Kapow 34 : Panama City to Turbo (The Darién Crossing)

SO HERE: we are, in a 4WD driven by a lanky Panamanian with a gold tooth cut into the shape of the Playboy Bunny. We were up at four o’clock, giddy with excitement, and even though he was two hours late to pick us up and has stopped every half hour for the last five hours our excitement has not abated. Today it happens. We are on our way, past the Darién Gap and into South America. Today. Today. This is it.

The Darién Gap sounds like the fanciful invention of a writer. A harsh, jungled no-man’s-land, traversable only by a combination of foot and dug-out canoe, peopled by some very dangerous men, armed to the teeth, whose only English phrases include “The ransom is two million dollars” and “Say hello to my little friend”. A land of wild things blocking the only point of contact between the two American continents.

It’s barely conquerable at the best of times – the expedition to cross in 1985-7 in a Jeep, taking 741 days, actually took more time than it would take for a snail to cover the same distance – and since the escalation of violence in Colombia in the mid-90’s, increasingly likely to end up in kidnapping, or worse.

But Diego and Mario, the two Brazilians we’d spent time with in Granada, had explained to us that it may be possible to skirt the edge of the Darien Gap, taking longboats from island to island through the San Blas archipelago and then further south, to the border town of Puerto Obaldía and into Colombia through Capurganá. That was all the information we had to go on.

Our 4WD drops us in the coastal town of Cartí which, against our expectations, is nothing more than a thatched-roof palapa and a carpark. A soft-voiced Panamanian explains that we will need to go to the island of Cartí Sugdub, which is a common stop for passing cargo boats. He guides us to a small longboat. Adam tries to take a photo of a group of men struggling with a homemade sailboat off the pier, but someone on the longboat shouts in protest.

“No photos here,” says the helpful man, “You can take photos on the island.”

I sit down next to a plastic bag full of dead fish and we set off, lolling across the shallow waves, the spray of sea in our hair.

The island is packed – every available space has a cane fence around it, giving the island as a whole the look of a wooden fort. The water around the shore, clear and blue, is encrusted with trash, strewn with plastic bottles and missing flip-flops. On the concrete pier, women are wrapped in bright orange and pink fabrics, covering their lower faces like Technicolor ninjas.

On arriving we’re told wildly conflicting stories – there will be a boat to Puerto Obaldía tomorrow, there will be a boat at 1pm, there are no more boats, period. The boat will take six hours, it will take five days, it will take three days – maybe. An old Kuna man with great Coke-bottle specs approaches us. “I don’t know if there are any boats,” he says vaguely in fluent English, “Maybe later?” He shakes our hands, except Danielle, who he can’t see out the side of his glasses. His name is Charlie; he speaks English because he spent most of his life working on American naval bases. “If you come and visit me in the afternoon, I’d like that very much,” he says, but though we run into him several times, shuffling along in his orange Hawaiian shirt, he never recognizes us again.

The island is small – it can be crossed in any direction in around two minutes. Everywhere kids are playing. They try to push each other into the garbage in the water, they play tug ‘o’ war using their ragged clothes as ropes.

We sit down to a meal of fried chicken and rice and try to formulate a plan. Remarkably, there’s a pair of foreigners already on the island: Yannick and Shirley, a pair of cyclists on a colossal intercontinental odyssey. They’ve been here a day already; they speak optimistically of the cargo boat on the pier and another speculated to turn up in the afternoon, but both are heading in the wrong direction.

We sit on the concrete pier under a ferocious sun. A group of kids surrounds Shirley as she teaches them math. The toilet on the pier is nothing more than a square hole dropping directly into the ocean. I take a walk around the dirt path of the island. The houses all jut against one another; there is literally no free space. All the older women have nose rings and oddly patterned fabrics on their legs; they sometimes smile but rarely return my greetings. There is a tiny school and medical centre, a couple of huts doubling as general stores and a handful with signs advertising cold beer. Against a cane wall, a group of boys play panpipes. Bright masks of cloth hang from doorways.

Back on the pier there has been an offer – a man willing to take us halfway for forty dollars per person. It’s more than we’d like to pay, but it’s encouraging. A German boy, Sebastian, and a Swiss girl, Pixie, have also arrived on the island, two friendly hippies fresh from several months living on a bus traveling through central America.

The pier is starting to get crowded. There are eight of us now. Needing some space, we head to a bar – actually nothing more than a hut with a dirt floor, pitch black inside except for the fuzzy glow of a television set beaming the latest news to half a dozen men who sit silently watching at the back.

We drink our beer in silence, fearful of breaking the respectful reverie the men seem to have for the news program. We order more fried chicken and rice and go to sit on the pier with the others. Darkness falls and the captain makes an appearance. It falls to Yannick to negotiate with him, and he’s a fine negotiator; his Spanish is not much more advanced than ours but the words come quickly to him. He pushes hard, working consistently at the idea that the captain would be silly to miss the opportunity. The captain counterattacks by claiming that, as foreigners, we weigh too much for the boat.

(“Look at me,” says Yannick, indignant, “I’ve been cycling for twelve months. There’s no fat on me.”
“Don’t translate this to your friends,” says the captain, “but you’re substantially smaller than everyone else here.”)

Then the negotiations seem to get away from Yannick. He makes a joke about us all making sure we urinate extra hard in the morning to rid ourselves of excess weight, and this does not go down well. Within minutes the price has risen to forty-five, higher than when we started. “No more negotiations,” says the captain, and walks away.

Everyone talks nervously. “Well, he needs us more than we need him,” goes the refrain, repeated several times. We eventually agree to wake early and try to get the price back down to forty and, failing that, accept forty-five. We play some cards on the balcony of our dorm and head to bed on paper-thin mattresses, a refreshing breeze blowing mercifully through the cracks in the cane walls.

As it turns out, the captain does not need us more than we need him; in fact, quite the opposite. When we awake he is not at the docks, and does not appear all morning. We are now left with no boat. Without even the hope for a boat. Rumours fly. There may be a boat leaving for Caledonia at 1pm, or the next morning. A cargo ship may or may not show up in three days. We sit on the pier and twiddle our thumbs, trying to remain in the quickly disappearing rectangles of shade. Men on the docks bring in crate after crate of soft drinks in cans and bottles. On a pier across from us a group of men fiddle with a large rifle, aiming it out to sea. A store room on the pier holds nothing but cans of beer in pallets stacked to the roof. The seconds click by sedately. When we realize it is only eleven o’clock in the morning I have a quietly suffocating panic attack at the thought of the day stretched out before us on this cramped island.

We go to lunch – the island has by this point run out of rice, so we get fried discs of plantain to accompany the ubiquitous fried chicken – and when we return a miracle has occurred: Yannick and Shirley have found another boat to take us to Ustupu at five o’clock the next morning for forty-five dollars.

The full moon is bright as we pack our backpacks and bikes into the front of the uncovered longboat, wrapping them in tarps as best we can. By 5.15am we’re in the boat and on our way, everyone whooping and hollering at the idea of getting away from the island. But any thoughts of a pleasant cruise are quickly drowned in the thick bursts of seawater that shoot over the bow and onto all of us. Within minutes of leaving, we are all wrapped tightly in flapping blue sheets of plastic. We’re still getting drenched. The little crowded islands drift past and are soon lost in the grey choppy water.

After an hour the sun is hovering low in the sky and we are out of the islands and into the open water. The boat ride is now starting to become scary – the boat lurches down the face of waves and threatens to roll. We are several hundred metres from the shore and a long way from any signs of life. We have not passed another boat. Erin is petrified; at every sway of the boat she gasps and grabs tightly at the wooden plank on which we are sitting. I, on the other hand, am experiencing that rare calm that sometimes occurs in situations which are out of your control but survivable – the tranquil methodical work of planning.

“If the boat goes over,” I am thinking, “I will not panic. I will cling to the overturned hull with one hand and if anybody so much as touches it I will quite happily drown them with my free hand…”

This section lasts another three hours, until we are again in the shelter of islands – these ones uninhabited and lush and palm-filled, like a cliche of a deserted tropical island. The boat gets some water in the fuel line and we take the opportunity to throw back the plastic sheets and get some sunshine, which by now is strong but not yet overbearing. We are laughing, we are joking. The driver spills some fuel onto the floor of the boat while messing about with the engine and the stench of petrol consumes the boat; it sloshes about with the water that is ever present at our ankles. Then it is fixed, the driver reattaches the plastic casing to the engine, back out of the islands and into the open sea.

The driver’s offsider spends much of the trip bailing water frantically out of the boat with the top of a large plastic jug. The sprays of his water fly up in long arcs like a fountain. Adam and Danielle help out with a plastic bag and an empty water bottle.

The boat is cramped and our muscles ache and tremble as the hours pass. Finally we turn in toward shore, finding a narrow channel and following it around to reveal our destination: Ustupu.

We get our stiff legs onto the dock but an old man is in my face, telling me that we can’t stay on the island. He’s saying that there isn’t enough food, that tourists are not welcome; also that he knows of no other boats going to Colombia for the next few weeks. I relay the news to everyone. Our driver, who had repeatedly refused to even consider traveling all the way to Obaldía, suddenly offers to take us the rest of the way for an extra thirty-five dollars per person. He says it will take two and a half, three hours. “Never!” shouts Sebastian with surprising venom when I relay the news. “Never! I’m never getting on that boat again!” He storms away up the pier, followed by Pixie. They sit and stew and smoke. It’s only later that we find out that they had fuel leaking onto them for the entire journey, which explains Sebastian’s mood but not his decision to light a cigarette. Thankfully, he does not explode in flame.

The rest of us talk over our options. Next to the boat a bloated mouse is perfectly suspended in the water. A starfish lies calmly under a blanket of plastic bags and tin cans. Everyone suspects that the islanders are in cahoots with the boat driver to hold us ransom for an outrageous price.
“But it’s the price we wanted to pay!” I protest.
“It’s not about the money,” insists Yannick, who spends the most of the following twenty-four hours describing the situation in terms like “extortion”, “hostage-taking” and “blackmail”. The old man reiterates that he would like us off the island as quickly as possible. The whole situation has a suspicious feel to it. We are all mystified as to why all the boat drivers on Cartí wanted to take us to an island on which we are not welcome.

After unloading their cargo the boat driver becomes impatient for an answer. I approach Sebastian and Pixie cautiously.
“Sorry, I know you probably want to be left alone,” I begin before the words start tumbling out, “but they want us off the island and there’s no way off the island except on our boat and they’re going to leave if we don’t agree to their price now.”
“Yes,” Pixie says quietly, not looking at me. “Yes.”

We tell our boat driver that we’ve agreed, but Yannick, still annoyed at the situation, refuses to pay up front, saying he’ll pay half now and half when we arrive at Puerto Obaldía. He means well but he pushes too hard, then there is a misunderstanding about his intentions and everyone is yelling. The driver’s offsider claims that we are telling lies; there is a general suggestion that we are planning to make a run for it when we arrive, which is clearly ridiculous with all of our packs and gear wrapped up in the boat. A large woman walks over from a nearby house and joins the fray, shouting at us loudly.
“Who the fuck are you?” Sebastian shouts at her in English. Eventually things settle; we agree to pay fifty now and thirty later.

Three local men are to accompany us. We glide slowly out of the dock past a cargo boat flying the Colombian flag. “Viva Colombia!” shouts Yannick enthusiastically, but it receives an ambivalent response from the crew.
“You have your own homeland,” one grumbles. “Why are you cheering for ours?”

The sea is as rough as before but without the weight of the cargo the boat is faster and significantly drier. Despite this new comfort, everyone is now determined to hate the trip and, in particular, the three men from Ustupu.
“You know, your customer service is not very good,” says Yannick to one of the offsiders, “It’s very bad for tourism. The internet is very, very big and we are going to tell everyone.” The Ustupu man gives this threat the look of derision it deserves, while I try to shrink away from Yannick as much as is possible when crammed together on a tiny longboat.

The landscape is truly wild as we cruise the last couple of hours to Puerto Obaldía, though we still pass a few bits of plastic and the top of a jug. But even in our current state – exhausted, famished, sullen and testy – we can’t fail to be overcome with silent wonder at that tangled expanse of untouched wilderness. Finally we cross the cape and the town lays before us. We pull into the sand, jump into the shin-deep water and wade up to dry land.

Puerto Obaldía is far more pleasant and laidback than we expected. We register our names with the port officials sitting lazily around a desk under a tent – the banner next to them reads “Our force does not consist of what we have, but of how we use what we have”.

Plans are already underfoot for the following day; passports are photocopied and stamped, boats are arranged to Capurganá in Colombia. We have not eaten all day. We go to a restaurant across the road from our dorm, and ask if they have chicken – “No sorry, only pork today. But we can go and kill a chicken for you if you like” – an offer we decline.

The shower in our pension is a high tap over a bucket. My body is still trembling and lurching from the hours on the boat. Yannick is still trying to work out if it was blackmail or extortion. The old lady who owns the place plays her television far too loud and mosquitos buzz in our ears all night.

We are up at 5:30 to catch a boat that bounces around the point in the grey dawn, to a spectacular vision of a golden sunrise above the silhouetted palms and murky jungle. The boat slaps the waves hard, throwing us in the air and bruising my tailbone, but within thirty minutes we are sitting on our packs by the beach in Capurganá.

The immigration office, which was supposed to open early for us, does not open early for us. We use the delay to partake of the new Colombian foods – arepas full of egg, the shining perfect orbs of buñuelos. When the immigration office finally opens there is no power, so we are forced to wait another hour. In the meantime we wander Capurganá’s lovely sunny streets, to the bay of black sand and the little red church covered in flowers.

Entering Turbo is a sensation as olfactory as it is visual. The viscous stench of garbage is everywhere. The water in the narrow harbour is a scummy muck so garbage-filled that birds can stand on the surface of the water. It’s the noisiest, smelliest, dirtiest and most chaotic entry point into Colombia, but we’re here. It’s taken two hundred and thirty eight days, but we’re here. We’re here and our hearts are strong and our bodies young and we’re here so bring it on and we’ll start a fire – this is happening and this is it and we’re here to do this so let’s do this bring it out into the light and let’s do it.

We get into the bus for Cartagena and fall asleep.

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Trip Details: We organized our trip to Cartí through our Panama City hostel, Luna’s Castle. It cost $36 per person; you may be able to find cheaper if you shop around. Be aware that you will need to specifically ask to go to Cartí as most people use the 4WD’s to access the San Blas islands and don’t go all the way. From Cartí to Cartí Sugdub the boat cost $2. We stayed at the hostel next to the pier which I believe is the only place to stay on the island; with a little haggling we got the beds for $5 each. The boat on to Obaldía is variable; we’ve heard of it costing as little as $30 on the cargo ships but they can take more than a week to get there. Be prepared to pay between $60 (if you’re lucky) and $100 (if you’re not) for a longboat, which can be very difficult to find. And be prepared to wait. Take more than one book. The thirty-minute boat trip on to the rather beautiful town of Capurganá is an extortionate $15. From there to Turbo takes about three hours and costs 50,000 pesos (about $28); try not to get stuck in Turbo if you can avoid it. The boat may try to charge you extra for any baggage. We caused a stink over this but it didn’t get us very far. From Turbo to Cartagena, the buses costs 80,000 pesos ($44) altogether. The bus to Monteria cost $30,000 and took five hours; we had to change bus halfway because of a collapsed bridge. Between Monteria and Cartagena we caught a more expensive minivan for 50,000 to avoid having to spend the night in Monteria. It took three hours. You can probably save about 15,000 pesos using the regular bus.

The tracks on this episode are: “No Llores Porque Me Voy” by Idamerica Ruiz with Osvaldo Ay, the Growler’s brilliant calypso track “The Diamond Ring for Emaline”, Los Soul Fantastique’s “Mi Bella Panama” and “El Pajaro Zum Zum” by Ceferino Nieto. All of these are available on one or the other of Soundway Recordings’ fantastic and highly, highly recommended Panama! series of albums.

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