edwards block

Today I went on a day trip out to Pipeline Road with Ancon Expeditions, an eco-tour company. They picked me up at 6:40am, and had already picked up four others, who were visiting from Maryland. They were a couple with a 15 year old son, and the mother´s adult sister.

Pipeline Road is an old dirt road that follows the path of a pipeline that was built during WW2 in order to ship fuel across the continent in the event that the Panama Canal was incapacitated. The part of the road that we visted was in Parque National Sobrania, about a 40 minute drive from downtown Panama, and a place internationally known by birders as a prime viewing site.

The Americans had accents that sounded like a cross between New Jersey and Boston, and demonstrated this by yakking endlessly, and loudly, about the most inane topics imaginable. The kid wasn´t so bad, but the adults were irritating beyond belief, and you know how tolerant I am of such things.

I´m sure I could have done better if it were quieter, but I saw about a dozen new birds, a couple of sloths, some peculiar rodent-like creatures, a turtle and a Cayman, as well as a lot of jungle plants, insects, and butterflies, including a number of brilliant Blue Morphos.

We stopped for lunch at another section of the park, near a waterfall. While the others were taking each others´ pictures, the tour guide and I were discussing the differences between the fairly modern Panamanian and fairly antiquated Costa Rican telecommunications systems. As we were discussing the element of socialist leanings in preventing Costa Rica´s system from progressing, the American man came along and made some snappy comment about socialism having such a devastating affect wherever it´s been tried, using as examples the historical human suffering in the Soviet Union and China.

I attempted to point out that while capitalism has certainly been a more effective means of advancing technology, it is unfair to lump democratic socialism in with Stalin. I suggested that the way capitalism is burning up world resources, devastation and human suffering of a grand scale are also a likely result of that system. He rejected this as hypothetical theory and continued on ranting about the evils of socialism.

I was introducing the topic of the military and cultural devastation that his country is wreaking on the world when the tour guide, very sensibly, spotted an unusual butterfly for us to gawk at, and that was the end of politics.

Now, I know that there are many very good people who bear the unfortunate burden of having been born in the US – some of the most interesting people I have ever met have been Americans. There are even a few intellects of particularly discerning tastes that are regular readers of this blog. But why, oh why, must I always find the rotten ones wherever I go? I expect people like this in Cleveland or Tampa, and pay them no mind, but at Auschwitz, or La Scala? It doesn´t matter where I travel, there alway seem to be a couple of obnoxious yanks with too much money and too little brain to annoy the rest of the visitors. If you want to yell and guffaw, go to Disneyland, for your savior´s sake, not on a bird watching tour.

Well, that´s the end of that rant. For now.

Tomorrow morning I am flying to the town of David, in northern Panama. I will then take a taxi to the smaller town of Boquete, where I will be recovering from the noise of the city in a small, isolated B&B in the mountains. With any luck, the place won´t be listed in the AAA guide.