I need to back up for a minute.
In the US, when you are in your lane, it is your lane totally. If a car was coming at you from the other direction, in your lane, you would react in some negative or angry way. You have the right of way in your lane.
Absolutely...you can count on it...take it to the bank!
In Panama, the entire road is at your disposal. Everyone swerves into the other lane to dodge pot holes, pedestrians, drunks passed out in the road, animals, bicycles, children playing or whatever.
When buses pull over to get or let out passengers, they only partially pull off the road. The traffic behind the bus swerves out into the on-coming traffic's lane. All the time. Everyone squeezes by the on-coming traffic.
So, the road is SHARED by all, in any way you want to use it. You can park or stop in the road...in either lane. Doesn't matter.
Needless to say, you have to pay ATTENTION!
The difference here is that all this is approached with courtesy. Cooperation. Working it out as you go.
Thus all the waving. Friendly acknowledgement of letting someone use "your" lane.
This is a much more appealing way to drive, I find.
Now about soap...
If there is soap in bathrooms, it is liquid soap. Frequently, in is weak, watered down stuff.
Why?
Well, when the soap is about half gone, they fill it back up with water. So now it is 50% watered down.
This process is repeated several times until the soap is essentially water.
Just a little quirk of Panama!
I was hiking on the Pipeline Trail in Bajo Mono. This is a beautiful 90 minutes hike. It ends at a 200 foot high waterfall. My favorite hike to date.
This morning, I met a local farmer and an old one to boot.
I told him I didn't speak much Spanish. He still rattled on with a blistering pace, ignoring my lack of understanding.
He was so charming that I didn't mind. At one point, he pulled out his pensionado card (retirement). I said "tambien" (me too) and he started to laugh. I guess because we had something in common.
I find that the older farmers are the nicest people in Boquete. That is saying something because most people here are nice.
Even though I didn't understand much of what he said, there was a pleasant sense of relationship, based more on way of being than words.
We parted friends. I'm sure I will see him again.
3 comments:
love the blog, Tom, and the awareness of the common courtesy when 'entitlement' is out-of-the-way. the encounter with the old farmer was great, and my experience as well. I find old farmers in Arkansas to be the very same... Love, Darshan
I guess a farmer is a farmer where ever they live. Thanks for consistently reading the blog. That puts the fun and satisfaction into writing it. Love, Tom
Hi Tom,
yeah, reading your blog, is for me, like being able to just show-up at a Friend's house, without being a pain in the ass - for those times when I have no (little)self interest in what I want or don't want. Then, going to your Blog is just right!! It always makes me feel Loved and Included. Honesty does that for me. Thanks for 'leaving the door open'. Love, Darshan
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