An old man gutted a live fish, still wriggling, on a weathered wooden table and tossed the guts to a long-billed bird spinning circles in the water.

Miguel pointed to a large lime-green building across the lake. The former School of the Americas, he said.

We had to check it out.

The School of the Americas operated in Panama from 1946 to 1984, training over 61,000 American and Latin American military personnel in the delicate arts of torture and interrogation. Among the more notorious artisans schooled here are former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, Bolivia's talented Hugo Banzer, and terrorist Luis Posada Corriles. The School has received much criticism over the years for training CIA and special operations forces abroad in methods which blatantly violate human rights. After closing down in '84 in concurrence with the signing of the Panama Canal Treaty, the School relocated to Fort Benning, Georgia under the name "The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" (how ominous is that?) where it operates to this day.

School of the Americas

Gamboa Resort (Former School of the Americas)

The building was reminiscent of the hotel in "The Shining". It had a definite presence. Once the most infamous university of torture, it is now a high-end jungle lodge resort, complete with swimming pools, restaurant, and shimmering chandeliers. We walked around the place, absorbing the latent karma lurking beneath the surface. Large gringos milled about, oblivious to the sinister undertones. I took a pee in the marble-lined bathroom and the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

Unsavory things had conspired here. You could sense it. Yet the only indicator of the buildings dark past was an unexplained photograph, faded and half-hidden by some potted palms, of a few old white men in safari hats standing in the jungle with about some shirtless indigenous women, wrinkled breasts sagging in the sunlight.

"National Aeronautics and Space Administration Jungle Survival Training - 1954," the inscription read.

The connection is shady, but nonetheless suspicious. After all, everyone knows that NASA is a front organization for diverting astronomical amounts of tax revenue to clandestine government programs. Like that whole business with the Mars lander not really working out because half the team was using the English measurement system while the other half was going metric. Whoops! A zillion dollars, disintegrated - just like that. Really???

Anyways, we took off the next day. Miguel had been the best host on the planet and he'd shared the generous spirit of couch surfing with all of us. Thanks a lot man!

Ricky, Froste, and I bussed for most of the day up to Santa Catalina, a small beach town on the Pacific. The town was totally dead. Come 9pm, we were the last people awake in the whole village, sharing a flask of seco by the beach. Hermit crabs clambered around, going nowhere, doing nothing. Midnight rolled around and we found a bonfire mysteriously burning unattended on the sand. We fed the thing, made it huge. Two Panamanians walked by with large pails of fish caught fresh from the ocean. We gave them two dollars and they gave us two big, silver fish which we cooked over the fire. Forste's viking instincts took over - he took command of the operation, grunting like Leif Ericson when the fish fat crackled in the flames.

The next day we checked the surf. It blew. We swam.

Now we are back in David, come full circle. Bambu is an awesome little hostel with a warm, relaxed vibe. Everywhere else is pouring rain and flooding, including my planned destination of Boquete.

Marooned in approximate paradise - stay tuned.

-------------------------------------------------------

Home Medicine

Last night
we attempted
a lint
transplant
but
her navel
rejected
it.

-Tom Robbins

http://www.bikeblogcollection.com/

written by  chaddeal on February 6, 2009 from David, Panama
from the travel blog: The Great Pan-American Synchronistic Cycle Extravaganza Unlimited
Send a Compliment

---

the abominable snowman
lives far from any city
up in the himalayas
where snow falls like confetti
men climb far to look for him
their ropes coiled like spaghetti
but though they've looked for years and years
they haven't found him yeti.

-tom robbins

written by  jillian bean on February 7, 2009

comment on this...