La Playa a Puerto Limones
Yesterday, 3/11, we traveled west across Panama on the Pan Am Highway, then turned south and drove another 70 kilometers or so to Puerto Limones, the southernmost point in all of Panama. Like Karen says in her blog, In da Campo, sometimes we need to go west to soothe our souls. From where the photo below was taken, the border with Costa Rica is approximately 10 kilometers. Just south of Puerto Armuelles, (roughly translated, Port of Spinach), Puerto Limones, (Port of Lemons) is a spot on the map with a resort hotel, un restaurante and not much else. Except for heat; lots and lots of heat. Driving through Puerto Limones, and this section of Panama generally, gave me a newfound understanding of what workers on the Panama Canal experienced 100 years ago. As David McCullough writes in ‘The Path Between The Seas,’ his National Book Award winning work on the building of the canal, at one point in the late eighteenth century the French effort was foundering. Heat, humidity, yellow fever and malaria were killing on average 40 men a day. At Limones it was not difficult to see why. Just surviving required effort, and the hardest work I was doing was raising a fork to my mouth.
It was low tide when we visited, as you can see in the pictures. We dined on tuna steaks fresh from the Pacific and watched humongous pelicans folding their wings and knife-diving into the roiling ocean for their own pescado por almuerzo. I’m going out on a limb to state that our tuna was likely as fresh as those the pelicans were catching. It was yummy.
Looking due south
La siesta at Limones
Raquel, our tourguide/AirBnB host points out the CR border
After a five-hour drive through western Panama, our visit to Limones, and a view of Costa Rica we headed back to the AirBnB at Volcan. I’ll post about that soon, as our stay at Raquel’s Ark is worth at least one blog post, perhaps eight, just ask Kris Cunningham, a frequent blogger at The Panama Adventure. What cannot be seen in the above photo is Raquel’s tag-along navigator, assistant, driving critic and constant companion. ‘Boomer,’ a mono pequeno howler monkey is in there scritching, climbing, being the best little monkey he can be. Boomer has the run of the vehicle–I thought he was going to help shift gears a time or two–and he took great pleasure in just ‘monkeying around’ for the entire trip. Here’s a photo of Mariah holding Boomer, her new simian BFF.
Boomer & Mariah: BFF
More later as the Panama adventure, our version of it continues. Thanks for reading.
Mmmm. I’m imagining those fresh tuna steaks! We both read McCullough’s book, “The Path Between the Seas,” after our initial visit to Panama City and the Canal. It really provided insight into the heroic effort that went into the actual building and the terrible toll it took upon the workers. It’s hard to imagine the heat, humidity, lack of sanitation, devastating diseases and the generally horrific conditions the workers must have faced. Just remembering the heat makes me understand a bit of what they went through… Anita
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Thanks for reading, Anita. Yes, the canal builders must have been pretty tough, or pretty desperate for work. Limones was an amazing place, for a lot of reasons.
More later, thanks again.
BE
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I’m enjoying catching up with your blog. Glad you guys made it there safe and sound. That monkey is adorable (I’ve sort of not so secretly always wanted a monkey).
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