The Road to Cambutal


The Road to Cambutal

(4 votes)

Written by Matt Landau

Sunday, June 04 2006

Panama culture is quirky and counter-intuitive so it seemed fitting that my decision to venture to the southern-most tip of the country—the remote and seemingly inaccessible village of Cambutal—evolved from the lone reason that most people won't go there.

If you picture the country of Panama as a stubby, wavy version of an uppercase “T”, Cambutal sits neglected at the bottom—the part where you pick up your pen and move on to the next letter. It lies approximately seven degrees above the equator on this knobby peninsula that juts out into the Pacific Ocean.

From hearsay, the only real people that go to Cambutal are surfers, which is essentially a warning—being that surfers, like wild animals, are extremely low-maintenance and don't mind roughing it. If you tell a civilized Panamanian that you're going there, they will look at you with this perplexed and concerned glance as if you have just told them you eat rocks.

Cambutal to me, even sounds like a remote place. The only hard facts I could find were from surf websites which praised the point for “hollow and powerful swells” as well as “rising and falling tides.” This meant nothing to me as my surfing ability is limited to the internet. But I would remember these terms and phrases incase I needed them. Nonetheless, the place sounded exotic and mysterious—for me, a good enough reason to visit.

For trips like these, I generally avoid the anxiety of packing by skipping the process entirely. Backpacks, like tootsie rolls were made that size for a reason, and I figure if I can't fit everything into one bag I don't deserve my title as an international man of mystery. I loaded up my sneaks, a plastic set of silverware, some TUMS, a rain jacket, a compass, and some jarred white asparagus. I was off.

The road to Cambutal starts as the Pan-American Highway—a very nice four-lane highway which, and it's really funny to actually envision doing this, leads all the way up through Central America and into the USA and Canada. Alongside the road, school children, in their neatly pressed blue slacks and white button downs, were walking home from school. They looked so tiny and cute up against this grand backdrop that is miles and miles of green mountains.

We stopped at, what is widely known to be the oldest church in the Western hemisphere and while I am not a man of religion, a title like that is far too good to pass up. The church itself sits in the little village of Natá—a dusty town of one-floor houses and hard working people. We pulled up in front of the church and asked a man in a purple shirt how old it was. He misunderstood me and answered that he was 27 and that he just had his birthday last night. “Happy birthday” I offered. “Did you get anything good?”

“Nah, just some socks and a turtle.”

The man, though just a passerby, offered to give us a tour of the church and we obliged. The inside of this church was really amazing: it was all wood and dated back nearly 500 years. Really quite an impressive building, church or not. (see photos)

We continued on our way and at one point in the road, an hour or two from San Carlos, you are given the option to continue on the highway or exit off it to the left. We took the option. For a few good hours there was almost nothing: just hills and cows that seriously would not have been out of place in Maine or Vermont. Every now and then we'd pass a small cemetery with its brightly colored gravestones and overdone nativity scenes. Oftentimes, beside the cemetery, or somewhere close by, would be a large plant-like facility with the following words emblazoned on a sign out front: Comité Nacional de Semillas. A National Seeds Committee, I thought, was a peculiar agency to be mentioned in the same breath as a cemetery. Why would anyone want to devote their lives to seeds if their inevitable death was so clearly displayed next door? A Committee for Skydiving or Swimming With Sharks would be more fitting in my book.

For a while on the road, things were pretty boring. We had entered the Azuero Peninsula which, in bodily terms, is like Panama's stubby, deformed foot. As in any road trip, a downtime in scenery allows for serious bonding. For Rebecca and I, this took the form of retrospection into animal rights. She, being an animal lover, is very easy (and enjoyable) to piss off and I, being an animal eater, was having my fun.

“Do you think dog or cat meat would taste better?”

“Oh stop it Matt!” she whined.

“No seriously. If you were on a desert island, and you had to eat either your cat or your dog, which would you eat first and how would you cook it? I'd braise a dog in some sort of curried stew or else just typical French style.”

“I've actually heard cat tastes like chicken” she said.

This struck me as a weird comment, and I had heard it several times before. More specifically, the word “heard” was what bothered me. Had some of her friends eaten cat one night and told everyone about it the next day in school? Or did she “hear” it from a stranger on the street or perhaps in line at Starbucks? I'll have a mocha latte, she'd say. And by the way, what meat would you say cat tastes the closest to? Had she looked it up on the internet? Maybe learned it from her older sister? How someone “hears” what cat tastes like is beyond me, but I let it slide.

Las Tablas is a small town, right around the arch of that proverbial Panamanian foot that I was talking about. It's really well known for its fratty antics during the week of Carnaval and we figured it was worth a stop. We edged through these crammed little streets bubbling with activity. Lots of small hotels, quaint restaurants, and some two-story French architecture that reminded me of Bourbon Street. I bought a pack of Trident Maxxx chewing gum which, I am pleased to say was a very very nice investment. I sometimes forget about it but when you buy gum, you are not just buying food, you are buying entertainment—an activity (chewing and blowing bubbles) which you can enjoy for hours. It was really a treat.

We hadn't passed a car—or a house or a person for that matter—for a while. Eventually the scenery began to improve and we rolled down the windows and put on some good music. Those rural mid-west scenes were slowly becoming more tropical and you could sort of smell that the ocean was near. The suspense was building with every turn until there it was: around the last corner was this glorious view of crashing coastline. We pulled down a small dirt road and found a bar, a few tired surfers who were packing up for the day. They looked to be from California or somewhere in the states and I knew exactly what I wanted to say to them.

“Those look like pretty hollow and powerful swells out there, huh?” I said with conviction.

“Huh?” one replied, surprised that there was someone standing directly behind him.

I thought back to the surfers blogs and reeled out another sure-fire line. “I heard tides do a lot of rising and falling around these parts.” I don't know why I said “around these parts” as it sounds a little cheesy, almost cowboyish.

“Yeah” the surfer said, the way you do when someone not as cool as you tries to be your friend.

I laughed because my attempt at surfing lingo had failed. I laughed because it was funny.

They were surfers just hanging out there, in this quiet piece of Azuero paradise and they could do perfectly without people like me ever finding them. The land out here is just incredible and property with beach views can be picked up for as little as $4/square meter. I saw one beautiful new house perched up on this green mountain cliff, overlooking miles and miles of pure coast—not another house in sight. We met a few campesinos looking to sell their giant beachfront properties for what seemed to us, like pennies. Contact me about the real estate if you like...

Dark was upon us so we picked up the pace. Just before dawn we reached the town of Pedasi which, by the size of the letters on the map, seemed to be a good place to rest our weary legs. Or is it eyes? Either way, Pedasi was dead. Jim calls it “an artist's town with no artists.” I call it a ghost town. It was pretty—looked kinda like it was out of a Hollywood set—and since the former President of Panama had grown up there, a nice park and clean streets were by code. But other than aesthetics, I thought it was boring. That Pedasi didn't strike our fancy may have been a blessing in disguise as we chugged further south as the few precious remaining minutes of sunlight sunk below the horizon.

As we neared our next and theoretically last chance for shelter, something very strange started happening: this bizarre phenomenon in the road ahead of us. At first, I didn't notice it, but the animal activist in Rebecca noticed it in the form of a loud, ear piercing shriek.

It had just rained and out of nowhere, appeared toads, sizing from golf balls to eggplants—like thousands and thousands of toads. Suddenly and without warning, they began mercilessly throwing themselves in front of my 50 mph wheels like some sort demented frog kamikazes. I couldn't dodge them, for there were maybe one million of these little suicide froggers. Hundreds of toads seemingly waiting for just the right time to launch themselves at the oncoming vehicle. As I gripped the wheel and continued at my speed, you could hear—through the ironically playing Bon Jovi lyrics of “It's My Life”—thumps and squishes, cracks and snaps. This was paired by painful howls coming from the passenger seat beside me and devilish, almost warrior-like screams coming out of my mouth. I couldn't help but run them all over. Sure I felt bad for them, but it was easily the most pleasurable killing spree I have ever been a part of.

With frog innards splattered about the front and side of our car, we rolled up to a small house/hotel called Hotel Boamy in the town of Tonosí. The owner, Bolivar and his wife welcomed us with open arms, showing us to a very cute little room and then cooked us dinner even though it was past their bed time. As we ate, Bolivar sat across from us at a nearby table with a pink table cloth, the sort of way you sit near something you want to talk to or learn more about. I sensed it and invited him into our conversation. We talked about a number of things, from fish sticks to Legos to the weather to crows and Bolivar was loving it. After dinner, still with the adrenaline of carnage and slaughter in our veins, we meandered over to a dimly lit pool hall. We played a few messy games of pool then retired for the night, passing and thanking Bolivar in his hammock as he sat watch over us for the night.

See photos of the new friends we met, the trip from Chitré to Tonosí, or the old church in Natá

Or if you like me so much that you want to keep reading, continue on to Part II

Or if you hate this story and you want to leave, get yourself back to Panama Travel.