Michael: Saturday, March 28, 2015

The dog on its back
Near the church under the sun
Isn’t suffering.

A few brief notes about a few of the people we met on Thursday after we failed once again to find the Amistad trail near the Totumas hot springs.

While we were waiting for the bus home a farm worker and his younger than school age son came walking up the road from Volcan. His son was dressed just like his dad and his dad was dressed just like the worker he was; unadorned baseball cap, long sleeve button shirt, long polyester pants tucked into long galosh type work boots. They were a very handsome father/son pair.

The smiling father reached out to shake my hand and paused from wherever they were headed to take a break and try to have a conversation. While we chatted as best we could the son sat on a large rock nearby and quietly and patiently waited for his father. He was the youngest son. The older sons were working on the finca near the hot springs. After we said about all we could to each other we wished each other a good day then he and his son headed up the road where the saw a lone cow that they drove down the hill. We didn’t see them again for quite a while but we could here them both driving the cattle in front of them until we could see a decent group of cattle and a couple of horses being driven to a clear flat area near the dirt road on the other side of the hill.

The next person we met while we waited was a contractor named Julius. He was driving by in his pick up and decided to stop and offer us a ride which we greatly appreciated and accepted. Julius, like the farmer, smiled and reached out to shake my hand. A two handshake day is rare for me anywhere and Kimme and I still aren’t sure what I did to bring on such good karma.

Julius, spoke a little more English than the farm worker but not much. From what I could gather on the short drive to Volcan is that he was working on a construction project in David, which he agreed with me, was too damned hot. He also threw in that Cerro Punta, as is much of the consensus around here, is too cold. Somewhere between the two is just about right. We also agreed that both the cities of L.A. and Panama were too damned expensive. I’m throwing in the “damned” part. I can’t quite be sure what Julius’ exact words were.

He dropped us off near a bus stop near the outskirts of Volcan where he must have been turning off to visit family or friends, and we caught the nearby bus to the parque to do a little grocery shopping.

And that was my two handshake day.