Peenie Wallie

So, I go down to the dock with all of my gear.

I go down to the dock, and there's this dropout gringo there from....I don't know where...it doesn't really matter....somewhere in the USA and that country squeeze him out like a ball of puss and now he's down here, bothering me.

"If you were in Uvisa, then you weren't in the Darien," he explains to me.

"I'm like...in fact, Uvisa is in the Darien Province, and the Parque Nacional Darien is, in fact, across the river from Uvisa. And I walked across the river, so I was, in fact, in the Darien."

"To get to the Darien National Park, you have to go down river from Uvisa," he offers.

"In fact, that's not the case. The Darien National Park goes the entire width of the country, which runs from east to west. So, yes, you can certainly get into the Darien National Park by going upstream, just as you could get into it by going downstream."

"But in the mountains..."

I'm like...."Look...honestly....I don't care what you think. Just let it go."

Like...you're freaking living out of a backpack. I could not care less what you think, moron.

But 10:00 a.m. comes and goes, and the sailboat, which I can see in the harbor, never moves an inch closer to the dock where I've been told I'm supposed to load.

Finally, I ride back to the hostel.

When I get there, I explain that the San Blas Cat is just sitting in the harbor, but won't come to the dock. At which point, the owner (Marco Polo) of the hostel starts trying to communicate with the guy in the San Blas Cat out in the harbor, and he says he doesn't have any reservations for motorcycles today.

So, there was a big miscommunication, it seems. Like...you can go to their website which clearly states that they sail from Portobelo every Monday which is clearly a lie.

Like... I can tell you that they didn't sail today. So, there is that.

Apparently, you have to make a reservation and, apparently, all of the contacts that Steve and I made wasn't good enough for them to ever even say: "We won't sail on Monday if you don't give us a deposit". Saying that would have cleared things up immensely, I think.

But, it is what it is. There's no use crying over spilled milk.

I talk to a few people in town. Mostly people who dropped out of civilization and sort of ended up down here for reasons even they don't truly grasp. And they indicate that there are a lot of boats operating out of Puerto Lindo.

So, there's a chance I could get out of a boat in Puerto Lindo.

I start to ride the motorcycle to Porto Lindo, but it starts to rain and lord fucking god would someone turn the fucking sky-faucets off? Seriously?

I've talkd with Ben about this. And also with Ken, one of the riders I met yesterday....after the trip, all of you remember is the great adventures you had riding all over the planet on your motorcycle. But when you're doing it, it's grueling work. It's hard, and hot and tedious and dangerous and, somehow, when you look back on it, you think it was fun. But it's not really all that much fun. I mean...part of the day is fun. But it's also like you're working harder every day than you've ever worked in your life, in a country where they don't speak your language, and they measure gas in liters and distance in kilometers. About the only thing we use that's the same is we use the same clocks, it seems.