The Odyssey of the Steel Rat

This is LOOOOOONG it may end up being in 2 parts.

The day at Lunas Castle started early. I picked up my watch and looked at it Damn 4:50 the alarm clock didn`t go ogg. The day before I had bought an ararm at El Machetazo on Central Ave. in Panama City to make sure I got up in time. I set it and double checked it before I went to bed. But alas 4:30 came and went and it didn`t go off. Well for $1.60 you don`t expect miracles. I had packed the night before so I was ready to go. All that was necessary was to bring my stuff to the front of the hostel and wait for the jeep. As I got there I saw a group waiting. In all therewas about 10 of us. We were all waiting for our ride to the coastto begin our trip on the Stahlratte the Steel Rat. Out in front confusion and uncertainty were rampant. There was one driver there with what looked like a new Toyota Land Cruiser. He let it be known that he was only taking 4 passengers and that another car wuld be here shortly. Then it turns out his car was reserved for 4 specific people and the 4 people who were already in there were rather unceremoniously removed. That driver finally located HIS 4 people and left. That left about 8 of us wondering what was going on. About 20 minutes later another Landcruiser shows up, however this one is sbustantially different. First of all even the most generous person no matter how hard they tried could look at this car and think it was new. As I later found out it was a 1995. The hood was dented, the windshield wipers didn´t work and instead of having nice new confortable seats for 4 it had 2 bench seats in the back. The bench seats held 8. At any rate he starts loading the luggage rack and there are 2 of us there with bikes which we each paid an extra $10.00 for. He asked which one was lighter and I said that the other one was probably lighter as mine also had my tent and sleeping bag on it. So he takes the other guys bike and puts it on top of the luggage while telling me that mine would go on the next car. Ah thinks I so there is going to be another car they are not going to pack us in there like sardines.......WRONG! The second car shows up and it is yet another aging landcruiser. This one looks even worse than it´s counterpart. There is a small triangular shaped median in the street and I noticed that he backs up until his wheels are touching the curb. After observing the rest of the car I speculate that he is doing that because the parking brake doesn´t work. Of course the biggest is that the car is already full with other passengers. So thick with the realization that yes we are going to be packed like sardines and that the only reason the other reason is here is to pick up my bike we all do a collective sigh and get in our respective cars. The one i get is packed full in the back so I have to take the front seat. The front seat is a 60-40 type of set up and I´m thinking to myself "self you scored. You got this nice wide seat while everyone else is squeezed in tight." It is at this point that the driver informs me that we have to make one more stop to pick up one more pèrson and I will have to share the seat with him...SIGH! Finally we are on our way and the driver informs us that it is 3.5-4 hour trip. Everybody get comfy.As we drive through new Panama city the rain starts to let up. By the time we are out in the country it has stopped altogether and the sky is clearing. On our way to San Blas islands our first stop is at Migracion to have our passports chedked. Our second stop is a few minutes later for breakfast. Breakfast is fried chicken with empanadas and coffee. Typical Central American fare. After spending about 45 minutes at our breakfast stop we continue down the road. The road begins to deteriorate, big potholes become more common and the driver is back and forth across the road avoiding them. The driver had informed us that the road was going to get worse after the restaurant, is this what he meant, it didn´t seem so bad.......NOT! Further down the deteriorating road he pulls off and makes a left turn and gets out and locks his hubs. The road goes up at a fairly steep grade and is turning dirt. In very little time it is up and down like this continuously mile after mile and the road gets muddier slicker and twistier as we go. I am very happy I am in a car and not trying to negotiate this on a loaded touring bike. We continue on like this for about 45 minutes when we stop at a table manned by 2 men along the side of the road sitting under a tarp. We are informed that we all have to pay $2.00 each to continue along the road as it is a private reserve. It is here that we all meet Liliana. Liliana is a spider monkey. Ostensibly a pet of one or both of the guys who works there. She just sort of hangs out in a tree and acts cute when the tourists show up. So we all pay our $2.00 and take pictures of Liliana and continue down the road. The road continues on in its twisty slippery way for about another 30 minutes. We stop at a point where there are a couple of army guys I´m thinking "uh oh what´s going on now?" It turns out this is the end of the line for the cars and we have to unload all our stuff and portage it about 50 yards to the river where some native Kuna with long wide boats are waiting for us to take us down the river to the ocean and out to the sailboat by one of the San Blas islands. The river is wide, beautiful and peaceful. As we make our way down river we pass through a rainforest area and we pass a Kuna indian village. The Kuna are short dark skinned people with broad thick shoulders. I speculate that those shoulders are from paddling a canoe from the time they are old to pick up a paddle. After about a half hour on the river we emerge into the ocean and see the San Blas islands as small dots in the distance. As we get closer we notice a few large sailing ships and speculate which one is ours. As we get closer it is obvious which one we are headed towards, the largest one in the area. The Stahlratte is a 40 meter boat. It is a steel sailing ship with a mainsail, staysail, fisherman, jib and square sail. It also has a 800 liter enging. It was built in 1903 in Germany and went through several transformations as a cargo ship, fishing boat,until 1984 when the current owners bought it and put it to use as a passenger ship. It makies runs from Panama to Cartagena and around the Caribbean. We unloaded our stuff from the boat onto the Stahlratte and as soon as we got on board we were asked to remove our shoes and they have been off ever since. The crew is: Andrew-owner, Ludwig-Captain, Guillermo and Katya-hands. All except Guillermo are German, Guillermo is from Argentina. Altogether they are a great crew. It was explained to us that we would sign in groups of 4 and each group is responsible for making breakfast and dinner one day There are 15 passengers and we are a diverse group. The countries of Japan, Germany, Ireland (the fantastic 4 of fun, Aaron,Sinead, Linda and Dion) New Zealand and the U.S. are represented. I had heard that the price included everything except alcohol. So being the efficient alcoholic that I am I went to the store the day before and bought a half gallon of Panamian whiskey for $8.95 can you say parts cleaner? On the first night after dinner everyone, crew and passengers got down to some serious drinking. My $8.95 whiskey brought me instant infamy. We were all sitting around getting to know each other and getting very blitzed in the process. Earlier in the day the boat went about 4 hours from the San Blas Islands to the Cocoa Banderas islands. We were anchored around several other boats. There are all these little uninhabited islands all over the place. At any rate one of the passengers from one of the other boats came by in a kayak and asked some of us to come back to his boat to party over there. His name is Felix. Instead of going with Felix we invited Felix to join us. Poor Felix, he accepted our invitation. It turns out that Felix and had met previously at the Purple House hostel in David City panama. The entire crew and guests were on a pretty good buzz when Feix showed up. He showed up with an empty bottle of wine he had drank on the way over. So old Felix himself wasn`t exactly sober. Well Felix was a big hit he fit right in. However he made the fatal mistake of sitting next to me and my cheap half gallon of whiskey. He had a metal cup and every time he would turn to talk to someone I would fill his cup. After he got sufficiently wasted we started shouting messages to his boat to the nature of "Send us all your rum and we´ll return Felix" Of ourse yours truly wasn´t exactly sober either. Needless to say Felix ended up 3 sheets to the wind. Of course everyone blamed me. Of course that is probably appropriate. At one point someone noticed Felixs kayak drifting away, this was relatively early in the evening when he still had some motor control left. So he jumps off the boat to retrieve the kayak which he does successfully. By the end of the evening we directed Felix to a chaise lounge and left jim there. Once in a while someone would check to see if he was still breathing. At some point in the wee morning hours the party ended and Felix was left to his own devices on the chaise lounge. Later that night it started----HARD! The storm woke up the captain who remembered that Felix was still outside. According to the captain he had to rock Felix rather hard for a long time to wake him up. Even though it was raining really hard. There are no stairs to the upper deck just rungs coning out from the wall to hold on to. The way the captain tells it it took him half an hour to get him down the 5 rungs from the top deck to the main deck. he had to literally one foot at a time. Once he got him ont the main deck he dragged him into the salon where he spent the rest of the night. The next day he woke up after nearly everyone else and returned to his boat in ignominy and hung over. For me the morning started at 7:00 when I got out of my bunk and started looking for coffee. It was my crews turn to cook. I was the first one in the kitchen and finally found the coffee and started making it. The only coffee makers I found were rather large stove top expresso makers, boy isn´t that a pity. I made enough to fill the large vacuum bottle. So right about the time I`m successfully making coffee the rest of the crew shows up they are : Pat and her (cute) 22 year old daughter Alyssa from NYC, Justin from New Zealand and a guy from Japan and also Guillermo. For breakfast we made a huge fruit salad, luncheon meat cheese, rolls, coffee and fresh orange juice. It was a success. As we were having a barbeque that night included potato salad as soon as breakfast was over we started peeling potatoes. Finally finished with that I swam to the island. It is a small island it is possible to walk the perimeter in 5 minutes but only if you walk slow. The time for the barbeque came and it was do it your self shishkebab, potato salad, boiled eggs, and beer or soda. After the cooking was done we took the grill off and made it into a huge beach fire. Time went on and we ate drank and had a good old time. Some friends of the captain were anchored nearby and joined us. The wife who is probably my age but not too much worse for the wear was walking around offering shots of tequila. In order to get a shot you had to lick the salt off her neck take a shot and then use you mouth to get the lime out from between her breasts. I had several of those shots by the way. As the night went on we all returned to the boat where the drinking resumed and we engaged in various entertainments such as table dancing. The next day arrives and I spend it writing everything you have read so far. That night they served the most fabulous dinner I have had in a long long long time. It starts out with fried fish one for everyone, then came the langostinos, there were enough that everyone could have as many as they wanted. Everyone was so stuffed that there were 4 left over and sacrilege oh sacrilege we through them back to the sea. The sharks enjoyed them. The normal drinking and bullshitting followed nothing terribly exciting happened. The next morning we all woke up to the boat moving back and forth, we were under way. It is 30 hours to Cartagena and I spent the day reading and drinking beer. I was happy I bought dramamine, I don`t think I would have made it without it. I went to bed early and got up the next day and finished reading and hung out until we got to Cartagena. Even though we got there at 11:00 they didn`t finish processing us until 2:00. I found my way to the Viena Casa hostel and here I am.