You Can´t Fight Carnaval, It Just Happens

I didn´t want to go to Carnaval, honest.  I had the idea to skip the crowds, the noise, the heavy drinking, the late nights, the excess– all of it, and just head to this one coastal town in northern Panama.  In fact the entire trip was spur of the moment: a quick decision to skip the 30 hour bus ride from Cancun back to Guatemala and instead work my way back up from the south.  When I arrived in Panama City, I wondered what everyone was getting ready for.  ¨You must be here for Carnaval,¨ someone smirked at me.  Actually no, I´m here for the Canal.  You?

The Canal was actually pretty boring, but I did spend a good part of the day hanging out with my cab driver, who insisted that he didn´t have anything else to do, so he wanted to come see the Canal with me. Seriously, people are this friendly and nice in Panama, there is something in the water.  He thought I should go to Las Tablas, the small town people flood from all over Panama during the 5 day pre-Ash Wednesday bash.  Five days, of nearly 24-7 dancing, music, drinking, eating, parades, performances, pagentry, thick crowds, and chaos.

There was only one problem, the once a day bus to Bocas del Toro, the beach town I wanted to see in the north, was sold out.  I faced another day at the slow as molasses Canal or to take my chances and buy a $8 ticket to Tabla.  I plunked down the money, got my ticket and went to look for the bus.  Ah, there´s a line, I realized.  A line that runs… all the way… to the end of the terminal.  Oh, someone else had this idea too.

No problem. Four hours in line, two diet cokes, a few hundred pages into my novel, and a seven hour bus ride later, I arrive, in the most famous town for Panama´s Carnaval.  There are throngs of people hauling in camping gear, inflatable mattresses, coolers, and bags of provisions.  I ask a few (five, actually) taxi drivers if there was a place I could stay for the night.  Hilarious!  I must be kidding right?  No?  Ok, can you point me to the direction of the party?

This was turning into a very bad idea.  Not only where there no rooms, there were no hotels!  Everything was closed, besides street vendors selling beers, hats and ice by shovel-full.  I wandered around for a while, growing more convinced that I was absolutely going to be spending tonight awake, at the bus terminal, waiting to return with my tail between my legs to Panama City.

By now it was 2 am and I must have looked strange, sitting there with my pack, nursing a third diet coke and trying to pass the next 4 hours before I could catch a bus by reading the latest Stephenie Meyer tome.  Someone approached me, and as a reflex I looked at them wearily.  ¨Are you from Canada?¨  Í shook my head.  By now, I noticed that it was two people my age, who definitely didn´t have that street hustler edge.  ¨Do you have a place to stay?¨  They seemed nice, we chatted for a bit, and before I knew it I had agreed to at least see their place, which was, as promised, just around the corner.

It was a house, completely stripped down to just walls and floors.  In 7 small rooms there lay the backpacks of their friends, about 20 Panamian kids between 21 and 34.  I could sleep in the tent on the back porch and they promised me, their eyes getting a little wider, the best time at Carnaval ever.  Oh, and it was house full of gay men and lesbian couples.  These things do not happen everyday.  I had no choice.  I was going to Carnaval.