Getting Stuck - A Series

I have several friends who are stuck in different parts of western Europe right now because of the volcano eruption in Iceland. Basically, each of them was on vacation somewhere, and now they cannot get back to their families, jobs, and lives because all flights have been canceled and delayed. Huge pain - it has even lead a girl I know to move "volcanos" down to almost last place on her list of favorite natural disasters.

Anyway, the Facebook Community has been responding to this unfortunate predicament by saying things like, "Well, you have a few more days in [INSERT BEAUTIFUL EUROPEAN CITY] - could be worse!" Being stuck on Europe vacation is a huge inconvenience and probably quite costly for these folks, but I guess the Facebook Community does have a point. There are worse places to be stuck. At about 6:00 a.m. this morning, this got me thinking about some of the times I have gotten stuck (or almost gotten stuck) in crappy places and situations. I'll tell these stories in the next three posts below this one. Here are links to those posts:

Part 1 - Stuck in a Cave

Part 2 - Stuck in the Darien Gap

Part 3 - Stuck in Panama City at 4:00 a.m. with no Wallet, Money or Identification

This is sort of "filler" material, because I am studying for another exam on Thursday. These stories happened a little while back when I was in Panama, so I have had them filed away in my head. When I am studying like this, I can still find the time to hammer out a quick blog post, but studying keeps me from going out and doing the weird stuff that I like to come back home and write about. So I just don't have as much new material to report. Don't worry though, I'll be out there making questionable decisions again in no time.

Part 1 - Stuck in a Cave

This is a story from about 4 years ago when when 3 friends and I spent a month in Panama and Colombia after graduating from college. The only other piece of background info you need to know is that we were on an island off the coast of Panama, and found a local Guaymi indian who said that he and his brother could takes us into a cave there on the island. Of course, this sounded like a great thing to do.

Well, we were able to come up with 3 hard-hats and a few flashlights. Of course there were 6 of us (4 gringos + 2 guides), and the flashlights were not water-proof (this is an example of "foreshadowing"). Feeling semi-prepared, we sat off on our adventure. We took a short boat ride through a small creek into the jungle, walked about 20 minutes to the entrance of the cave, and walked in.

The roof of the cave was covered in bats, and the floor of the cave was covered in water and bat droppings. During our first 10 minutes in the cave, we came across a caiman. I'm no animal expert, so I'll just say that these are like smaller versions of the alligators we see in Mississippi and Louisiana. Anyway, my friend Drew decided that he wanted to grab the caiman's tail.

Part 2 - Stuck in the Darien Gap

This is another story from 2006 when 3 friends and I spent a month in Panama and Colombia after college graduation. We decided to rent a car and go hiking into the Darien Gap. For those who don't know, the Darien Gap is the 30+ miles of dense jungle that separates Panama and Colombia. It is the one and only reason that it is not feasible to drive a car all the way down to South America. The Darien Gap is inhabited by the Embera indians, a few VERY small little villages, and roaming FARC guerrilas and other Colombian rebel militias.



Our plan was to hike into the Darien Gap to a ranger station called Rancho Frio. We would spend the night there and spend the next morning seeing animals, taking cool pictures and exploring the jungle. Then we'd hike back to our car and return to Panama City.

So we rent the car and set off down the Pan-American Highway. Well, the Highway eventually turns into more of a road, then a dirt road, then just dirt. Finally, you are bumping along a pitted dirt path that cuts through the jungle. We went through no less than 3 different police checkpoints before we finally arrived to a small little village called Yaviza. This is where the Pan-American Highway stops. We asked some local police if we could leave our rented car at their camouflage-covered police station, and they obliged. Then we found a store to stock up on some "supplies".

Most guidebooks recommend that you do NOT go to the Darien Gap. The guidebooks then give you helpful advice in case you decide to go anyway. I think our guidebook recommended that we take plenty of food, water, a First-Aid kit, satellite phone, camping equipment, etc. Well, here is what we took into the Darien Gap: a bag of rice, a can of mixed vegetables, 4 cans of tuna, some bottled water.

Not the least bit prepared for our hike, the 4 of us set off on a 1-and-a-half hour canoe ride

Part 3 - Stuck in Panama City at 4:00 a.m. with no Wallet, Money or Identification

This is a story from just a couple months ago. I was in Panama and had gone out for the evening with a friend of mine. We had dinner, then went for some drinks, then went to an apartment in Paitilla where several of the her friends were having a little party. Well, at about 3:00 a.m., we left in a taxi. The taxi dropped her off at her house in El Dorado, and then the taxi driver was going to take me to my buddy Ben's apartment where I was staying for the night. I was about half-way to Ben's place when I realized I didn't have my wallet.

I had the wallet earlier in the night when we went for dinner and drinks, so I thought it must have fallen out of my pocket back in the Paitilla apartment. I asked the taxi driver to take me back to to the party. Well, the wallet wasn't there. I now had 2 immediate problems: First, I didn't know how I was going to get back to Ben's apartment, because I didn't have money for a taxi. That leads to the second problem - I had a taxi driver waiting for me downstairs who expected to be paid for driving the girl home and then taking me all the way back to the Paitilla party.

I asked the people at the party if someone could "loan" me a few dollars to pay the taxi driver. I managed to find one guy who gave me $5. I went downstairs and asked the taxi driver how much I owed him - $8 he says. My reply was, "Well, all I have is $5." The taxi driver called me an "awebao" (read "dumbass") and squealed his tires as he sped away. It is interesting how squealing your tires is an international way of saying "I feel very angry with you". Anyway, as the taxi sped away, I knew that one of my problems was now gone.

Then I started trying to think of how I could get back to Ben's apartment, which was several miles away.