Niño del Mar

This is a really cool article about my buddy, Bolivar Andres, who lives in Bocas del Toro, Panama. That is him on the left in the picture I have robbed from his Facebook.

Bolivar is originally from Chile, but arrived to Panama many years ago on a sale boat with his father. As the article explains, Bolivar is an experienced sailor - a true seaman, but Bolivar is also well-known in Panama as one hell of a surfer. In crossing paths with him, though, you'd never know it - because he's not at all boastful. In fact, Bolivar is one of the most genuinely good people you'll ever meet. Anyway, I was impressed with the article and wanted to share it with you all. DEFINITELY CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE.

At the bottom of the article there is some good footage of Bolivar surfing. Here is a link to Bolivar's video on YouTube. I was going to embed Bolivar's surf video directly in this post - but while searching for it I found this other YouTube video of a conversation between Bolivar and my friend, Scott Balogh - discussing the bungalows that Scott built and that he rents out on Bastimentos island in Bocas. Lemme go ahead and plug into this post the Red Frog Bungalows, a place worth checking out when you are looking to get away from the sad U.S. economy and be able to step directly out of your room onto a beautiful beach. Actually, if you check out the El Gringuito Slideshow (in the upper left-hand corner), you can see several images of the very beach where the Red Frog Bungalows are located. I can guarantee you'll wish you were there. Anyway, I'm glad to have the opportunity to give a shout out to both Bolivar and Scott in Panama.

Only the very beginning of the video is in Spanish, and then Bolivar and Scott switch to English - so stick with it even if you don't speak Spanish. I'm not sure when the recorded this, but I got a kick out of it - so I have included the video here:

Reggaeton Night

On Friday, I went to Reggaeton Night here in Buenos Aires. Reggaeton is a music genre that has developed as sort of a mix of reggae, cumbia, hip-hop and rap. Most of it is in Spanish, although there will occasionally be some English thrown in there.

Reggaeton has developed in countries through Central America and the Caribbean, and it has actually gotten pretty popular in the U.S. Many people consider it a "guilty pleasure". This is because reggaeton isn't always exactly "good" music - the lyrics are often cheesy (with some exceptions - see Calle 13), the rhythms and melodies repetitive, and the singer is usually decked out in platinum chains and other over-the-top bling.

But it is feel good music, and it is great for dance clubs. I guess people start considering it a guilty pleasure when they leave the dance club and start listening to reggaeton on their iPods.

Well, I listened to a whole lot of it when I lived in Panama. As a matter of fact, I still listen to a lot of reggaeton. I listen to it on my iPod in Boston, and I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. Anyway, I need to get back to telling you about what happened at the show.

The 3 singers on Friday night all came from Panama - Eddy Lover, La Factoria, and Makano. None of these guys

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.

Cargo Partnership between Mississippi Gulf Coast and Panama

It is not that often that I get to talk about Mississippi and Panama at the same time. On the surface, one of the few things that the two places have in common is that Ryan Bullock loves them both. Anyway, I am excited to report that representatives from Panama's Tocumen National Airport have been in Mississippi this past week where they signed a cooperation agreement with the Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport. Here is a link to an article from the WLOX News station in South Mississippi.

Rafael Flores, general manager of Panama's
Tocumen International Airport, inks an
agreement with Bruce Frallic, the Director
of Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport

The agreement will allow international cargo coming through the Panama Canal to be flown into South Mississippi, where it will subsequently be stored and transported out of an air cargo facility at the airport in Gulfport. Interstate 10 runs through the Mississippi Gulf Coast, providing access to 10 primary north-south interstates between southern California and Jacksonville, Florida.

The possibility of a synergy between the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Panama has excited me for several years. In October of 2006, while I was living in Panama, a proposal to expand the Canal was approved

Why I Like Latin America

A number of my classmates at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) have asked me why I would want to come study in Argentina. Is anything that I am learning here relevant to the work that I will do as an attorney in the United States? Of course I have made a point to choose classes that are international in scope (International Private Law, International Arbitration, Maritime Law). There are potential indirect benefits - not many U.S. law students study abroad, so maybe my exposure to Civil Law could make me slightly more marketable in certain areas of U.S. law such as maritime and admiralty law, international contracts and disputes, and even some M&A. In the current job market, maybe an Argentine perspective on international law could help to distinguish me from the thousands of U.S. law students who will have an "international law" class on their transcripts. There is also the benefit of developing a Spanish legal vocabulary. There is an increasingly large Spanish-speaking population in the U.S., and they are all potential clients. On the other hand, much of the substance of what I am learning at the UBA may not be DIRECTLY beneficial to a legal career in the U.S.

The truth is that I just really enjoy spending time in Latin America. Here are a few reasons why:

Excitement & Challenges. Vacations are fun, but when you spend some time living abroad you find that what would ordinarily be mundane tasks become a lot more interesting and challenging. I'm talking about the little things - grocery shopping, making a photocopy of a document, or buying an random item such as a stapler. These things would be simple in your own country, because you'd know exactly where to go and you'd be able to anticipate approximately how much it will cost you. In the U.S., you would also feel confident that what you are looking for is in-stock and that whoever you need to talk with will be available during regular business hours. Well, here in Latin America you have none of those assumptions. If the notary office in Panama is open between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., that just means that the notary might (possibly) be in the office during those hours and definitely will not be in the office outside of those hours. Maybe you need a three-pronged folder for your law school class, but in Argentina you find that all of the folders are two-pronged. When you need to get to work or to an appointment, the street might be flooded resulting in a traffic back-up - or maybe a group of protesters has blocked the avenue. Your weed-wacker is broken and needs a replacement part, but the stores only sell replacement parts for obscure Chinese brands. There is a guy who sells the part you are looking for, but he is on vacation for the next 3 weeks. This is especially unfortunate, because he is also the town's notary public. You are probably better off just buying a new weed-wacker. It is a pain, but it can be really satisfying when you start learning to navigate through the inefficiency. Maybe we should move on to a better example of why I like Latin America...

Less Expensive. I do not come from a particularly wealthy family, but in Latin America I have some money. I can afford

Panama Upgraded to "Investment Grade" - U.S. Economy Still Sucking

Last Tuesday, Fitch Ratings upgraded Panama's rating to "investment grade". Here is a link to short blog article. A lot of people in Panama have been anticipating this for the last few months, so there has been a lot of excitement.

Of course, this is happening in stark contrast to everything we are seeing and hearing about the U.S. economy right now. It seems like a lot of people in the U.S. have decided that it is a good time to go back to school. I am one of those people. I had always planned to eventually go to law school, and when the real estate market went south I decided it might be a good time to hide out from the job market for a few years.

The problem with this plan is that a lot of us are accumulating a shit-ton of grad school debt. I have been told that we are apparently expected to pay that back at some point. BU Law is a top-20 law school, but there are a whole lot of BU Law students that will be doing "public-interest" (read "unpaid") internships this summer. Many law students hope for a career in the public-interest sector and would be doing this kind of work anyway. On the other hand, there are PLENTY of students who will be working for free this summer simply because law firms just aren't hiring summer associates like they have in the past. Law firms hire less summer associates, because they know they will not be able to make offers to all the "freshly-minted attorneys" coming out of law school in the next few years. I'll keep this post short, because there are plenty of people a lot smarter than me who can offer much more intelligent commentary on the economic situation in the U.S. Suffice to say that these are scary times for all of us...

La Perla

I just learned how to post YouTube videos on my blog. Sorry, there is no story here. I just really love this song and want it on my blog. This is a Puerto Rican group called Calle 13 featuring Panamanian salsa singer, lawyer, and former Tourism Minister, Rubén Blades. I never get tired of this song.

Getting Robbed in Latin America

I keep up with a couple news blogs in Panama, and I just read this morning that the former Minister of Health in Panama was recently the victim of a home invasion robbery. Another article from the same blog explains that it is projected that the small Republic of Panama could see more than 1,000 murders this year, mainly related to drug trafficking.

Crime is a problem everywhere, but the risks can be particularly real for foreigners traveling and living abroad. As a tourist abroad, you may be carrying important documents such as a passport. More generally, when traveling anywhere you may carry larger quantities of cash. As you may be unfamiliar with the city or country, you may also be more likely to find yourself in a "bad neighborhood" where you stand out even more than usual. This also applies to you ex-pats living abroad (see my post about why you are still clearly a gringo).

You may also be partying and drinking more when you are on vacation. For example, there was the time several years ago that a guy punched me and took my money in New Orleans. That was in my own Country, but the point is that I might have prevented the whole thing by

Gringo

Step 1: My name is Ryan, and I am a gringo...

Yeah, the term encompasses a lot of negative connotations and many consider it to be offensive - but I am a gringo. I always have been.

I don't think I realized that I was a gringo until I began spending time in Latin America. I was born on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and I always considered myself a southerner until I realized that I am a gringo. When I was 24 years old, I moved to Panama to work for a U.S. real estate developer building a resort on an island off Panama's Caribbean coast. During my first three weeks, the company became engrossed in a strike with a radical labor syndicate called Suntracs. This labor union is well-known in Panama for shutting down streets, burning tires, throwing rocks, and pitting itself against the local police who arrive on the scene to break up the "peacefull protests". The company I worked for had this little golf cart that we often used to cruise around the little town near where we were developing, and one day I found myself headed straight toward a group of protesters marching down the main street. I probably should have just turned around and gone back to the office, but I was on my way to the supermarket to pick up something for lunch. I suppose I was feeling a little cocky, and I just kept driving forward. As the protesters and union reps passed by me, I heard someone yell, "F*ck you, gringo!"

I was excited to tell my co-workers about about my adventure when I arrived back at the office. We gringos really get a kick out of this sort of encounter, and we usually assume that our miraculous adventures in Latin America are completely, 100% original. We drink beer with some local guy, visit or get robbed in a "bad neighborhood", or pay a guy to guide us into the jungle - whatever we do, a gringo likes to think that he/she is the first gringo to do it. Of course, there is nothing better than being invited to a party where you are the only gringo. These make for fantastic Facebook photos and/or blog postings. We accumulate these stories, and then we go to gringo parties where we scoff at other gringos that who have arrived to Latin America more recently. As a gringo who has been in Latin America for several days, weeks, or months, you can be sure that all those other naïve gringos cannot possibly have had the plethora of interesting experiences that you have. My personal preference is to look down on dirty "backpackers". They show up in little Latin American towns, eat avocado and tuna from the can, and spend 2-3 days getting drunk and not showering before finally moving on to some other town where they will criticize U.S. materialism and will not put any money into the local economy. See, it is easy!

That day on the golf-cart was the first time that I was ever called a gringo. I have also been called a gringo as a term of endearment. So, what does it really mean to be a gringo? What I have realized is that I am a gringo because I just don't quite fit in here. I'm not from here; I'm from "allá". I speak Spanish well, I am well-versed in Latin American politics and history, and I eat the local food - but I'm a gringo. I listen to Latin music, date Latin girls, and enjoy watching The Simpsons dubbed in Spanish - but I'm still a gringo. Almost two years ago I moved from Panama to Boston for law school, and guess what... I don't quite fit in there either! After three semesters of law school at BU Law, I'm still a visitor. At some point I'll leave and move to some other place where I won't quite fit in. I suppose it has become a way of life, but I really like it.

Right now I am writing from Buenos Aires, Argentina where I am an exchange student at the national university's law school. Let me tell you, it feels great to be down here again having new adventures. Being "away" for a lengthy period of time, a guy begins to think about things in a different light and develops a perspective that lies somewhere between clarity and naivity. Starting now, I am going to write it all down. After all, its not like something I put on the internet creates a permanent virtual footprint that can come back to haunt me indefinitely. I'm sure I can just erase it all one day when I grow up, get married, and decide to pursue a political career... :-)