Peninsula de Azuera is considered the artisian capital of Panama. They have small communities scattered over the peninsula which individualy specialize in pottery, hat making, dress making, and mask making! We spent 3 days exploring by bus the nooks and crannys of the area, using the not so delightful Chitre as our home base.
SIDE NOTE: I must say, I have got to give it to Panama for a simple, convenient transportation system THAT WORKS!! Sure the vans and buses are often packed. When the van should fit 15 in actually fits 25 but it never the lasts too long and these transportation vehicles triple as school buses and delivery services as well.
They pull over for no particular reason and all of a sudden a boy is haulin ass down the dirt road on his bike, hands a bag off to the driver, and is then dropped off kms later. These buses also go into rural areas carrying the elderly and all their groceries to their doorstep! It becomes a communal event. As someone steps on board he hollers "buenas" and immediately a response "buenas" fills the cab. It's truly amazing. These buses may be small but they run every 15 minutes to an hour. There is hardly a need for a car even if you live a half hour out of town. Seems to me the U.S. could learn a thing or two.
Food: We ate nothing particularly special besides one meal. We ventured out to this restaurant which was a 20 minute ride out of town but cooked all its food on a wood fire... I was especially eager to try the shrimp. We we got dropped off and... SURPRISE it was closed. Their hours on the wall say open... but nope. So, back on the bus, and off the bus to what we thought was a food place. Nope just a fruit stand. So, we walked down the highway looking good as ever until AH HA! A small meal shack which only sold one thing... delicious, warm, chicken, rice, potato soup. So simple but so delectable and cheap... all in all a success.
Hostel: When we first got to Chitre we had reservations for Miami Mikes ($10). To put it nicely he seemed to take care of his hostel as well as he takes care of himself. Nice, nice, friendly man, but what a slob! The confederate flags in the closet set Molly over the edge so we quickly changed locations the next day....right across the street, with a balcony, looking straight at his...A bit awkward but a serious upgrade. Needless to say all hostels can't be awesome and sometimes you wing it just to find out.
Las Tablas: La Festival de Polleras is held once a year. The men and women dress up in their authentic Panamanian outfits. The men wear handmade sandals, white shirts, and hats that are weaved so tight you can hold water in them. The dresses are all hand made down to the embroidery. They pull their hair up with jeweled flowers and wear long gold necklaces.Las Tablas blocked off the town square and had a parade. Now, Molly and I were talking about how disorganized parades usually are but this one takes the cake. It had to be 10 minutes between each float, people were walking in and out whenever they pleased to take pictures with friends and family in the parade, holding up the whole thing. But none the less it was a great experience and everyone really looked top notch!
La Arena and Parita: These two towns are about 10 km north of Chitre. La Arena is known to be pottery central. Families had small store fronts selling all their hand made goods. I think we would have stayed longer if it wasn't so darn hot.
Next we went to Parita. The buildings here were very old, from colonial times, and picturesque. The strange thing was...It was like a ghost town (the only happening place seemed to be the bar)....we were pretty sure we were going to see tumbleweeds. We weren't sure if this was always the case of if it was because it was Sunday ( Molly later found it is always like that.)
Besides a few people sitting on their stoops we seemed to be the only ones in the street (an odd sight for sure). Now the reason we came to Parita was to see a mask maker. His name is Mr. Lopez and he makes all the masks for Panama's Carnival by hand. Some only take a few days, others take weeks. He has been doing this since he can remember being handed down the family tradition by his father.
Ocu: An hour drive from Chitre, we went to Ocu in search of a "real Panamanian hat" for Molly. We pulled up and asked around. Two teenage girls took us under their wing to try to find the hat maker. We ultimately failed at our mission but got a lovely tour of the town and the town lake from the ladies.
Pedasi: As lovely as the last couple days sounded, it was in fact quite a task. It was incredibly hot and I had an ear ache that I was taking mystery medication for. So we changed our plans of heading to Panama city and aimed for the BEACH! In Pedasi we treated ourselves to a very lovely hotel run by a couple from Pennsylvania. In the morning we took yet another bus to the bottom of the peninsula to Playa Veneo.
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