Life is Good Panama: Eric's Journal Day 14

Trail Photo 11

Trail Photo 12

Trail Photo 13

Trail Photo 14

Trail Photo 15

The regular crew showed up Celestinos wife was minus her sister so Justo and I loaded them up with food, chain saw, and a Milwaukie battery saw and sent them up. Justo informed me that the guy with a backhoe and two dump trucks had stopped by last night and was going to come at 7 am to give me an estimate, I looked at my phone to see the time and asked him - is that Panamanian time? He kind of chuckled and I told him we had time to go get the meat for their lunch and be back before he showed up. So off we went today the chicken necks looked the freshest so that was our decision and to be honest I don’t think we have had a complaint since we started buying their food, guess I wouldn’t complain either. No doubt they eat for sustenance not for pleasure like we tend to.
Shortly after we got back to PL the prospective road guys arrived and we talked and headed up to the entrance of PL.

Two electricians and Justo

On the way he was commenting about the conditions and said those wouldn’t be a problem and just hearing that made me smile so we continued upward on the 1 km walk over and back over a stream countless times. All the time he said that isn’t a problem. After every person we have talked to and all that came out of their mouths was how much and how hard it was to build; l it was a welcome relief to hear those words that I once used to chime in my contracting days. Once we got to the entrance of PL he was feeling pretty good that the road was not going to be a problem so Justo and I took him up the hill towards the bamboo. The trail the cows have made over the years is almost straight up the narrow ridge that reaches to the bamboo and I would easily say it is well over 45 degrees -possibly even closer to 60 and remember that 90 is a straight wall. He still seemed confident that this was not a problem so I asked him for two prices. One road just to the entrance and one to the bamboo - he said no problem. I sure hope this is the rainbow I have been wanting so desperately.

Bamboo Groove

After that we went back to the entrance and while Justo walked ahead I took my time, carefully checking and started punching out the work they had done. It honestly looked good but needed a little polishing to really shine so I went to Justo and talked to him about it and said we needed to get Celestino to walk it with us so we could show him the small details we wanted addressed. As I walked back I asked the guys if they had seen Celestino and I kept getting a head shake until finally I got one of the guys who didn’t seem busy and told him to go get Celestino. He kind of just stood there and finally I asked him “Celestino vamanos?” Remember when I tell you that I told the guys to do something its not even a 25% chance that they understand me on the best of days so it’s always pot luck. It did seem to work and in about 15 minutes Celestino appeared and Justo and I walked to the entrance of PL. I began with I wanted him to know about what a good job I thought they where doing. Then I told him I had a few things that needed to be finished up. He nodded and we started. Most of the things were like small making a ditch a little deeper for drainage, picking up the debris from the construction of the bridges and trail, cutting a root back here and there and adding more rock. They are going to hear that one a lot tomorrow “add more rock.” As we continued over all the trails pointing out this and that I remembered Celestino had sent two of his men to work on an alternative trail to the top. I asked Justo about that and saw Celestino smile. I of course wanted to see the new trail to the top and was pleasantly surprised and although it wasn’t any thing special, it was a trail with a switch back that was very easy to walk. I told him I was very pleased when we finished the trail and that we didn’t have time to work on that trail right now but at least we found it. He smiled and I looked at Justo who was huffing and puffing a little bit and realized we had just walked all the way up to the bamboo and climbed down then walked up past the bamboo finding another trail and I knew he had to be exhausted so we headed back down. Life is good.

When we got down to Laguna de Justo and the bench Justo took a break. We talked a bit and then he started moving rocks on his waterfall. I decided it was time to do some work and walked up and grabbed my 18 volt battery saw in one hand and my 18 volt battery saws all in my other and headed up the hill to trim the posts on the rails and cut the ends of the bamboo to be square. It makes them all look a lot better after I do that. I almost forgot when Justo and I returned to the entrance this morning after talking to the backhoe guys we saw a lone guy at the front working on sanding and cleaning the rails. I had given him a sanding block that after the first rail was used up. He had done a good job but was showing me the sanding block. I then grabbed his machete and started showing him how to use the machete to scrape and smooth the bamboo that way. It was like a lighting bolt had just hit the ground next to him he was so startled at how you could scrape and smooth something like that. I mentioned to Justo that he was probably born with a machete in his hand and how he had acted like it was the first time he had ever seen that. Once I had seen him at the entrance to PL I hardly ever saw him again all day so I guess he worked on scraping and polishing the rails all day. Much later in the day I asked Justo if he knew if there were even 12 people today. He thought for a second and didn’t know either so we started counting over and over until finally Justo had to ask Celestino and he told him about the (12)? guys scraping - good thing because I thought I was going crazy.

Salistinos Wife

As long as we are talking about the 12 guys lets talk about the 13th woman. I know she cooks for 12 guys of course she doesn’t have to get any food and Celestino makes sure she has fire wood, we have made a shelter for her to keep dry and to cook under and the tent is right by a stream. This is the stream I have been asking her to clean up for all this time and finally she did. Well for the last couple of days I have been noticing she has been sitting there a lot just talking to her sister or just dangling her feet in the creek. I had told Justo to tell Celestino that if I was going to pay her she was going to need to work the whole time. When I talked to Justo and asked him if he had talked to Celestino he said he had not talked to him yet. Tomorrow that will have to be one of the first things we talk about in the morning.

As the day went on the progress did slow down a lot without being able to communicate I was struggling hard to keep on top of things and I didn’t do too well. I didn’t leave until the day was done and made sure they washed the tools and took what we no longer needed up there down to my van so we didn’t have as much to carry down tomorrow. As I was walking the trails today seeing the ones we had done and seeing the ones that didn’t work out on our exploration for the ultimate path I realized that we didn’t just clear one km of trails we probably cleared 10 km of trails but where only had 1 km or so that really worked well and got finished. Still that’s pretty good and I did a lot of exploration and haven’t gotten to the other side yet which is 4 times the size of this side. What’s cool is I feel sometimes like I am just scratching the surface of a giant gem and sometimes I laugh at my self and think it’s a giant turd - such is a typical day in my jungle life. I don’t really mean that but it is sometimes exasperating not being able to communicate and trying to get the job done.

We all got off the mountain and put some of the tools in the van; I have already loaded what we don’t need in the cabana out in back of Mario’s. I just had one of the best warm showers in the world the day is over and only one more day to go for now. Tomorrow is going to be a great day I just know it is.