The Savage Traveler: Panama: Day 1

Friday, Mar. 29: The wind is howling and the palm fronds and bamboo are rattling noisily outside our cabana at Cabanas Potosi in El Valle de Anton, Panama. We stayed overnight at Kris and Heidi's house in order to make a quick getaway after rising at 4:15am this morning to catch our flight from Lansing to Chicago. From there it was was an uneventful 5 1/2 hour flight to Panama City. We watched "Pitch Perfect" as an inflight movie and had a nice lunch of chicken raviolis. There were no problems as we went through immigration, picked up our luggage, went through customs and got our rent-a-car, a blue Toyota Rav4. Then through the combined efforts of Marv and Google Maps we drove more than 2 hours to El Valle. The horrendous traffic of which we had been warned was a complete "no show" until we arrived at the tiny village where the streets were full of people out celebrating Good Friday. Panamanians flock to the interior to celebrate the Easter weekend and El Valle, with its pleasant temperatures in the 80s during the day, is very popular. Meriya told us that she had had 20 people call or come to try to rent one of their 4 cabanas and was worried that we would be a no-show. Luckily, Dennis was sure we would come and wouldn't let her give away our 2 cabanas. This Ecolodge is just what we had hoped for and will be a wonderful home base for us as we explore the area. On Dennis's recommendation we went to a small restaurant in town called Artash's where we sat on the porch of the owner/cook's home with two other parties and enjoyed a very delicious and reasonable dinner. In this quiet setting we could hear the band playing in the nearly two hour Good Friday procession a few streets away. Marv and I stopped by the main house to find out that #4 seed Michigan had won its Sweet 16 game against #1 seed Kansas to advance. Unfortunately the Panamanian Sports channel had shown two games and was done for the night so we couldn't watch to see how #3 seed Michigan State does in its match against #2 seed Duke. Marv and I sat in a picnic shelter to enjoy the warm wind and 70s temperature before going to bed, listening to the customary fierce winds blow.