Globe Corner Blogs

Moon Handbook to Panama

I’m talking myself out of this with remarkable speed and brilliant rationalizations. It seemed like such a spectacular idea just a month ago: take a trip to somewhere exotic as a gift to myself for finishing grad school. This place would have to be relatively cheap, given the thousands of dollars in debt I now find myself in; this place must be warm to counter the frigid Boston winter; this place must not be covered in resorts or populated by be-cameraed and fanny-packed tourists; and this place must (preferably) have capybaras in its jungles. Panama seemed like the obvious choice.

So Panama it was. I bought the guide book, checked out plane fares (so cheap!), and began imagining what I could fit in my giant backpack. Then something slippery happened. The overly-anxious angel in my shirt pocket started whispering up things that will go wrong, that will ruin the trip.

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National Geographic Central America map

I recently returned from a trip where I drove through Mexico and all of Central America (sans Belize): Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, back through Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and finally Panama. Browsing through the Central America section of the store, I came across Joan Didion’s Salvador. As always, Didion captured her subject through her lens of unsettling physical disconnection. Given the country’s violent, bloody, and war-torn history, this lens was a perfect fit.

In planning our El Salvadorian itinerary, we found the Pacific coast to be a much more pleasant option than the north, where the main attraction, according to both the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet guide, was the Genocide Museum. We opted instead for two days on the beach. And they were very pleasant.

Despite the bad rap El Salvador gets, or maybe because of it, we were able to find not just beach front, but “beach on” accommodations for the night. The highway simply ended at the water and opened up to a series of colonial homes converted into restaurants and sleeping accommodations. Families frolicked in the water, while street vendors shooed the stray dogs hoping to catch a bite of their french fries. At high tide, the veranda-style restaurant where we ate was surrounded by the ocean. One had only to walk down three steps to be in the water. We shut the joint down with drinks and fresh seafood only to find that the entire beach front area was closed by 7:30 pm.

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