Organizing El Real

     I'll never forget my first trip into El Real. My business partner was named George Mahoney. I had met him a couple of years before in Michigan through a mutual friend and when the idea came up to establish a facility in Central America, he didn't hesitate to get involved. He came down to Darien for several weeks at a time over the first couple of years to help get things going. George and I faced a dilemma; neither of us spoke much Spanish. We found a Peruvian student in Panama City named Jamie, whom we coerced into accompanying us to act as a translator.
     The three of us arrived in El Real about mid-day. After settling into the hotel, and having a great meal at Mama's, we went out to talk to the men of the town. Although there was one of almost every basic business in El Real, there were three cantinas. This is where you would almost always find the men. Their main drink is called Seco Herrerano (hereafter referred to as Seco). They say it is a kind of rum but I suspect it is really recycled paint remover. Believe it or not you can eventually develop a taste for something like that, especially when there is little else to drink. They always drank it straight, no ice (there was never any ice), and no mixers. They occasionally had Panamanian beer of which there are two kinds -- Panama and Balboa -- though it is more accurate to call them 'near' beer; I think the alcohol content was about 2.7%, and it was never cold.
     The cantinas were the social and political meeting place for the men of the villages. You rarely ever saw women there. The cantinas were of wooden construction and you would sit on wooden benches or old wooden chairs around small wooden tables. There was always one of the old-style, record-playing, juke boxes blaring salsa music. Most of the salsa we listened to was from Colombia. They played it so loud that you would have to almost scream to be heard. Most of the men had the salsa music flowing through their veins, and when they got to a certain level of inebriation they would stand up and salsa dance right beside where they were seated. The bars were an escape from the everyday life and an integral part of the daily life of the men.
     We arranged to have a meeting with all of the men of El Real that evening after dinner. The meeting was held outside in front of the hotel, which faced on the center town square. All the men in town were there. As the meeting drew on, the men seemed to be getting more and more agitated. We didn't really understand what was going on as Jamie was translating everything in both directions. We were trying to explain to them that we wanted to move down here, hire a crew, and build a house and an animal quarantine facility.
     The townspeople were skeptical because we were telling them that we were going to ‘buy’ birds and reptiles. The Mestizos were terrified of snakes. Up until our arrival the only thing they ever did when they encountered a snake was to machete it into little pieces. The whole idea that we would be ‘buying’ snakes immediately classified us as “Crazy Gringos” in their minds. If we never accomplished another thing in our years in Darien, at least we instilled in everyone that all animal life (even snakes) had a value, and that no animal should ever be killed indiscriminately.
     Jamie said they were getting upset because other 'Gringos' had come in the past, made a lot of promises, and ended up doing nothing of any benefit for any of them. It was starting to get dark and there seemed to be a lot of shouting and yelling going on. It was when several of the townspeople drew their machetes and started waving them in the air over their heads that we decided the meeting was over.
     The three of us slept with one eye open that night. You had to anyway to be able to dodge 10" cockroaches (no exaggeration!) and rats the size of small dogs (a little exaggerated). We left the next morning on the plane, a little shaken up over the experience and happy to have gotten out in one piece.
Once out of El Real the plane made another stop that day in La Palma. La Palma is set near the Pacific Ocean, and is just inland from the Gulf of San Miguel. It sits on a large bay. La Palma is the capitol of Darien, and has a population about half again bigger than El Real. The La Palma air strip is much nicer than El Real. It is a dirt field right next to the city -- no cows or trees to dodge and no long walk to get to the city.
     The pilot came up to us and said we would not be able to go back to Panama City because the landing gear was broken. We looked down at the wheel on one side of the plane and it was just hanging there; it had almost fallen off during the landing. We watched a man with a roll of a heavy wire twine wrapping the crippled wheel, to try and somehow hold it onto the metal piece that came down from the plane. He wrapped the wire around and around and around the wheel brace piece. He must have made 30 loops. He went over that with duct tape and finally declared "That ought to hold it."
     George ran for his camera excitedly exclaiming, "I have to get a picture of this." The pilot immediately became upset saying that if anyone took any pictures we would not take off. He was afraid that he might get in trouble. George put his camera away. The last thing we wanted was to spend another night down here.
     We got onto the plane and started down the dirt runway to take off. George was sitting on the side with the bad wheel and I was sitting beside him.
     As the plane began to get up speed down the runway to take off, I kept bugging him asking, "How is the wheel holding?"
     We got half way down the runway and he turned away from staring out the window at the wheel, and looked directly at me. His face had turned a ghostly pale white color; he was gasping for air, unable to speak, and pointing out the window.
     I leaned over him and looked to watch the twine breaking, one strand after another, ping, and ping, ping!
     When the plane finally lifted off there were exactly two strands of twine left holding on our wheel.
We sweated it out all the way back to the city, with the anxiety building every moment we thought of landing on a wheel that was not secured to the plane. Amazingly, as soon as the pilot hit the runway to land he slammed on the brakes, coming to a complete stop within a few feet of where we had first touched down. We all quickly climbed out of the plane, leaving it right there in the middle of the runway.
     Our second trip back to El Real went much better. The first failure at establishing a business in the Darien did not deter us. Once back in Panama City we discussed our first experience at length and actually devised a plan for the second trip. During the first trip we had met Juan, the town elder statesman and a well respected slightly built man in his sixties, whose principle trade was that of a carpenter. On our second trip we arrived in town, walked into the main cantina, immediately hired Juan as the construction crew chief, and bought a round of Seco for everyone. Now we had friends. When the people realized that we were serious about coming to live in Darien, hiring the local people, paying a fair wage, and building the quarantine facility, their attitude toward us changed.