At first glance we could tell that enough rain had not fallen to cause a flood bad enough to scour the channel, wash away our expensive equipment, and scour the channel badly enough to ruin our experiment. Several large yellow and black frogs jumped on the stream banks; the golden frog of Panama was doing well here for now. They were not concerned about our presence. We walked another quarter mile up the slippery muddy trail to where the pump was dripping in the tracer solution at a constant rate. We changed the battery and added fresh tracer solution. It was good to get the weight of the tracer solution out of our packs. Tadpoles were swarming in the stream as they had been the day before, the slightly increased flow and cloudy water from the rain was not bothering them apparently.
Everything looked in order so we ate lunch and headed back. By the time we started back the rain had cleared and the tropical sun had started to beat down. It heated up quickly and the road was steep from Rio Maria up to the volcano rim, to where it would drop back down into the crater and wind down to El Valle. We started regretting that we had not thought to bring more drinking water. We slid our way down over the slippery clay on the steep hill that had stopped the trucks in the morning. Our ride had not arrived at the bottom of the hill, so we started down the road toward the hotel. We hoped we would not have to walk the entire 5 additional miles back without a lift. After a bit we reached the area where there were farms and passed a place where a citrus tree had dropped its fruit into the road. These green fruits were not quite grapefruits and not quite oranges. Nonetheless they were a welcome and delicious source of liquid as we made our way toward El Valle. Another half mile down the road one of our trucks pulled up and we rode back.
That afternoon it was still sunny and we made our way down to the open market in El Valle. It is a mixed tourist and local market with booths selling everything you would need to live in the area, as well as many trinkets, locally produced and imported art objects aimed at tourists. While some may consider a department store a modern invention, the city market has a comparable array of goods crammed into the same amount of space; many more merchants participate in selling goods. We bought more food and some gifts for our families. I noticed fruits not common in the US (custard apples, nance) as well as those that are (pineapple, oranges, and grapefruits). The produce was fresh and much better than commonly found in large supermarket chains.
Items mainly for tourists included the well known traditional molas, an appliqué tapestry made by Kuna Indians and transported from the Caribbean coast to the north. Tagua nuts are about the size of a lemon with an ivory colored interior that hardens after being carved and exposed to air. The tree in native from the Southeast of Panama into Northern South America. Before plastic buttons, the nut was commonly used to make buttons that looked like ivory. Using these nuts to produce statuettes is an environmentally responsible solution for those who like ivory carvings. Commonly, intricate animals are carved in the tagua nuts and the carving is painted.
Natural animals are a common motif in these artisan-produced objects and most are fairly realistic. Many of the Tagua nut animals are extremely accurate representations, both in terms of color and proportion (although there are some inferior products to be found as with any craft that is sold for tourist consumption). These crafts suggest that the Panamanian artists, at least, value their wildlife. If they were only carved for tourists, attention to details of form and coloration of local spiders, frogs, and snakes would be unnecessary, as most tourists have no idea what the real animals look like. There are also cocobolo carvings of animals, and palm-fiber baskets and purses.
I was particularly interested in how many golden frog statuettes were available, some were tagua carvings, but most of the frogs were cheap plastic versions. The golden frog in Panama is the equivalent of the bald eagle in the US. The population crash of the bald eagle ultimately led to banning use of DDT in the US because people were upset the national bird could be lost. The toxin DDT concentrated in their eggs and made them so thin they would crack. The US people found this unacceptable and refused to allow use of DDT.
The Panamanians are experiencing the demise of a cultural touchstone to their country, and they can do little to stop it, as will be discussed in the next chapter. I also wondered if the statuettes would still be available in a few decades and how much they would look like the actual frogs. Many of those available in the market that day were true to the morphology and coloring of the golden frog. Others were depicted smoking and drinking martinis, kitschy tourist bait. Cultural evolution and no real comparison alive in the wild could ultimately lead to only a stylized version being sold, if any.
We watched as tourists disembarked from large air conditioned busses and flooded into the market only to leave an hour later. Overweight tourists haggled with the market vendors; many had cameras with lenses over a foot long or expensive digital video cameras. It was a typical scene in a tourist town. The atmosphere was definitely more relaxed after the last bus left. It was humorous that I too was a tourist, yet somehow felt superior to these bus tour participants.
That evening, after dinner I noticed that a television in the bar across the street was playing the super bowl. Passing up this bit of “culture” from home proved too difficult and we decided to go in. Entering the bar I noticed the gangs of tough looking youths hanging around outside. There were very few women in the loud and crowded bar; obviously the few females there were attending in a professional capacity. These professionals were not the women young men would bring home to meet their mothers. In general, this was one of the rougher bars I had been in. Feeling a bit insecure, I stayed near the bar with my group and watched the game.
Suddenly it struck me… nobody was smoking. I asked about this and was told that smoking had been outlawed inside public buildings in Panama a year before. Here I was in a rougher bar than any in my small town in the Midwestern US, yet smoking was not allowed here while such a ban in my home town occurred 2 years later. Some places in Panama are more socially progressive than parts of the US. This observation led me to realize that relationships between society and health were more complex than I had considered.
Later, I discussed the idea of social responsibility for health and environment with Heidi. She has an interesting perspective having lived in Panama for the last half decade, but growing up in the US. She mentioned that the Panamanians were also very concerned about global warming and most were unhappy with the way the US has been dealing with this issue. They felt that the US was burdening them with environmental problems associated with global warming without spreading the benefits of their extravagant lifestyles to the Panamanians. Essentially they felt the US people were burning the fossil fuels and they were paying the price for our consumption.
I don’t remember who won the football game. I do remember that the next morning I got my luggage! We had another working pump and I had some clean clothes. The clothing I missed most, other than clean underwear, was the quick dry pants. Quick dry clothing in the tropics is far superior to denim jeans. The thin synthetic fabric protects you from insects and the sun, but is not too hot. Given the amount of rain in a rainforest, the quick dry feature is advantageous. Plus, my quick dry pants looked a good bit nicer than the droopy jeans I had been wearing non-stop for the last 5 days.
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