What Happens in Bocas stays in Bocas: December 2016 Panama Travel Blog #2; to Aunt Gerry

Well, not exactly…

If Los Angeles or Irvine or Carmel is a melting pot of cultures, then Bocas is the granddaddy crock pot!

We invited our friends, Carlos and Raine, to have dinner with us in Bocas Town.  After some consideration they declined.  We will have dinner together here at the casa tomorrow night when the new owner arrives.  Joel, his girlfriend Vicki and Joel’s chihuahua Oliver, who caused a delay in Panama City because some doggy document was not in order.

So we struck out to Bokart, an eclectic restaurant that we had eaten at last year.  We remembered they had great sangria and I could eat there without getting poisoned by gluten and our Bocas friends knew the chef, Juan (pronounced Jew-on).  We arrived and the place was mostly empty.  Quiet evening for an open air restaurant with calm breezes flowing through and a house cat that moved under the tables looking for handouts.  Artsy fartsy decorations adorn the support posts of the roof and bar area.  Think- Bohemian meets surfer dude type of décor.

Bocas Town main street

We were seated in a corner where the few patrons were already eating and chatting across several tables.  We ordered our Sangria.  The pitcher was brought to the table and before I could take my first sip a slender blonde lady at the table across from us asked us where we were from.  The night became very interesting from that point forward.

Bus turned into restaurant

Elizabeth is a Stanford grad MD that is in private practice offering house calls for seniors with dementia.  Her boyfriend Ben is a long time employee of Apple computer that had started his career at Genentech.  I wasn’t clear on exactly when or how they met, but she was divorced with two teenage boys and he was never married and without kids.  We guess them to both be in their 50s as she graduated Stanford about the time that Bryant graduated Berkeley.  They were on their initial sojourn looking for an alternative to living in the U.S. because the Trump election was making them scared…very scared…. So, we had something in common.  Trump was not the candidate of our choice, either.   Both live in the San Francisco bay area and we had common experiences that kept us talking.

While this conversation was taking place, at an adjacent table was a group of six, speaking German.  However, I noticed that the guy that seemed to be the host would switch to Spanish and sometimes French.  He caught my eye on several occasions and at one moment pointed to our food and turned his thumb up and then down, apparently inquiring about our satisfaction with the entrees.    I was really intrigued by this person as he reminded me of a young Samuel Kahn, my dad’s younger brother.  With a full head of wavy grey hair, a square jaw, wide forehead, crystal blue eyes and full lips,   yes, he knew he was good looking.  The crowd he was with seemed somewhat beneath him in that they were tatted, wore leather braided jewelry and featured unkempt hair.  The host was much more put together.

Another great restaurant we frequented in Bocas Town

We chatted happily with the doctor and her boyfriend, exchanged contact information and I sent an email introduction to our friends Kirsten and Ray in Boquete as that was where Elizabeth and Ben were headed next.  Why not help one another meet the pioneers that have already forged the path?  After they departed, the handsome German excused himself from his friends and pulled up a chair at our table as if he knew he would be welcomed.   He was.   He looked at our chocolate fondue and asked if we were finished.  With a nod of our heads he stuck his fingers into the fondue pot and licked the chocolate from them.  I liked him immediately.

Axel was born and raised in Berlin, ended up in Frankfurt and studied aerodynamics which he hated.  Somehow he fell into photography and made a living at that for a while and morphed that into a design career of furnishings and architecture.  How he got from that to his 49 foot sailing boat and from Frankfurt to Bocas remains a gap in the story.   He has been living on his boat for 11 years and became the host to the tatted group quite by accident earlier in the day.  He heard German being spoken at one of the bars, understood they liked to sail, offered his boat for the day and away they went.  He said that he was drawn to the girlfriend of the long haired guy..something about her beautiful skin…and that she did not rebuff his obvious interest.  He was looking for us to give him permission to pursue this other guy’s girlfriend. Loneliness being the motivator.    Aha…interesting. What do we look like?  The priest and the rabbi?   Never asked a word about us or our story…but we sat for about 30 minutes just enamored with his ramblings while we watched him scrape our fondue pot clean.

As Bryant and I left the restaurant in a torrential downpour that came out of nowhere… I managed to say that no TV program could ever rival the interesting people we meet on our trips!  Our taxi driver was loudly playing music reminiscent of Julio Iglesias and we just sat there smiling at one another.

We are back in our casita and the rain is pouring forth making a huge racket on the red tin roof.    The geckos are croaking and the howler monkeys are whooping.   I hear crickets trying to out-chirp the chorus of the rain.   Yah, no TV program could ever rival this.

Tomorrow, Joel from Mississippi, his part time girlfriend and that dog….