Writings By Date| Panama By Taxi | 1 | 2 |
But our cabbie adventures for the day weren't done yet. A few hours later, we were in for a totally different kind of experience.
We were getting ready to check out of our hotel, but our new friend Mike wasn't around yet to pick us up. After waiting a little while, I phoned his home, where his dad told me that he wasn't around, so I should just grab a cab and come over. I said sure, that wasn't a problem, but we didn't know the address. His response: "5823B in Diablo".
That's it? That's an address?!
Well, we were going to find out. We flagged down a cab driver, and he seemed a bit concerned when I asked him if he could take us there. I had to explain I didn't know the cross-street, but when I showed him the address, he mulled it over, then said okay.
It was the beginning of rush hour, so this ride was a fair bit slower and calmer. As we drove the crowded Panama City traffic, though, I listened to the concerto of cabs, and began to piece together the driver's horn code of Panama.
I listened to the hypnotic cacophony as we made our way out of the downtown area, to Diablo. Diablo is an area in the Canal Zone that used to be populated with American military. In typical military fashion, all of the houses and buildings are numbered, in a sort of order, but among many different winding streets. Our driver went down one street, whre the house numbers ran from 5010 to 5120. Then we turned, and were looking at 5300 to 5350. A few streets over, and it was the 5200's. Our driver continued along this random search pattern, asking one pedestrian for directions, but getting a very vague shoulder shrug in response. The driver just continued staring out one side of the cab, then the other, looking at the numbers. The quest wasn't made any easier by the fact that few roads, if any, ever met at right angles. Every so often, he'd let out a sign, and put up his hand as if to say, "Just give me a minute here, we'll find it." (In Spanish, though.)
We thought one of the intersections looked familiar, so we pointed him in that direction. He asked another passerby for directions, this time getting success. About two blocks later, we found it. Technically, we found the house by recognizing the front porch; there was no number 5823 that we could locate (although we did see a "B"). These guys must win the prize for the shortest mailing address I've ever seen after "Santa Claus, North Pole".
If there's any moral to be had here, it would be that driving in Panama can be a deadly adventure. If you aren't in danger of being run down or honked off the road, you're likely to be lost and driving around parts of Panama for days. In the end, our Diablo cab driver seemed more amused than annoyed, but that was probably because we were paying him good money for this — twice as much as we should have, I'm guessing. Maybe he'll put the extra money to good use — like buying a map of Diablo.
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