Ok, so I haven’t posted a blog in some time now, but most of you know that I’ve been busy with other issues. Although the events of the following blog happened some time ago, I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
FUN AT THE FARM
I was invited to see the famous Finca Hartmann, which believe it or not is actually in my Frommer’s Panama and Fodor’s Panama guide books. Turns out that my host mom’s daughter, Susana, is married to one of the Hartmann’s. I’ve actually been helping their son in the after school English program. I paid the dollar and took the bus to San Antonio and Susana met me at the bus stop. We walked the short distance to her home as she was apologizing because everyone was gone. Once at the house she started preparing lunch and tossed me the remote. Her son arrived after a while and was working with a friend on his dirt bike. Susana asked him (Alois) to go grab the horse so I could ride for a little while. “Cool” I thought. At least I wouldn’t be watching bad American television dubbed into Spanish….uugghh. Alois brought the horse around and said “Here you go.” I was like, “Here I go what?” I’ve been on a horse all of once in my life. Really? You’re just gonna bring me a horse and say, “There it is, have fun.” What the crap? So I get on the horse and we slowly trot to the end of the drive turn around and come back when Susana says “That’s it?” and I’m like “That’s it what?” She says “You don’t want to ride?” I tell her that I do, so she waves her hand around and tells me to go ahead. The problem is I have no idea where to go, the farm is on the side of a mountain and there are trees and fences everywhere. But I can see that’s about as much instruction as I’m gonna get, so I trot down the drive and we turn left heading down the road until we start to go up an incline. It seems to me that the horse doesn’t want to go up the hill, but what the hell do I know about horses. Once again when we get back she says “That’s it?” This is becoming frustrating. She tells me to ride down that way as she points her finger down the hill. I kick him in the side and try to get him down the hill, but he’s having none of it. He keeps turning towards the field where he usually stays. I can’t get him to go the right way, so Susana leads us by the side of the house thru a gate into a small, narrow concrete block building where another horse and pony are having a grand ol’ time staring at the wall. I have to duck way down and the horse squishes my leg against the side of the building. Apparently my horse and the one stuck in the pen are engaged in an important conversation that I can’t hear because he won’t move past the other horse; he just keeps mashing my leg against the building. I of course am very calmly screaming “Aagghh! Aagghh! My leg! He’s making mashed potatoes with my leg!” Susana looks at me like I’m the biggest pansy ever and that’s when I say “I’m done with the horse”.
I spent the rest of my time watching Alois and his friend beat on a dirt bike motor before deciding they needed some sort of part and leave. I go back inside and watch bad American TV dubbed into Spanish. Uugghh. I can only stand this for so long, so I decide to go for a walk. I make it up the mountain all the way to a cell phone tower where to my surprise I also find a cemetery. Susana was shocked that I walked to the cemetery and asked what I was doing. I didn’t want to tell her that I was tired of watching (you guessed it) bad American television dubbed into Spanish, so I just told her that I liked to walk. We ate lunch and she asked me if I wanted to see the farm. “Of course!” So she hollered for Alois who drove me across the road to their cousin’s coffee farm. He dropped me off and told his cousin to call him when I was done. Really? Here’s our farm, call us when you’re done. Really?
PERRO!
So what can I do? I just start walking around the farm. One of the cousins who spent nine years in Seattle points me towards a trail. Turns out she married some Italian guy from Seattle who moved down to Panama with her and opened a pizzeria in a town about an hour down the road in Volcan. I had met him about a week or so earlier at his restaurant when I went with another volunteer. Anyway, I started walking as a small charcoal colored dog followed me down the trail. We walked all over that farm together. What a great dog! He was seriously with me every step. If he wandered off for more than a couple minutes I would yell out “Perro!” (which is just dog in Spanish) and he would come running.
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| Perro!! |
The farm is absolutely gorgeous. They grow shade grown coffee and have their own processing facilities on site. It’s really quite impressive and I had a good time checking things out, walking around like I owned the place.
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| A River Runs Through It, but there`s no Brad Pitt (sorry ladies) |
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| Processing Facilities |
I did however get lost and wound up at one of the cabanas where one of the many indigenous Ngobe families live during the harvest season. There’s no telling how many Ngobes work on the Hartmann farm, but there’s a lot. I got back just before dark having walked up and down the same mountain a couple of times trying to find the trail. Only Sean could get lost on a coffee farm.
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| Somewhere (la, la, la) Over The Rainbow |
They also have a little museum when you first enter the farm that has all kinds of insects pinned to the walls as well as some menacing looking poisonous snakes jammed into jars. I tell what’s her name that I’m done on the farm and Alois picks me up and takes me back home. MOTO PHOTO
The next day I went to a motocross event at the Municipal building in town. I got there about 10am and didn’t leave until 4. They had several races for different classes of dirt bikes and 4wheelers. What a blast! But HOT! I had burned my neck a little the day before hiking around the farm, but I was more than happy to slap on some sun-screen, turn my hat backwards like those damn teenagers (to protect my neck from the scorching sun) and sweat like crazy in my shorts and t-shirt in the middle of December. A lot of the participants were from Costa Rica since it’s so close by. Well, I don’t have a clever ending for this blog, but I do have some neato-burrito motocross photos. Check em out!
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| Dang I`m Cool! |
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| Gosh I hope I don`t hurt myself. |
