Category Archives: DINING

Very full day which began at 8 a.m. in a minibus full of game-for-anything Iowa farmers, who set off to visit some Panamanian farms about 120 miles west of Panama City on – as Panamanians would say – “the Pacific side.” The ride was bumpier and longer than expected – almost three hours – but we did get to see stuff your everyday tourist doesn’t. In this case, first stop was a cashew “factory” – a very small operation. We learned that cashews grow on trees, in the form of a fleshy, fist -sized creamy yellowish-orange fruit with a cashew-shaped shell-encased nut growing out of the bottom. Very strange. Our host – who owns the company – picked one of these fruits for us to taste – and then we walked through a very small rudimentary “factory” where we watched a few young men working to shell the cashews, using a foot-pedal operated machine, almost like a vise, to crack open the oily shell and pick out the nuts. These guys do this for hours on end for pay that, if I understood the guide correctly, amounts to $1.25 per hour. Yeesh.

From there we went to a sugar cane operation – driving our bus down rutted dirt roads with high fields of leafy sugar can stalks on either side and the occasional field of onions. As a fire burned in the distance – sugar cane fields are best harvested after they’ve been set afire, we learned – we watched a guy operate a combine-of-sorts to cut the cane. And our guide took what looked like thick sticks, shaved them with a knife until they were a yellowish core which – amazingly enough – tasted wonderfully sweet with odd woody texture. Sugar in the raw!

We stopped on the way back at a remarkable restaurant that was an homage to horses – I’ll try to get the name – and sat in big wooden chairs at long wooden tables with a vaulted ceiling made of rough-hewn wood beams and what looked an awful lot like thousands of pieces of sugar cane but probably wasn’t. We had ceviche, rice and a creamy chicken dish (always these heavy dishes on very hot days) and salad.

Tonight we went with another couple into Panama City to the famous Tinajas Restaurant – okay very touristy but such fun. We ate ceviche (can’t get enough of the stuff) and jumbo shrimp in coconut sauce and drank pina coladas and Balboa beer and best of all, watched a floor show of Panamanian dancers accompanied by percussion players (bongos, maraches, accordion, a tiny female singer who could really belt out those traditional songs.) Great performers – one of whom pulled me up to dance with him, which was a kick – and interesting that the crowd included not just American tourists but what appeared to be many Panamanians and/or people from other Latin American countries.  At the end of the evening,we met two adorable college girls from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy who are doing an intern here  – working at the Panama Canal. They’re studying to work for the port authority – and have gotten to board some of the massive vessel, one from Turkey, another from Russia, that crawl through the canal. How cool is that? Makes me feel like a young carefree explorer again – which isn’t something I’ve felt in some time.