February is a very contradicting month: not only do you have the annual opportunity given to you by Hallmark to tell the person you love that you do (and if you didn’t then oh noes!) but right a few days later you’re granted to a 4-day holiday fueled by debauchery and lack of self control where you’ll drink you face off and chase as much tail as you possibly can… you, my friend, are going to Carnivals. Many people in this country destroy every foundation of trust they tried so hard to build on Valentine’s Day in order to hop on a bus, hit the interior and get so ridiculously drunk it’s the excuse they’ll give when their significant others find out they were doing the no-pants dance with the town slut and it’s all in good fun. For 4 days the entire country reaches a screeching halt to leave all worries to the wind, stocking up on alcohol and going to the areas where the party’s at: parks, sidewalks and most private properties. For the second year in a row I decided to take my little red car and trek to the mystical lands of the Azuero Peninsula, an area famous for their homebrew approach to carnivals. Of course, I say “homebrew” sarcastically because now that everyone’s found out about it (including TV stations) you see a lot of city folk over there doing their worst… it all adds to the surrealism of carnivals, though, and makes for a very interesting and fun time. Thanks to Matt at ThePanamaReport.com, I have little intros for each town we’ll be visiting! Hooray! About Azuero, then:

The Azuero Peninsula, for starters, sits more than three times the distance than most other hotspots within car-shot of Panama City. The tourism and real estate industries in Panama are young, very young, and it only makes sense that the few tourism and real estate booms that do exist, take place close to the country’s credible and already-proven capital. Towns like El Valle, Gorgona, Coronado, and Santa Clara seem to be forecasting the development trend as we see hotels and real estate projects popping up further and further along that Central Pacific coast. In Azuero though, things are just getting started. It’s a region of unrefined beauty where jagged shores meet smooth rolling hills, where humble farmers go about their business as if this was how beautiful life was intended to be. It sits about 3 hours from cosmopolitan Panama City but appears to be a world away. Its virgin coastline of secluded beaches and waterfalls mysteriously resembles those of Costa Rica, Belize, and California: a developer’s topological pipe dream. This is Azuero.

In order for this report to work I will provide you with a basic rundown of how carnivals are done in Azuero: the peninsula is broken down in towns which have pretty much the same construct, it being a big town square where the town is built around. Town square’s where the magic happens, folks… all roads leading to it are blocked off by the cops in order to keep crowd control levels high but once you and your poison of choice (mine this year: vodka orange) you go into the field; the streets of the town square are packed with people dressed like they’re going to the beach or if they had just woken up and left the house without taking a shower… they all scream at the large container trucks at the sides of the road in order for the people atop the huge cylinders spray them with water using their ridiculously huge hoses. They also throw promotional stuff constantly representative of whatever company is sponsoring these containers, the practice commonly known as “culecos.” Don’t ask me why on Earth the act of hosing down a drunken mob with a hose can be called a “culeco” because it defies any logic and reason… we like it that way, though. So, these “sponsors” will throw all sorts of freebies at the crowd like bandanas, thermoses, plastic bottles of assorted alcohol beverages, glasses and assorted items. Music can be heard from all over the place as every corner of the square has something going on involving reggae or reggaeton or both… many rappers and artists take the stages at around 5-6PM and their shows are ridiculous, mostly because they never “rap” nor “sing” nor whatever it is these people actually do while they perform that isn’t jumping around like circus monkeys and cutting their tracks 10 seconds after they start playing them.

Jam & Suppose, Eddie Lova, Danger Man, Kafu Banton… all of these guys have the same show, and it has a very simple formula that unravels as follows:

1. The artist talks to the crowd making sure he says “fuck” a lot. The crowd, in return, goes wild. After getting them all riled up he’ll instruct the DJ to “let rip one of his phat tracks” and for some unexplainable reason he’ll say “pull-up” with a fake Jamaican accent before said track begins play.
2. The track starts, usually very ghetto and groovy sounding; the tribal mating calls that are surely hidden within the track gets the artist to meet with his monkey king self within the confines of the fifth dimension where his reality truly is. They decide it’s time to, pardon the expression, let the monkey out of its cage and the artist enters what can only be described as a very extreme epileptic seizure. Monkey see, monkey do: the crowd goes nuts and does the same. This is as good a time as any to point out 2 things: these artists have it easy when they perform live because they do everything but rap or sing; the crowd has been bombarded with the tracks over the radio (and specially in carnivals) so fucking much that by the time the song are being performed all the rapper needs to do is stick the mic out to the public and they’ll sing the frickin’ song for them. I take it this helps the artist because being possessed by the monkey king must hinder your senses and perception. Second: I’d be going ape shit too if I wasn’t so scared of getting mugged/crushed.
3. Anywhere between 10 to 20 seconds after the track has been “ripped,” the Monkey King will leave the artist’s body, ending the epileptic seizure on its tracks. It’s at this very moment that I can only imagine what’s going through the artist’s mind: I think he reaches a moment of clarity where he realizes that he was, in fact, jumping around like an idiot and not doing much of anything while his public did the job for him (i.e. “singing”). He feels insulted, resulting in the screeching halt of his tribal rain dance. He turns around to face the DJ as if he didn’t know where he was or what he’s doing to then instruct the Mixmaster to cut the track.
4. Wash, rinse and repeat.

Moronic? Yes. Moronic, and classic. I love it. Since most of the acts presented in carnivals followed this formula, my crew and I did not care for them. From this moment on you will read the accounts of one Rob Rivera as he dips into the Azuero tundra of debauchery, powered by vodka and soaking-wet women. I hope you enjoy yourselves, bitches… I sure as hell did.

Day 1 – Saturday

After the company I used to work for comes up with a spiffy scheme to give us “sick days” in order for us to go get drunk far, far away and in peace, I picked up Bounceddog and Cutito at around 1PM to start our journey to Chitré, in the Azuero Peninsula. About Chitré:

Chitre is anomalistic. Its large, bustling town square, modern grocery stores, and bevy of restaurants and hotels are perhaps more urbanized than any other pueblo in rural Panama. This capital of the Herrera province is vibrant with an odd farmer-meets-city charm, and its maze-like streets will swallow you whole if you don’t know where you’re going.
I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a cosmopolitan place. Known mainly as the agricultural processing center for the expansive Azuero Peninsula, Chitre is a small town with a big town feel. Population about 150,000 (estimated by The Panama Report, February 2007). It is a good stopping point whether you’re venturing into the peninsula or coming out. The center of Chitre is a large beautiful church which spans one square city block, then sprinkled around the church, throughout the town, are small open parks—the perfect spot for an afternoon juice box if you like them.

My “luggage” consisted of a Señor Frog’s knitted bag I got way back in 2000 when I went to Cancun for my high school graduation trip and a smaller fanny pack with my survival essentials.

In the Señor Frog’s bag:

• 1 pair of board shorts
• 1 buttoned shirt
• 5 t-shirts
• 1 pair of shorts
• 1 pair of jeans
• 5 pairs of boxers
• 1 pair of socks
• 1 pair of “culeco” shoes

And in the fanny pack:

• 1 small jar of Extra Strength Tylenol (gel caps)
• 1 small jar of Melatonin pills
• 1 Toothbrush
• 1 deodorant
• 1 Mach 3 razor I never once used during the whole trip
• 1 sunscreen bottle I totally forgot about
• Condoms I never got around to using
• 1 small notepad and pen I apparently used but was too drunk at the time so the noted I wrote down are nothing more than unintelligible scribbles.

Other assorted things I brought along where my loyal sunglasses and flops. I stress the word “culeco” in culeco shoes because they usually come back so disgusting and filthy you don’t want to wear them again. There have been anomalies to this rule though, as the white Keds I used this year where the same ones I used the year before and they came back in a somewhat decent shape. Nevertheless, with the ridiculously cheap merchandise you can get in Panama it wouldn’t hurt to buy a pair of $3 aqua shoes… they’ll do you good.

There are two ways to get out of the city by car: one is the America’s Bridge located in the Panama Canal area. This bridge has been around since forever and it used to be downright unbearable to get in or out of the city before the second option was available to the populace: the much more merciful Centenario bridge located around the Rod Carew Stadium. It’s much more accessible to people in the city and it somehow gets you to the open highway much faster than the old way does so I decided to take the new bridge… little did I know that part of the road that led to it fell off a Goddamn cliff. I shit you not: part of the road that led to the bridge fell off the side of the cliff where it was constructed. It seems that the soil added to the cliff in order to build the road wasn’t as rough and tough as everyone assumed; not only that, but the same could be said of the concrete used on the road itself… so we get to the bottleneck traffic jam and are delayed an extra half hour… Panama. It’s fan-tastic!

Drinking while driving used to be a common occurrence during carnivals since Panamanians have the tendency to start holidays early; this year the Panamanian’s plans to launch a preemptive strike at their livers was trumped by both the police and the transit authority due to the fact that they cooked up the most “fuck you” response to alcohol-fueled drivers they could come up with: Every 10km or so there would be a highway patrol officer aching at the chance of catching some rebel driver going either too fast or too disorderly. If this person is stopped and the cop smells an alcoholic breath on him, not only is his driver’s license suspended but his car is towed back to the city and left at a special junkyard where the driver will be able to pick up his vehicle when its offices open the day after Ash Wednesday. If this happened to someone today (Saturday) then he/she is le fucked. And to add insult to injury this person will not only have to pay the fine for drunk driving, but also the bill for the tow truck and the days the car stays at the yard, as well as a fee in order to take it out… let’s see here:

1. DUI - $150
2. Tow Truck - $60
3. Car Yard (per day) - $20
4. Retreival of Vehicle – $40
5. A Carnival Shot to Hell Because You’re Stupid – priceless

So, getting caught drunk will cost you the confiscation of both your car and license, as well as a fee shy of $350. I take it the cop bribe rates have increased due to these new developments. Bye, bye Mr. Lincoln; say hello to Mr. Hamilton! In all seriousness though, I think it’s a great idea because on our way over to Chitré we saw considerably less car crashes this year (2) than I did last year (5) so it’s definitely an improvement… I have to admit those new measures scared the shit out of me so I waited until we were way past Penonomé to fuel up in brew a little. We listened to a lot of reggae and reggaetón along the way in order to get in the mood, and some típico because Cutito plays in a band and he would literally jump out the window if I blew the roof off with the stuff I like to listen to.

4 hours, 400km and 3 gallons of gas later, we arrived to Magnus’ house in Chitré. It’s not the mansion you’d think we’d shack up in but it’s exactly what any person needs in order to escape the diatribe of the city. Already there: Magnus and Bastardizer (changing his nick to Kuma from this point on, folks), Magnus’ parents, and brother Walo, and well as Angee and finally, Magnus’ mom’s best friend’s family (*whew!*) composed of husband, wife and three sons. I could do a whole other blog post on these guys… they surely made last year’s carnival one to remember. Now, since we got to Chitre practically at sundown we missed the culecos so we started discussing what to do at night over dinner.

When the sun goes down there are 2 ways to keep the carnival spirit on: either go traditional and visit the stops all across the Azuero Peninsula and get caught up in what I like to call “The Queen Wars” (more on that in a minute or two) or go the open-air clubs set up in the same stops. The Queen Wars are the reason why this whole thing is going on to begin with: in the beginning, there were two… streets, that is. “Calle Abajo” and “Calle Arriba” are rival streets of the same villa that go head-to-head every year in an epic battle for supremacy, the victor winning bragging rights for acquiring such earth-shattering accolades as the prettiest queen and parade car, as well as the most inventive “tuna” or “anthem.” Oh yes, the urgency to settle this feud is imperative for the preservation of mankind. Every town in Azuero (as well as every town everywhere across the country, pretty much, though no one takes it as seriously as the Azuero Peninsula) has these two rival factions and as early as March they all begin preparations for the following year, taking in applicants for the role of queen and coming up with concept art for the parade cars as well as lyrics for the anthem. The queens have a different outfit (and parade car, at times) for every day of carnivals, and they parade twice during the day: once during the culecos amidst the water and drunken retards and then late at night where it’s usually more glamorous and picture-worthy. Since the parade worth a damn is at night, most people take their attention to the festivities during that time in order to appreciate things better. So, the M.O is pretty much this: Calle Arriba queen goes around the town square on her parade car with her princesses, followed by a smaller car that takes the 20-man band playing awesome carnival tunes and carnivalized-covers to the most popular songs of the moment. Once she’s done, the Calle Abajo queen does the same. Whatever faction you support then you’re expected to follow the cars and sing the anthem, or if you don’t know the lyrics then just jump and dance around like the drunken moron you should be by the time all this heap is going on.

The other thing we Panamanians do during carnival time when the sun goes down is to attend what I will call open-air clubs, which are exactly what the term implies: mock-up “clubs” that are set up in every town that sees Queen Wars action. If memory serves, there were three different clubs for you to choose from: The X-Zone, carnavales staple Pub Herrerano (PH) and the “newcomer” Rock Café: Carnival Edition. A quick note about this Rock Café entity, if I may… this establishment is quite possibly the oldest prep and middle-income oriented club in the city… nay, the country. I almost certain that it’s older than my youngest cousin and he’s frickin’ 16. A remarkable feat in any country if you know how the whole nightclub business works, where the life expectancy of most of these places is anywhere between 6 months to 2 years or so, ballpark figures. Anyway, that’s not what amazes me the most about this joint, no siree bob. I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge on the subject by any means but since I became aware that nightclubs existed and began to frequent them (16 and 18 years old, respectively) there have been at least 15 gunfights and 3 dead. FIFTEEN GUNFIGHTS and THREE DEAD. The place is, of course, still open and so far there’s not one theory that I’ve heard that justifies Rock Café the right to stay open since not only have people died on its dance floor but the place is like a parallel dimension where factions of society that would otherwise never cross paths go ahead and congregate for the same of hustlin’ tail and alcohol. So, for starters, on a regular night there’s the most unbearable series of noises that every living breathing person that’s not drunk or trying to sleep within a 5 mile radius will not tolerate by any means (I speak from personal experience… motherfucker, one time I happened to crash in a building right across from that God-forsaken place and I was sleepy and had one too many beers and I had to drive to the airport early the next morning and those assholes wouldn’t stop their damn thumping up to the point where just when I thought I’d finally be able to catch some sleep a 4 person live band started playing. Hell, the bass player started doing his ridiculously loud-sounding sound check at 3AM. Band play a quarter shy of 4AM and by the time I finally fell asleep I only caught around 2 hours of sleep. I was so cranky I could’ve wrestled a cougar) and when things get really interesting, people get shot. Like, as recently as January. It’s ridiculous, so I don’t know what kind of patron saint these people pray to (my money’s on Satan) that allows them to quite literally get away with murder but it seems that their contract with the scorchin’ down south has been extended for another hundred years because now they’re getting their mittens into the carnival game. Watch out when you deal with the people who work there. They eat babies and drink goat’s blood.

The way these carnival clubs work is fairly simple when you come to think about it. What they do is they find a really huge piece of real estate, rent it out for a few days and once they have all of that red tape untangled they build somewhat of a box-like perimeter that resembles a zombie retention camp like something out of “28 Days Later” or, more appropriately, “Walking Dead.” So, they build these large courtyards and seal them off so that there’s only one entrance/exit and charge people the standard clubbing fee of $10 to pretty much do what they do when they’re in the city, sans roof. The bad thing about these venues is what could be called the “Rock Café Effect” that spreads all across the open-air clubs and that would be the clash between the factions… I didn’t touch up on this sooner but what I mean by this is that in Rock Café is probably the only place in the country where the preppiest kids mingle with the most ghetto thugs you’ll ever see talking broken English, resulting in idiots getting a cap in their ass. The way it was explained to me illustrates the point quite clearly: imagine, if you will, an empty club. Not that big, not that small… just adequate. So, on the left side of the club you will place 300 rich white kids (and in a lot of these cases I do mean kids) and their spectacularly hot friends and girlfriends. They’re the type who only likes what’s hot on the music charts at the moment or whatever is trendy at the time. Like, chumps. Fill half of the club with rich, white chumps. On the other side of the club then, you will add 300 of the biggest, toughest, blackest gangstaz you have ever set your eyes on. Remember the most ghetto-fabulous rap videos you’ve seen in the past 10 years and pull out the toughest thugs from them… now, put them in that club next to the rich, white chumps. Oh yes, there will be blood.

Prep kid brings in hot girlfriend. Prep kid and hot girlfriend dance and get dirty. Ghetto thug takes a good look at hot girlfriend. Hot girlfriend sees ghetto thug; ghetto thug grabs his crotch and does his best Zoolander model face. Hot girlfriend is eerily attracted to ghetto thug, but prep kid notices and is enraged, so he walks up to ghetto thug in a feeble attempt to protect his manhood, fueled by both his insecurity and the delusion that because he has money he is untouchable. Ghetto thug is beside himself with disbelief as prep kid has the nerve to ask him why he’s eyeballing his hot girlfriend. Interpreting the ghetto thug’s silence as fear, prep kid becomes full of himself and goes so far as to shove ghetto thug in order to secure aroused girlfriend pussy for the night. Ghetto thug takes out his Glock and shoots a hole through prep kid’s chest. Party is over. Thank you for playing.

To their credit, the open-air clubs are a booming industry and I must say that if you buy into it, they deliver the goods. All the prices you know and love from the regular disco hangouts stand in the carnival clubs as well, and on the plus side, there’s no dress code (other than “please don’t come naked”) so you don’t have to worry about wearing those uncomfortable shoes you don’t like. Another plus to this is that eventually everyone can go in, regardless of age. Hell, there was this one club we went to last year (where I lost both my ID and Visa, mind you) where we had a problem because one of the brothers I mentioned earlier couldn’t go in because he was a minor. That didn’t stop his underage heart’s determination to intoxicate with dubious amounts of alcohol and by the time I got back to the group from getting a beer he was in as if nothing had happened. Lucky for me I had my ATM card back at home and every town has a variety of ATMs from all the mayor banks so I wasn’t stranded or nothing of the sort; loosing my ID was a real bitch, though. When I got back I had to pay almost 20 bucks and wait a week for the new ID… the plus to that was that now my picture is of me with an awesome tan. Anyway, the tracks come fast and furiously, one right after the other; artists have been known to take the stage every other day and if you’re lucky (or outgoing) you can score some poon or dong, depending on your particular preference… this is where I should talk to you about the concept that is commonly referred to as “incidents of carnivals,” but I will tease you now and save that little number for you on Day 2 of this carnival voyage.

So, taking a good look at our options we decided to head out to the town square and see what was going on; we packed ourselves up and quickly headed over to there in order to check out the latest installment of the Queen Wars. They were cool, cars and band and songs and everything. Things in Chitre are rather low-key at night so it’s a good alternative when you want something to do without having to deal with hordes of drunk people playing smartass all over the street.

IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT: La Villa de Los Santos, Vodka Orange, Rules of Engagement in the Culeco Arena and Drunken Rob.

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