In the middle of September I made a short business trip to Calgary. Luckily the weather forecast, which promised temperatures close to 5 degrees C and rain was totally wrong and we had a couple of beautiful Indian summer days. Calgary skyline has not changed as much as I expected (last time I visited was when I was taking Alice to U of C in 1999).
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) But there is a fair number of very deep holes with construction going on and so in a year or so, I imagine the downtown is going to look a little different.

I was nice to be in a city where you can walk but by 6 p.m. most of the shops close and the downtown is too quiet. I also picked up a real estate magazine and even though I have seen the high prices on the internet it does not have the same impact as seeing the floor plan, dimensions and a picture which seems to represent a rabbit hutch rather than a house (located in a suburb which did not even exist 10 years ago) and the going price of around $ 450, 000. Apparently the market has slowed down and now houses do not move very quickly and there is a lot of choice, but prices have not moved very much yet. I would say they have a long way to go but the feeling among the locals is that prices are not going to drop very much. Reminiscent of the optimism in mid 80’s, just before the big crash.

As I was heading home on Thursday it was becoming more and more certain that hurricane Ike will land somewhere on the Texas coast and even though the projections were showing it heading directly for Houston, the envelope of uncertainty was wide enough to hope that it will change its mind. I arrived in Houston around noon and decided to go to the office to get my expense done and start preparing for my upcoming vacation. I arrived to a nearly empty building, all computers were shut down and everybody was either gone and getting ready to leave. On the way home I wanted to buy some fruit but gave up after seeing the long lines at the store. I spent the next hour or so looking for a gasoline station that still had something to sell. Everybody was in a serious preparation mode.

Due to the coming hurricane we had Friday off and I spent most of the day watching the approaching swirl on television. The weather in Houston was perfect, not a hint of what was only 12 hours away. Kumiko, who has been through many taiphoons in Tokyo, took a dim view of what she regarded as general unwarranted panic. The hurricane eye reached Galveston around 2 in the morning and reached us about an hour later, by which time it was downgraded from cat 2 to a strong cat 1. Even so, it was impressive. The house literally shook and I understood what they meant when they talked about windows blowing out. Shortly after 3 the electricity went out and we went to sleep. The hurricane did not bring with it as much rain as I was expecting. The big rain came the following morning, when the center of the hurricane was already past Huntsville. Luckily it the rain did not last too long and so we did not even come close to flooding our street.

Things calmed down enough in the afternoon and we started to clean up. Around our house it was mainly small branches knocked off the live oak tree in the front. When I stepped into the street I saw a large fallen tree few houses down. We got our cameras and went to have a look. We were not the only ones, people were walking through and driving through, curious about the damage. It was a strange atmosphere, reminiscent of Christmas time when people drive around to look at the lights. The feeling was accentuated by the pervasive Christmas tree aroma, many of the branches knocked down were from pine trees.

The original plan was for a friend of ours from Japan to come to Houston on Saturday and we were going to fly together to Panama. However, since the airport closed on Friday before the hurricane hit, he flew directly to Miami and I hoped to join him there on Sunday. But when we drove to the airport on Sunday morning we were told that the airport was closed until Tuesday. We actually had a hard time getting back because in the meantime many of the streets flooded and I was not keen on getting stuck in water. I tried several different routes but we always came to a point with lots of water and turned back. We finally came to one which did not seem too deep and made it through. In Houston you do need an SUV to get around at times like these, my Honda would have drowned.

This gave me a chance to finish the clean up and also to resume my walks – all the time surveying how everybody is reacting. People cleaned up with surprising efficiency and by Monday most of the fallen trees were cut into little pieces arranged by the side of the street for pickup along with smaller debris neatly packed into large garbage bags. The effort was undoubtedly helped by the local Latino population, which identified a need and deciding to fill it turned up with chainsaws and helped afflicted house owners to handle the fallen trees. There were lots of them and surprisingly very few fell down on houses, as if they were trying to avoid them. Many close calls, very few direct hits. I found out later that getting a tree cut down is not a cheep proposition. Depending on the complexity (i.e. tree that fell on a house and needs a crane to remove it) prices ranged from $2,000 to $5,000.

The big problem with hurricanes is that they interrupt the basic services, sometimes for a very long time. We were quite lucky. Since our subdivision has its own water treatment plant and they had a generator standing by, we never lost water. The water heater is gas and so we were able to take hot showers and that makes all the difference in the world. In addition, the temperatures dropped to a comfortable 25 degrees C and so eating by candlelight was the only adaptation necessary. In addition, our electricity came back on Sunday – even though on Monday most of our neighbors were still in the dark and some of them staid that way for two weeks. However, the lack of power and pleasant weather brought about a strange transformation. People sitting outside on their porches, barbecues and grills in every back yard – a vision of Houston of past ages, before air conditioning and television confined people to house arrest. Kind of nice to see, especially since we did have electricity.

By Tuesday morning the airport reopened and it was surprisingly easy to reschedule my flight. In the meantime I was able to contact our friend (circuitously – through a mutual friend in Japan) and find out where he was staying in Panama. Changing planes in Miami I was surprised by the $8 beer at the airport. No wonder the country is in a financial crisis.

I finally arrived in Panama City on Tuesday night and we were able to restart our trip, the main purpose of which was collection of barnacles on the Pacific and Caribbean coast (barnacle evolution has been a research topic of my friend ever since we were together at the University of Tokyo). Panama City was as much of a pleasant surprise as San Jose in Costa Rica was a let down. The city has a nice colonial era zone on a small peninsula jutting into the Panama Bay. The modern city is undergoing an intense transformation and aggressive construction is changing the skyline rapidly even though on the ground it still remains a congested Latin American city.

Taboga is one of several islands in the bay and we spent a wonderful relaxed day there. Incidentally, it has the second oldest church in the western hemisphere (I believe the number one is in Dominican Republic). I could see myself spending a laid back week here and I imagine the other, more distant islands, are even nicer. After all, the ex-shah of Iran retired to one of them.

The only train in the country runs along the Panama Canal. Even though there is only one train a day and it takes only one hour to cross from the Pacific to the Atlantic it is a trip well worth taking. It follows the canal most of the way and in addition has the atmosphere of long bygone days. It arrives at the city of Colon – which in my guide book was described as one big slum. Overall, a fairly accurate description. We hired a taxi for several hours and using the driver as a guide and unofficial bodyguard we were able to visit several sampling sites along the coast. The sampling did not take very long and so we took one of the local buses to the Gatun Locks where ships are elevated from sea level up to the elevation of the canal (or lowered for east going ships). It is an impressive facility and because ships are designed to fit the canal, the amount of free space is truly tiny.

Having finished in Panama City we headed north. We spent the first day in the town of Valle, which is a small resort in the caldera of an extinct volcano. Because of higher elevation the air is cooler than on the coast but vegetation still has a definite tropical look. We stayed at a hotel owned by a retired German merchant marine captain and had a surprisingly authentic tasting bockwurst for supper – apparently made in Panama City. I wish we had someone like that in Houston.

The next day we headed back to the Pan-American highway and tried to stop a bus going north to David. The busses run every hour but the first two were full and did not stop. We were on the point of modifying our plan when a David-bound bus finally took us in. Buses in Panama fall into three categories. Local buses are garishly decorated (both inside and out) American school buses.






Shorter, intercity transportation, let us say up to 3-4 hours is handled by small Toyota buses. These are the best because you can see outside very well and there is usually good people watching inside as well. For longer haul (like Panama City –David) large buses (think standard Greyhound) are used but they are a long way from the cruisers of the highway they use in Chile. For one, none of them have an onboard toilet and that forces one to be very conservative when it comes to choosing what to eat.

David is the second largest city in Panama but it is quite unremarkable. There is a border crossing on the Pan-American but according to my guide book (confirmed by various sites on the internet) it tends to get quite busy and confusing, involves lining up in various queues, handing over you passport to the bus driver and other things I am not particularly keen on. However, there is another crossing, in the middle of the mountains at Rio Sereno. This has been described as very quiet and so we headed into the central mountains. The road was narrow but surprisingly good. This is dairy cattle country with a climate of constant spring enhanced by tropical flora. Lately it has become a popular spot for Americans and Canadians to retire to, and even though we did not visit the town of Boquete which is the locus of expat retirees, I could see the attraction of the area.

Rio Sereno was a very quiet crossing. We had to ask where the border was and then look for someone to stamp our passport. There is really nothing other than the police building and a bar (which was closed) on the Tico side. We waited for about half an hour and a small Toyota bus showed up and took us to the nearest town where we changed buses and arrived at San Vito where we spent the night. Costa Rica is known as the Switzerland of Central America and while at a glance the standard of living appears to be higher than in Panama, it is still a third world country.

Next day we continued out journey north. Coffee plantations everywhere and then the road starts to climb and gets up to the cloud forest (this is an area that is so high that is it almost always in the clouds – basically constant fog). The Interamericana reaches its highest point here (3,491 m) at the Mountain of Death. In the lower areas to the north coffee plantations are replaced by endless pineapple fields. We arrived in the capital San Jose around three in the afternoon. The city was so unimpressive that we got on another bus and headed to the Pacific Coast at Jaco.

September is well in the rainy season, very few tourists around and so we never had any problems finding accommodation. In Jaco we stayed in a very nicely landscaped Dutch-owned hotel.



After a few days rest we continued south to the town of Quepos. This is a starting point for visiting the nearby Manuel Antonio National Park. We were extremely lucky – the day we visited the park was the only day when it did not rain at all, big blue skies, and due to the rainy season – very few tourists. Beautiful beaches, fantastic flowers and plenty of exotic wildlife.

























The most remarkable thing is that even though we visited during the rainy season and even spent some time hiking through the jungle, during the whole two weeks I saw only one mosquito – and this was in an outdoor bar in David. I would like to know the secret – we could certainly use it in Houston.