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(And, just to prove how bad it can get, on Sunday the pterodactyls revert to frigate birds and, showing some sense, promptly frig off)
 Pterodactyls are in the sky competing with omnipresent buzzards for top air space. Small flocks consisting of 5 or 6 almost as large pelicans pass just below them in Flying V formations. One or two dive-bomb inelegantly for fish – individual pelicans paddle majestically and perch imperiously, but they dive as if they’re practising for the pelican version of a belly flop contest.
 You’re on a nearly deserted playa, lying in a hammock protected from the often-brutal sun by a palapa hut (called a ‘rancho’ in Panama). Your book and writing materials are on a plastic table beside you.
Beer-bearing waiters are a wave away – a wave of a hand, that is. Two deck chairs are at your disposal in case you decide to risk feet-up tanning, which you may do – later, after a swim, in the barely existent, watery waves.
Right now though, going through the advisable ritual of smearing on (60 wt) sun block strikes you as too much effort; all the more so when your only companion is a possibly pregnant cur (mongrel dog) that wouldn’t be much use if you needed help covering hard-to-reach back spots. (Happily she doesn’t seem inclined to protest you moving into the same rancho she uses for shade during the day.)
It’s only 10 a.m. but it’s low tide and the water’s invitingly flat. Although, as you discover over the course of the next few days, it can get mildly choppy when the wind blusters and the tide starts to rise, it’s mostly flat anyway. Sun block or not, the day’s first swim can only be a matter of minutes away. All seems right with the world.
This is Veranares Restaurant, Bar and Cabanas, Playa Blanca, Santa Clara, Panama. Around the wooded, pathless point to the west is another Playa Blanca.  Upon it sits an all-inclusive mega-resort known as the Royal Decameron. The only reason I know it’s there is because I took its shuttle from Panama City (a 2-hour drive for $48 USD return), and thence a short, $5.00 cab ride, in order to get here.
Said here strikes me the best swimming beach I’ve come across since Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, a month ago now. Given the peacefulness of the moment, I reckon Veranares the perfect spot to end this snowbird’s winter flight to Costa Rica and Panama. I’m not alone in my assessment of the beach either. William Friar, the Panama-born writer of the Moon Handbook I’ve been using, calls it his "favourite Pacific coast beach".
Oddly, though, he does not mention Veranares in the guidebook. One of the reasons for that might be the slime green pond of stagnant water laying beneath and to the sides of the bridge leading to its office, restaurant, bar and beach side cabanas. Despite much ballyhooed efforts to eradicate it, dengue remains endemic to Panama and there’s nothing the mosquitoes that carry it like better than stagnant water. 
(Regardless of what you may have heard, or read, malaria and Yellow Fever are no longer a problem in Panama. That is to say they aren't unless you feel like daring the largely people-free Darien Gap between Panama and Columbia, in the country’s far south. I’ve no intention of doing that on this trip. Perhaps I never will. It’s not unheard of for folks to get eaten down there. Much more often, however, they get kidnapped.)
 You also can’t help but notice the trash (‘basura’) surrounding the offensive cesspool (for immediate want of an inclination to euphemize). Plus, speaking of which, your second or third reaction upon walking out onto the beach – after how seemingly endless it is in both directions, how gorgeous it is, and/or how calm the water looks – is that the undeniably fine, white sand (thus Playa Blanca) could do with a thorough power raking.
Then you slap yourself in the head, forcing yourself to remember that it’s February back home and, at least according to recently received emails, there’s still a foot of snow on the ground in parts of the Lower Mainland in and around Vancouver.
All right, so you weren't overly impressed with the rooms on offer when you arrived late yesterday afternoon. For one thing, those you saw in the so-called Jungle Lodge were down a hollow quite a ways from the beach. In discouraging addition, there was a certain pong to the air within them, more than a hint of mould on the walls, less than complete drainage in the shower stalls – hence, in part, the pong – and the air conditioning unit was really loud.
 The ones above and to the side of the restaurant weren't much better, without a TV and having a fan instead of a/c. Primitive comes to mind as an applicable adjective. So does Spartan. One big bed and a bunk bed (two narrow singles on top of each other), no mossy nets anywhere, a shower stall that looked to be an afterthought arrival and, at a minimum of $45 per night USD, none of them were bargains. At least the floors didn’t move, indicating some degree of success, as well as chemical insecticides, adhered to the creepy-crawly control program.
I suppose, credit card in hand, I could have opted for the nearby Decameron. Part of a Columbian-owned chain of resorts, it has 600 rooms, all with either two full-sized beds or a single king-sized one, 8 restaurants or cafes, 8 bars, 9 pools and the use of non-motorized water sports equipment such as ocean kayaks, small sailboats and snorkeling gear. Scuba diving and sailing lessons are also included in the price, as is “unlimited consumption” of food and domestic alcohol.
But, hey, I’m told the Veranares restaurant closes at 8:30 pm and doesn’t reopen for another 11 hours. I’m also promised that the lights are out by 10 pm, or as soon as everyone leaves. And they shut down the music (such as it is – sacrilegious as it sounds Bob Marley can get overplayed in these parts) the moment they shut down the service. (While this last claim turns out to be somewhat of an exaggeration, silence does generally reign by 10 pm.)
So it comes to pass, come Saturday, I’m delighted I decided to keep my credit card where it belonged, namely locked up in what passes for the Veranares’ safe. Which, I discovered after the fact of trustingly depositing it there, is an unlocked filing cabinet drawer in its often-unoccupied, never-locked-during-the-day office.
(I know this for an after-the-fact because its Argentine manager allowed me to use his office computer privately. I was hardly the only guest who had that privilege, albeit primarily for email purposes. When I needed my passport number in order to cement a reservation for my next hotel room in San Jose, I just clicked open the third drawer down and pulled it out.)
Then came Sunday. In proverbial 20/20 hindsight, I should have, um, seen it coming. And by that I’m not implying ignorance as to names for the days of the week.
Although Spanish has always been #1, Veranares attracts quite the polyglot clientele. English vies with French for 2nd position, whereas a wide variety of mostly Northern European tongues compete for out-of-the-medals placement in terms of languages spoken by its guests. Which of course suggests that, regardless of why it didn’t make Moon’s, it must be listed in other guidebooks.
It’s been hot and sunny since I got here but as the retrospectively dreadful day approaches, evident weekenders begin to supplant obvious vacationers like me. Day-by-day Panamanian Spanish – which sounds, to my sad excuses for ears, more clipped and hurried than Mexican or even Tico (Costa Rican) Spanish does – becoming more and more dominant is only one sign, however. Playa Blanca suffers from a serious case of what might be termed 'bi-tropical disorder'.
On Friday afternoon a crew of locals set up a tent down the beach. Moments later two of them rope a couple of fancy yellow jet skis, or sea-dos (skidoos on water ski pontoons), to offshore buoys. Much more ominously, they use All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs, called ‘quads’ in Panama) to tow the horribly noisy devices waterside.
Throughout Saturday the campsite to the east of Veranares fills up, with boom-boxes that blast invariably clashing ‘gangster’ rap seemingly more common than tents. The until-then-empty ‘fonda’ (meaning, literally I’m told, ‘hole-in-the-wall’) next door opens. Horses trot out of the jungle, they with their whip-toting drovers in search of paying riders. And, yes, those aforementioned quads, which are far noisier per unit than any everyday average jet ski, are also for rent by the minute, let alone by the hour.
The nevertheless mostly still deserted playa to our east, in front of beach side mansions no doubt belonging to exceedingly well off Panamanians and/or ex-pat North or South Americans, thereupon almost instantly becomes a mini Indy racetrack. Helmets, seatbelts, even mufflers on the decided deathtraps – forget it! Forget walking very far eastwards as well. Quads are notoriously tipsy, but my sense is their drivers are, for the most part, way beyond the point of being merely tipsy.
Fortunately there seems to be an undrawn line in the sand that the area in front of the Veranares is out-of-bounds. Fortunately also that means the beach lying to its west remains eminently, not to mention safely, accessible for strolling. So long as you’re wearing sandals, it should go without saying – the sand above the eventual high tide waterline is scorching hot.
(Note: In this part of Panama the Pacific Ocean is actually to the south. No doubt to the disappointment of the geographically challenged amongst us, that results in an absolute dearth of fabulously photo-worthy sunsets featuring our patch of playa. I took a couple anyhow, hence the attestation.)
Sunday announces its arrival at 4 a.m. with the clangour of boom boxes blasting forth their bass-heavy inanities (insanities, more like). The parking lot’s packed by breakfast. By 10 a.m., probably earlier, ‘collectivos’ from Panama City and no doubt elsewhere are pulling up in their near-dozens. (As in Mexico and elsewhere, collectivos are crammed-full, passenger vans.)
After a hard week at work, or else in school, many of those getting off here have already gotten off, so to speak. (Meaning, they've decidedly been in beach party mode for awhile now.) Additionally, most of the vehicles I witness arriving are almost as tightly packed with kids of the childish, non-goatish, persuasion.
(This in itself can hardly be considered out of the ordinary of course. To this day the only public transport I can recollect riding in that allowed kids in it – kids of the goatish persuasion, I should iterate – was a train heading to northern Italy, and thence into eastern France, from the vicinity of Naples, and that was in the Fall of 1971.)
It isn’t just brain-numbing boxes booming now. So is business. Veranares has tripled or quadrupled its visible staff. Not only that, it’s charging admission – though presumably not for access to the beach itself, which is illegal in Panama. The cost is $2.00 USD per adult, the same for children over a certain age, and $5.00 per Styrofoam cooler, no matter how small it is or whatever they're filled with besides comestibles.
Nonetheless, every seat in the restaurant is either taken or reserved hours before lunchtime. The palapa huts, of which Veranares has six while the fonda next door has at least eight, are overflowing. The ocean is too, albeit with bobbing heads. Since brief bikinis and equally skimpy speedo-style bathing suits are as popular as shirts and shorts, there’ll undoubtedly be more than a few burnt shoulders, backs and butts come the drive home later on today.
Never-before-seen police, some carrying automatic rifles and all with truncheons as well as holstered handguns, are there in number, not to mention an impressive variety of uniforms. Many dress in camouflage greens, exactly as what one might expect members of the military to wear – except Panama supposedly emulated Costa Rica and abolished its army in the aftermath of the Noriega fiasco and Bush Senior’s Operation Just Cause at the very beginning of 1990.
Lifeguards, also hitherto unseen, have set up their own tents and first aid cots, which don’t lack for occupants. Those who aren't administering salves, or cold compresses, and applying bandages are out patrolling the shoreline in both motorized zodiacs and ATV quads. I am, however, moderately pleased to report that their quads, like those of the police, have mufflers. They also keep to an appreciably low speed.
Those revving the rental units, though, they continue to exhibit an unconscionable recklessness (if presumably not an enforceable lawlessness) that wouldn’t be tolerated in most of the rest of the known cosmos. That holds true for sea-doers, some towing banana floats, and the fisher folks in their bullet-boats.
Both groups are plying the waters trolling for paying passengers – and do so, to a man, woman or teenage one of them, much too fast for any sensible person’s at easiness. In defiance of police and lifeguards, in their own, just as potentially dangerous watercrafts, they buzz along with apparent impunity barely beyond the bobbing multitude.
As bad, when someone beckons them in for purposes of getting on or getting off, they veer shoreward straight through said bobbing multitude, audaciously bellowing at swimmers or waders like me to get out their way. All the while, as should be manifest already, the trash keeps accumulating.
 It’s not just trash either. Horses no more clean up after each other than their paying riders or their being-paid drovers do. ATVs, muffled or otherwise, belch fumes. Ditto outboard motors and jet skis. As if by mutual consent, no one seems to be paying attention to anyone else – not to his or her friends, not to their presumed relatives and especially, guiltily gratifyingly to me, not to those in positions of nominal authority.
Tempers audibly flare. Fists don’t so much fly as threaten to do so. Frigging pterodactyls (technically known as frigate birds, thus frigs for short) still soar – I’ve never yet seen one come to ground – but the buzzards are mostly in the trees, evidently using them as grandstands and quite enjoying the spectacle. If they had lips instead of beaks they’d be licking them in anticipation of the feast awaiting them come sundown. As for the pelicans, they’re nowhere to be seen anymore. Before too long the frigs aren't either.
 The Panamanian beach equivalent of the World Wrestling Federation finals soon gets underway. Although the fighters are presumably amateurs, it's replete with chest-thumping challenges, angry-sounding shrieking, vicious-looking smackdowns, full body slams (with more than a few unrestrained elbows to said chests), and the consequential, if hopefully inadvertent, muscles strained and thimbles of blood shed.
I decide I’m much too intolerant an outsider for participating in any more suchlike voyeurism, not conscience-cleanly at any rate. I load my day pack with towel, book and notepad, buy more bottled water, have the office matron call for a cab and, making like the already-remarked-upon absent pelicans and frigate birds, head over to that other Playa Blanca, the one 3 km by road to the west.
Six hundred rooms probably means more than a thousand people might be staying at the Royal Decameron. A large percentage of them seem to be on the beach as well. But virtually everyone there’s lying on beach cots or sitting in deck chairs beneath umbrellas, quietly chatting or reading books. Somehow everything looks so orderly.
Too orderly for me, as it happens, and, I further reckon, especially for me without an obligatory wristband to occlude tanning rays. I don’t wait around to be reminded of this deficiency. Down the beach to the east, towards the wooded point on the other side of which the Sunday near-mindless madness carries on unabated, hey, it’s virtually deserted. Save for a few pelicans, that is.
I don’t return to the Veranares version of Playa Blanca until nearly 5 pm. Thankfully things are well on their way to winding down already. Even better, no body bags are visible. Come 7 pm, full moon semi-darkness and dinnertime, matters are mostly as they had been at this time since my arrival last Thursday.
In truth, about the only difference between then and now is that the beach could use a major league sand-threshing instead of just a thorough power raking; always assuming there is such a thing as an automated sand-thresher, I should add. Then again, if there is, I’m sure the Royal Decameron has more than a few of them. Perhaps it could lend Veranares one of theirs.
To be fair, as well as to conclude, maybe it does and maybe it did. Because, by the time I come down for breakfast on Tuesday morning, my last day on Playa Blanca, Santa Clara, Panama, it did look as if a howsoever-equipped, yet relatively competent clean-up crew had been over the beach either the night before or early that morning.
When a cab came to collect me that afternoon for a return journey to Panama City, via the Decameron shuttle, I was once again slapping my head in bemusement. Forget the weekly horror show. Why would I ever want to leave here?
Sure, Sunday's hellacious but midweek's bliss.
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