Travelogue V: Bloody Hippies

Pants

Travel Writing

Travel writing has a long tradition and its most commercial manifestation is the now ubiquitous guidebook. Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, we have used both of these on our little family adventures and found them useful. Bradt Guides are new to us and we bought the Panama guide because of good reviews on Amazon. These reviews are wrong. Sarah Woods’ views on Panama are a masterpiece of partial and inverted snobbery. Partiality is quite acceptable (you have read this blog haven’t you?) but when it is lame-brained and badly written it does not deserve a commercial outing. Did any one proof-read this book? There is an opportunistic and wholly unilluminating foreword by Irving Saladino, Panama’s first ever Olympic champion, described as a high jumper, which he is not. Ignorance on the topic might just be excusable but when the text is accompanied by a photograph of Saladino manifestly long jumping it betrays a lack of attention. Even worse is the brief (and again worthless) biography of the athlete on page 291. This is a  piece of journo-trash obviously badly translated from Spanish which nobody has bothered to check over. If you run a writing class and want an example of lazy, cut and paste journalism read Appendix 2 to this guide.

But what really got my goat was the unremediated condemnation of the Red Frog Beach Resort at which we stayed in Panama. In truth the resort is sloppily administered and open to criticism but Woods’ damnation of it is a piece of bien-pensant western romanticism which stems from an attitude of mind that denies countries like Panama the right to grow up and make their own mistakes, if mistakes they be. Yes there has been a lot of construction and it involves brick rather than the more prevalent wood and corrugated iron (a product which Woods might like to observe is hardly a natural resource) but if you actually take time to observe the architecture of the villas (admittedly difficult if one is looking down one’s nose as Woods does) you might note that they mimic the shape of the traditional waterfront properties and are tastefully screened from view. This is Woods’ vitriolic conclusion on a place one doubts she visited with her eyes open,

How this sorry excuse for legalized devastation passed through Panama’s planning checks one can only hazard a guess. The completion of this multi-million dollar real estate eyesore has been fraught by financial hiccups and delays but not before it is altering one of Panama’s most beautiful sandy stretches for ever – a crying shame.

So that you, dear reader, can have the full story I counted the man-made intrusions on the resort beach. There are twelve palm fringed umbrellas, a rudimentary bamboo volleyball net and a sign warning bathers of the rip tides. No doubt it was a purer place when unwary visitors were drowning in those tides.

As I hinted, the administration of the resort is pretty ham-fisted (the polar opposite of intrusive, it is completely invisible, inaudible, inaccessible) but the place itself is beautiful and the properties top grade and tasteful. We are not, Ms Woods, all of us backpackers kidding ourselves that what we experience is authentic, in fact, dare I whisper it, the locals might just be glad of the presence of some of us who are not parsimonious with the tips and have a bit of cash to spend. I liked Red Frog Beach Resort and I’m not ashamed to say so.