The Accidental Tourists

Do we look like the accidental tourists. Aroldo my companion has been staying with me and teaching me Spanish, and I him English. He thinks that my Spanish is improving fast. I am learning a bit I can tell and my comprehension is also improving. That wasn't hard to do as my comprehension before he came was close to zero. I could say something but had not much hope of understanding the answer.

My friends Norma and Turk have a house at the beach (the good swimming beach). We decided to go and check out their house as it has been some time since we have seen it. We brought the equipment to do some boogie boarding. I quickly learned something which is; don't drag all of your stuff down to the beach, but rather go back to the car for it when you need it, because we dragged everything down and then had so much fun in the water that we never came out until it was time to come home. Therefore we had to drag it all back to the house again. So here we were with the towels, mats, beach umbrellas, boogie boards plus my bag with the camera.

Sure does beat -25C all you Calgarians.

Anyhow, it turned out to be an expensive trip as on the way to the beach as I was zipping along the highway, some cop was sitting out in front of a group of about 5 houses with a radar gun. The speed limit was 100 and I was doing exactly 100 and he pulls me over. He asks for ID so I give him my Panamanian ID and he asks for my drivers license. I give him that. Then he wants to know when I got here and I tell him. He tells me that I need to carry my passport with me to prove when I entered the country, as my drivers license is only good for 90 days. Then he proceed to write me up a $50 ticket for going 100 in a 60 zone. I plead my case that there were no highway signs indicating that I was to slow down. He tells me that if there are houses you need to slow down. I tell him that I didn't know that and he should just give me a warning so that next time I would know. He then says 'this is Panama, get used to it'. I was so mad, what a jerk...I could used better words to describe him, but I don't want to offend anybody. Anyhow I must go pay my ticket as they won't let me out of the country with an outstanding debt to the state. HELP, let me out of here! I should be thankful that he didn't put me in the slammer because he put another couple who were travelling without their passports in some stinky hot little cell for half a day because they didn't have their proper documents. The guy is a real jerk. Oh well, that's Panama get used to it'.