The unglamorous side of travel writing
I was eating lunch on a linen-topped table under a palm tree on one of the white sandy beaches in the San Blas archipelago with a mother and daughter from New York. “How did you find out about the Coral Lodge?” asked the daughter in her early twenties readjusting her black Chanel wrap-arounds. “I’m a travel writer on assignment to review the hotel,” I explained. Smacking her lips and sighing she said: “Oh, *that* sounds like a grim job.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Most people immediately fancy the idea of travel writing. After all, it’s like being on vacation all of the time, isn’t it? Well, yes and no. I was in transit to yet another tiny little island because the tide was too low around the lodge to leave early enough in the morning to catch the only flight, a 6:30 a.m. flight, back to Panama City. Most people who visit the lodge travel to Colon province in the early afternoon, after the tide rises, and then drive about three hours back to the city — if you don’t have a helicopter. However, because I was flying directly to Piñas Bay in the Darien, I didn’t have time to spend the day driving. It’s hard to tell how remote the Coral Lodge is on this map, but it’s somewhere between Portobelo and El Porvenir. Piñas Bay is indicated:
So, I had to spend the night in more “rustic” accommodations on an island close to the Cartí airport, near El Porvenir. This is where a travel writer really needs to have a bit a lot of flexibility.
When I was led to the bathroom and I saw the plastic container on top of the trash can, I knew immediately what to do. Traveling around Indonesia in the early 90s, just about every bathroom I visited during those two months was similar in design. Unphased, I did the old scoop and soap routine.
The room was quite clean and I had a bird’s-eye view to the happenings around town.
My room looked over the bustling main street. At night, it wasn’t much different from a small town in the United States where young people come out to walk up and down, and up and down the main drag. After an hour of people watching, I knew who had a crush on who, and who was allowed to stay out late, etc.
So, it’s not ALL five-star resorts and bubbly, thank goodness!
