The Lost and Found

Chiriqui, Panama

The Lost and Found is a unique hostel built on the side of a mountain in the cloud forests of Chiriqui, Panama. It was opened illegally before being accepted by the local government and is the only hostel in the area.

The hostel is owned by Freemasons and known for its quirky masonic attractions.

There is for example a labyrinth made out of hedges. The trail is marked by placards inscribed with masonic symbology that means nothing to me.

More well known are the treasure hunts. One carries you around the hostel premises. The other is an all day trek up the mountain and down a river. You find clues wedged between tree limbs and underneath rocks.

In the treasure hunts you're attempting to locate characters from a novel written by one of the owners. The novel is called The Lost and Found and is about the hostel and creepy masonic stuff. They sell the book at the hostel and there are large posters advertising it next to the toilets.

I read The Lost and Found and it made me think. As a novel it's not exactly a masterpiece. It's structured in the form of blogs, emails, and essays by the various characters. Some of the pieces are very good on their own - particularly an essay about toting an ex-girlfriend's jacket around the world and hanging onto the past.

The novel forced me to reflect on my role as a white American traveling in Latin America. One of the characters comments that anyone with blue eyes in Panama will have women falling at his feet who would never give him the time of day in the states.

It's obviously an exaggeration, but there is some truth to that.

Part of it is that a blue-eyed white guy is exotic and different. When I say "I'll be the white guy with the beard" before a first date it's not necessarily a joke like it is when I say it in Minneapolis.

But another part of it is a racist ideology that exists throughout Latin America where white = beautiful. It's an idea created through history (Spaniard > native) and reinforced through popular culture.

So what's a blue-eyed white guy supposed to do? Tell women who are attracted to me that they're racist and should be more attracted to guys with darker skin? I have tried that to some extent and I think my impact has been minimal.

For the most part though I've just taken the free points without complaint.

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The bar at the Lost and Found is quaint and cozy. There's a Foosball table, a loft with library, Christmas lights, $1 beers and $2 shots.

One night I was hanging out at the bar with a bunch of young hotties. I had just won a low-stakes poker tournament against against some Czechs. Then we had played lifesize Jenga where every block had some (usually sexual) directive attached to it a la "remove one article of clothing" or "play-act giving birth." Now it was just a dozen or so hotties dancing in a tiny room.

I really liked all the other guests and wanted to keep hanging out, but I don't dance ever. So instead I got ludicrously drunk. At one point I had the DJ play Tom Waits, but mercifully the WiFi pooped out and the dance party survived.

Late in the night a woman my age with a private room at the hostel bluntly invited me back to her room. I gave it maybe a second or two of thought and then we were outside making out against a tree in the nippy mountain breeze.

Not to paint too detailed a picture, but I'll just say that we had quite a lot of sex.

The next day she treated it like nothing had happened, and I took off up the mountain to track down some fictional international criminals.

It was just sex. Physical attraction is a far cry from love. I can't imagine two people ever lived happily ever after because they found partners with just the right hue of iris. But have my blue eyes gotten me laid? Yeah probably.