Adrift on Captain Morgan`s Waters


Saturday morning, we hired a lancha (boat) to take us from Cocle del Norte -- where the river of the same name meets the Caribbean and the Johnny Walker flows like Venezuelan crude -- eastward along the coastline toward the city of Colon. Stuck in a small town with no hotel, no restaurant, no road, and seemingly only one boat for rent, we had very little bargaining power...as you might imagine. When it was all said and done, we had paid $115 to travel two hours by boat. However, the stretch of coastline that we saw as we skipped over turquoise breakers appeared nearly unsettled -- a long line of emerald-green turtle shells covered in coconut palms. Beautiful. Every few miles, we would pass a single house situated atop a cliff overlooking the ocean and I would wonder why more people weren`t living here. Oh yeah, no roads and $4 per gallon gasoline.