The first week of our journey abroad was spent in Panama City, Panama, a sprawling city much like Miami. Glittering high rises and construction cranes can be seen from every street we passed from our Uber into the heart of the city. We stayed for one week in a trendy neighborhood off Via Argentina with an eclectic couple we found on AirBnB. I will be honest and brief about my stay in Panama City. Our time passed without much fanfare and was a tad unmemorable. Aside from our visit to the Panama Canal and going out to Casco Viejo (the historic and former capital of Panama), the city itself felt too similar to a city in the United States.

A timelapse of a carrier ship pulling into the Panama Canal.

Interestingly enough, Pat and I arrived in the country while it was in full swing of its presidential elections. Election buzz followed us everywhere in Panama. Signs, billboards, and smear campaigns were ubiquitous on every street corner or plastered on balconies alongside air-dried clothes. Even when we left Panama City and entered Bocas del Toro (Bocas), a cluster of islands off the Caribbean side of Panama, the election was present, if only scaled back to a local level. Left behind were the giant billboards and politician-led parties in parks. On Colón Island, political campaigns consisted of handing out t-shirts with political leaders’ name emblazoned on the front with a reminder of voting dates on the back, megaphones announcing support for a candidate blaring from trucks, and the occasional parade down the main street for an opposing candidate.

We arrived to Bocas via a ten-hour bus ride from Panama City followed by another 30-minute boat ride until we reached the shores of Isla Colón. We passed two pleasant weeks with slow jogs on the golden sands of Playa Bluff, giddy swims in the warm waters of the Gulf, and lazy strolls through streets of Colón Island. We soon realized restaurants were more expensive than advertised on this beautiful island, but the ingredients at supermarkets were fairly cheap. Keeping to our budget of $40 a day for housing, bike rentals, food, we started cooking more meals in our small outdoor kitchen, which we shared with other guests passing through the hostel. Water was not safe to drink on the island, so our budget now included buying large jugs of water too. Gone were the days when I could simply fill a glass of water from the faucet or be instantly cooled by the air conditioning of a chilly room.

Perhaps one of the greatest joys of traveling is to gain a deeper appreciation for one’s home country. By no means is the U.S. perfect, but each discomfort is a reminder of how nice life is back home. However, I still do relish the challenges for they not only are lessons in adaptability, they can also strengthen one’s self-efficacy and can also bring people together.

One night during our second week in Bocas (third week in Panama), Pat and I noticed some odd electrical buzzing while we walked around the town center. Thinking little of it, we enjoyed our Nutella crepe freshly made at a street stand and returned to our hostel. As we sat chatting with a few guests from the hostel, we heard a loud bang and then pop; the power went out. The streetlight right outside our hostel had burned with a great flash and then snuffed out leaving us in total darkness. The hostel owner rushed down with candles and lit them at our tables. Before we could thank him, he had already rushed past us to inspect the street and talk with neighbors. He returned with news that the entire island lost power, not just our neighborhood. I was grateful Pat and I did not linger in the city. We would have had to bike home in complete darkness.

Other guests from the hostel started to stream out of their rooms and join us in the main dining area. Although tired, a musician couple from Costa Rica began performing classic Spanish songs in the dark silence. We all settled into a cozy evening surrounded by strangers joined in unlikely circumstances, city workers arrived in white utility trucks to fix the power outage. We talked about our travels and where everyone was headed to after Bocas; we giggled at nursery rhymes from our home countries; and sometimes we sat in comfortable silence save for the strings of the guitar. Three hours and several cans of Balboas later, the power returned snapping us out of the balmy magic of the night. It is a memory like this that I will return to in old age, chewing on the hazy details as they grow sweeter with time.