Overlanding a 1965 Buick Electra 225 - Atlanta to Panama in 1974

[JackW]

This is a report I wrote of a trip we took 49 years ago - looking back it was a lot of fun and a big adventure.



I was lucky enough to have some pretty adventurous parents who liked to travel (and drag their kids along) to some pretty neat places. They met in 1945 when my dad was going to Georgia Tech and my mom was an Atlanta native attending Agnes Scott. Dad was born in New Jersey but had lived in Sydney, Australia and grew up in the Panama Canal Zone. He graduated from Balboa High School in 1944 and joined the US Navy with the ambition to become a fighter pilot – specifically the F4-U Corsair. Luckily for me the war ended before he finished training or this story may have never happened. After finishing his masters in electrical engineering he went to work for RCA, did a year at Studebaker and then came to Lockheed Georgia in 1955 to establish their NC machine shop. My two sisters and I grew up in Atlanta and we had many occasions to travel all over the US in the family Ford Country Squire station wagons.

In 1974 Dad had a much more ambitious plan for us – his thirty year high school reunion was coming up and he wanted us to drive to Panama so we could see the Canal and where he spent 12 years of his life.

Back in 1974 the Pan-American Highway was more of a concept than an actual road in many of the countries south of the US Border. Dad’s plan was to buy a car big enough for us to drive through Central America but cheap enough to walk away from and fly home at the end of the trip (it was always planned to be a one-way drive). His choice for our adventure was a pretty unlikely steed – a big black 1965 Buick 225 Electra four door sedan with lots of chrome. The deuce and a quarter as they were called cost a princely $600 – our departure date was the second week of January.

The plan was for my dad and I to drive the first 1800 miles to Mexico City where we would pick up mom and my little sister as they flew in from Atlanta. From there the rest of the trip would cover another 2600 miles through southern Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. We only had four days from our departure from Atlanta to get to Mexico City to meet the girls so we decided to recruit another driver to help and convinced Ken, the son of some family friends to join us.

Our trip preparations consisted of building a big wooden box to mount on some gutter mount roof racks to hold an extra spare tire and three 5 gallon cans – two for gasoline and one for water. We packed a rudimentary tool kit with some wrenches and screwdrivers, a box of some food, our clothes and considered ourselves ready to go. Notice the complete lack of any of the “required” expedition gear we are so fond of now.

We left Atlanta on Tuesday morning – with the requirement that we be at Mexico City airport by 10:00 AM Saturday to pick up Mom and Lisa. In 1974, I-85 ended at Newnan and didn’t resume until you got almost to Montgomery, Alabama. Nobody said it was going to be easy. Everything went pretty smoothly for the first couple of hundred miles…..

Somewhere in southern Mississippi the top radiator hose exploded; a small portent of what would become a recurring theme throughout the rest of the trip. As we waited on the side of the highway for the mighty Buick to cool off enough to remove the radiator cap I took the water can to the nearest house to fill it up. It was an old sharecropper’s cabin with a hand pump in the front yard. The old black man on the front porch graciously said to help myself and I filled up the can and lugged it back to the steaming Buick. We wrapped a rag and some duct tape around the hose to patch it up enough to get us to the next town where we got a new hose but the 225 never really ran right from then on. This little problem threw a bit of a wrench into our schedule and disrupted our plans to take a leisurely drive through southern Texas on our way to the border.

As we crossed through Texas via Houston and San Antonio with a quick stop to visit the Alamo on day two it was obvious that the Buick was not happy. We made it to Laredo that evening and some under hood exploration revealed that the water pump was way past its prime. The first thing to do the next morning was to find an auto parts store and buy a new water pump which I changed right there in the parking lot. By 9:00 AM we were ready to cross the border into Mexico and the adventure officially began.

 

[JackW]

The first day in Mexico went pretty well – we drove down to Monterrey and then turned west toward Saltillo and passed through a nice mountain range on our way to the central plain. We stopped and poked around an old town where I picked up a hand carved wooden pin from an old post and beam structure that had fallen in. We bought a big bag of some wonderful oranges and stopped at a pananderia and filled two grocery bags with selection of great bread for under a dollar. From Saltillo we took Mex 57 south towards San Luis Potosi. We were getting acclimated to Mexican roads and driving conditions. The topes or “sleeping policeman” are large speed bumps at the edges of the town and you really don’t want to hit them at speed.

I buzzed through one small town at a speed above what the local cop who was leaned back in his chair outside the police station thought was proper and he blew his whistle at me as I passed. I slowed down but he continued to blow his whistle and dad said I had better stop and go back. I didn’t want to seem to be running so I backed up to where the cop was standing in the middle of the road and said I’m sorry. He berated me in rapid Spanish which I didn’t understand and asked for my licensio (and dad who spoke some Spanish sat there and played dumb as well) and after seeing that I was too dumb a yanqui to understand him he just waved his hands downward saying despachio, despachio (slowly, slowly) and handed me my license back.

The buses in Mexico were a great treat to see as they were all highly decorated and painted – I remember following one for a while that had a painting of Mighty Mouse on the back with big letters SUPER-RATON on the back. Buses and trucks pass anywhere and anytime they want to and the number of dead horses and burros on the side of the road was astonishing. We broke one of the cardinal rules of driving in Mexico that day – never drive after dark. There are too many hazards on the roads after dark and very few trucks dimmed their high beams making it even harder to see. Upcoming road hazards are marked with a small branch or rock placed in the middle of the lane (usually just before a blind turn) so if you see one of those slow down before you become a part of whatever problem that lies around the bend.

We made it Mexico City airport about an hour before the girls got there – enough time for me to spot an orange Porsche 356 Speedster with the optional hardtop in the airport parking lot – not at all what I expected to see there. There were a lot of cool little Renault Alpine coupes running around Mexico City as well but the main car we saw was VW Beetles. Every light change was a signal for the VW Grand Prix de Mexico to start again. Three painted lanes on the road became five abreast plus two parking lanes. It was like a horde of brightly colored Easter eggs clattering down the street jockeying for position before the next light 100 yards away turned red. A big black Buick was totally out of place in this mob so once we got to the hotel we parked the car until we were ready to leave Mexico City a few days later. We spent a couple of days based in a hotel near Chapultepec Park exploring Mexico City by taxi and the subway. One of the downtown subway stations was built around an Aztec ruin that was uncovered during the excavation – very cool.

One taxi ride was memorable when my mom shouted Ole’ when the driver aggressively cut off a Vespa rider and a couple of other cars – hint - don’t do that – it really encourages them. A few terrifying minutes later we arrived at our hotel and walked into the park to explore and get our hearts back down from our throats. There we found the training ground for future cab drivers. There was a road course with traffic lights, cross walks and street signs and a whole bunch of kids on tricycles. They would line up at the red light and then when it changed to green a flurry of pedaling and jockeying for position would commence. It was almost total chaos – very reminiscent of our recent cab ride.

One night we went up to the top of the Torre Latinoamericana. Mexico City is built on the floor of a volcanic crater and the walls are almost 2,000 feet higher than the center of the city. From the observation deck of the tower 590 feet above the ground you can see the lights of the city wrap up the sides of the crater walls above you. It’s like being in a big cereal bowl with over 5,000,000 other people.

 

[JackW]

After a couple of days exploring Mexico City and burning out my taste buds on a chicken mole’ we headed out for the silver mining center of Taxco. Taxco is a quaint little city that has been the center of the silver jewelry industry in Mexico for hundreds of years. We wandered around shopping. In one I saw a familiar looking extraordinarily beautiful woman walk in and be greeted effusively by the shop owner who escorted her into the back for a private showing. I asked the clerk if that was who I thought it looked like and he said – “Oh yes, Elizabeth Taylor stops in whenever she is in town.”

From Taxco we drove to the resort town of Cuernavaca where we had what is probably the best meal I have ever eaten in my life. Las Mananitas has been feeding travelers since 1955 and its gardens are world renowned. The service was impeccable without being intrusive and the two pork chops were each about two inches thick and perfectly cooked. Everything about the evening was perfect as we ate on the patio overlooking the gardens and watching the peacocks. This is a five star resort and it earns every one of those stars – just an amazing place about two hours south of Mexico City.

Our next destination was Oaxaca and the ruins at Monte Alban. We arrived late in the day and had the ruins almost to ourselves. We spent a couple of hours walking to the top of each pyramid and just soaking in the beauty of this place. Oaxaca was a very neat colorful city – I’d love to go back there for the Dia de la Muerte (Day of the Dead) celebration on November first of each year.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give an update on the condition of our overland vehicle. It had done pretty well but the high compression Buick V-8 didn’t much care for altitude (over 7,000 feet at times) or Pemex regular (high test was frequently unavailable). We’d try to set the ignition timing by ear but we continued to have overheating issues exacerbated by the 85 octane (maybe) gas we had to pour in the tank. With five people in the car and a big box on the roof gas mileage was pretty awful – especially when it was knocking and sputtering but so far the roads had been paved and the rest of the car was doing ok – that would soon change.

South of Oaxaca on the way to the border with Guatemala we saw some kids standing on the side of the road holding up some two foot long iguanas for sale. We stopped at a roadside café for lunch – a big open sided metal roofed structure that had hundreds of little green chameleons running around chasing flies. During our lunch we had more than one lose his grip on the ceiling above us and plop down in the middle of the table. They would pause, take a quick look around and scurry off the edge of the table causing my mom and sister to jump. I had a local dish - arroz con iguana (it was supposed to be chicken) which enlightened us to the reason the kids were displaying live iguanas to passing cars. It was actually pretty good.

We followed Mexico 190 and 200 along the western edge of the mountains down to Tapachula. From there we headed toward Quetzaltenago in Guatemala. Our second border crossing of the trip went pretty smoothly – except for Ken (our last minute addition to the trip) we all had visas for the countries we would pass through in our passports. With only minor “considerations” we passed through smoothly after getting a visa on the spot for Ken. We found that as we got farther south in Central America and the countries got poorer it cost us a little more to cross each border. The sole exception was Costa Rica which was a delightful change – no extra fees or additional issues other than getting the car stamped into dad’s passport. This is a normal procedure as there is generally a significant import duty that is due on a car that is being permanently imported into a country. For travelers passing through it’s not a problem as they cancel the stamp at the border when you leave the country.

 

[JackW]

In Guatemala we followed Hwy 1 up to just south of San Cristobal Totonicapan where we first joined the Pan American Highway CA1 which winds through mountain ranges and passes a few active volcanos. Between Chaquiya and Los Encuentros Hwy 1 turns off to the south and heads toward Lake Atitlan, a spectacular basin that is volcanic in origin, filling an enormous caldera formed by an eruption 84,000 years ago. It is shaped by deep surrounding escarpments and three volcanoes on its southern flank. The culture of the towns and villages surrounding Lake Atitlán is influenced by the Maya people. It has been described as one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. What the guide books don’t tell you is how steep the road going down into the crater really is.

Dad just had to take us down to see Lake Atitlan saying it would be one of the highlights of the trip. It was certainly memorable but for more than the reasons we envisioned. As we passed through the town of Solola we saw that the local residents were having a festival of sorts. The descendants of the Maya were all dressed in colorful tribal dress and many of the men had obviously had a little too much to drink. One older man was being led up the hill by his wife who had a firm grip on his ear as she scolded him on their way home. I was driving this stretch so dad could shoot some photographs and we started down the hill to Panajachel. The old Buick wasn’t running too well in the altitude and the drum brakes on this heavy car were experiencing a load the designers never imagined – fully loaded with a trunk full of stuff plus the roof rack on a rough, steep, twisting, narrow mountain road in Guatemala. I kept telling dad that this wasn’t a great idea but he kept saying “it will be OK – just keep going”. I could feel the brakes fading and dropped the car into low gear and the engine note got even rougher. Just a few hundred yards after we passed through the town at the bottom of the hill the road makes a hard right to a narrow bridge over the Rio Panachel. When I started to brake for the turn the pedal went right to the floor and I had to steer the Buick into someone’s driveway to the left of the bridge to avoid going into the river. I got the car stopped and threw it into park, shut it off and had a little bit of a hissy fit yelling at dad how he was going to get us all killed and stuff like that. After a while everybody and the Buick cooled off and we were able to get on our way with a very awkward silence until we got to Guatemala City. I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy Lake Atitlan as much as I should have and feel a little guilty that I probably ruined it for everybody in the car too.

From Atitlan we drove into Guatemala City. Compared to the beauty of the countryside I wouldn’t recommend it. As crowded as Mexico City seemed, GC gave the impression it was just as overcrowded even fifty years ago – I can’t imagine what it’s like now.

Our next destination was the border with El Salvador. At the border the customs official looked at our roof rack with three 5 gallon cans in the box and asked what they were. Dad pointed to the nearest one and said “gasoline”. The official said it’s not allowed to bring cans of gas across the border since the country wants you to pay the fuel taxes locally. Dad asked if it was OK if the fuel was in the car and he said yes so we got the can down and poured the contents in the gas tank. Unfortunately we had another full can of gas and no room in the car’s tank. The official asked what was in the other two cans and we said “Agua” as dad slipped him a twenty. The official nodded and let us pass into El Salvador without further questions. As it happens we almost never needed the extra cans of gas we carried as we were able to find gas stations along our route pretty regularly – one spare can would have been plenty.

Although southern Mexico had seemed very poor with people living in houses made of sticks with their farm animals, El Salvador was much worse. It was very eye opening to see the level of poverty in this country. Only five years earlier Honduras and El Salvador had engaged in a 100 hour war that coincided with the world cup soccer qualifier. It has been called the Soccer War but the cause was an immigration issue where Salvadorans had been moving into Honduras which had about 40% less population in a much larger land area. Thousands of Salvadorans were expelled from Honduras after a land reform bill was passed which redistributed land settled by Salvadorans to native born Hondurans.

The two border stations used to be within a couple of hundred yards of each other on the slope down to the Rio Goascoran that separates the two countries. After the 1969 war the countries moved their border posts back on the back side of the hill facing away from the river. The bullet pocked ruins of the old border stations still stood as testament to the 100 Hour War. At the border with Honduras we ran into a problem. Ken. Our last minute addition to the trip had not been able to secure a visa for Honduras and although we had been able to arrange his visas at the other borders as we crossed them Honduras wasn’t going to let him in. Since Ken didn’t have a visa we had to come up with a plan.

 

[JackW]

Cotton fields in Nicaraugua


The border agent told us he could get a visa at the airport in San Salvador if he was flying into Honduras. This meant we had to backtrack about 40 miles to the capital of El Salvador and get him a flight into Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. Then we had to turn around – go back to the border and take a detour up to Tegucigalpa to pick him up that evening. We ate some hamburgers in the San Salvador International Airport while we made the arrangements to get Ken to Tegucigalpa After dumping Ken off and wondering if we would ever see him again we retraced our steps to the Honduran border and after a relatively smooth crossing we took the CA5 up to Tegucigalpa and were pleased to find Ken waiting for us with a visa proudly stamped in his passport. That evening was sort of a blur as we soon came to regret that hamburger in the airport – the only time we got sick the whole trip.

The next morning we headed back towards the coast and took a left to head for Nicaragua. The border crossing was pretty uneventful except the size of the bribe increased to smooth the way for the Buick to enter its 6th country of the trip. Shortly after we crossed into Nicaragua we stopped at a store to restock our supply of drinks and a white 109” Land Rover station wagon with red crosses on the doors pulled up. The doors swung open and at least 20 people got out of that thing – it looked like one of those circus acts involving clowns and a tiny car.

As we drove down Hwy 24 towards Hwy 12 to Managua we could see the volcano San Cristobal off to our left. It trailed a plume of smoke and provided a spectacular welcome to Nicaragua. The cotton fields in the valleys surrounding the volcano were spectacular – the plants were over seven feet tall and had boles bigger than a softball. As someone who grew up in Georgia where cotton plants rarely get above three feet tall they were pretty impressive. That is some very fertile soil in that valley.

About a year before our trip Nicaragua had suffered a devastating earthquake centered almost directly under the capital city of Managua. As we reached the outskirts of the city it looked like we had entered an industrial park that was in the process of beginning construction – lots of empty streets with green mounds of dirt between them. It wasn’t until we had travelled through several miles of this and suddenly found ourselves in the Zocalo or central square of Managua that we realized that what we had been driving through used to be shops and houses of the people who lived there. Most towns of this size would have two story buildings with the shop owners living above their business. It was unbelievable how much devastation the earthquake had caused and hard to imagine how many people had been killed in the quake. The only multi-story building we saw had lost the entire front wall of the building and the centuries old church had lost one of its bell towers and had a two foot wide crack running diagonally across the front of the sanctuary. It was a very humbling experience to witness the power of the earthquake a year later.

We stopped for the night at a place on the shores of Lake Nicaragua – a body of water so big you can’t see the other side from the shore. It also has fresh water sharks so swimming is not recommended. The next morning we arrived at the border with Costa Rica and were all amazed at how efficiently and smoothly the border crossing went – no bribes required and very welcoming border guards. Costa Rica was alone in Central America of not having a standing army and had been a great supporter of the United States during WWII. They declared war on Japan immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor and Costa Ricans served in the US Military during the war since they didn’t have a military of their own. They were encouraging Americans to retire to Costa Rica in 1974 and thousands of retirees were moving there to enjoy stretching their dollars in a comfortable and welcoming environment. We met an American couple who ran a small hotel our first night there and as we dined with a flock of wild parrots on the balcony they said the only drawback was high tariffs on hard goods that needed to be imported such as appliances. Costa Rica was overrun with Series Land Rovers at the time – it seemed that every fifth car was an old Land Rover that was purring along.

 

[JackW]

Costa Rica is a beautiful country with a high ridge of mountains running down the country. You can pick your climate by selecting your altitude and what side of the mountains you are on. We saw log trucks straining under a single mahogany log that could measure nine feet in diameter (luckily logging is much more controlled now than it was then). Fence posts stuck in the soil would sprout and a few years later the fence line would be a row of closely spaced trees. The people are friendly and gracious. Of all of the places this journey took us, Costa Rica was our favorite. Much of the Pan-American Highway was paved with a few stretches of graded dirt road south of the capital, San Jose. The only potential problem we could see was an ominous clicking noise coming from the drive shaft area.

When we got to San Isidro, Dad decided he wanted to see the Pacific Ocean. He had spotted a road on the map, Hwy 243 that was supposed to take us to a small hotel right on the beach. It was only 25 miles down a dirt road he said, an easy drive. I reminded him that I was worried about the rear U-joint in the Buick and didn’t think it was a great idea. We took the turn and started descending a winding steep road through the jungle. As we reached the coastal plain the road forked and the left turn took us directly to a rough looking river crossing with basketball sized rocks and running water about 18” deep. The hotel we were trying to reach was supposed to be at the end of that road. Obviously our expedition Buick had met its match so Dad backed out and took the right fork to see if there was another path to get to the hotel. We made it about 100 yards before the drive shaft fell out of the Buick with a big clank and we coasted to a halt. It was getting dark, we were 25 miles down a dirt road in Costa Rica with a broken Buick, and there wasn’t a sign of civilization anywhere. We had a box of Ritz crackers, 5 gallons of water, all the bananas we could pick off the trees around us and no camping gear. We hiked back to the river crossing and waded over to the far side to go looking for the promised “hotel”. About a half mile down the road we found the beach and got to look at the Pacific Ocean.

There wasn’t a building in sight and no sign of any habitation anywhere plus it was getting really dark. We hiked back to the car, ate a few crackers and decided to “camp” there for the night. The way it worked out is Dad got the front seat, Mom and my sister Lisa got the back seat, I got the hood and Ken got the trunk. There is a strip of chrome down the center of the hood of a 1965 Buick Electra that does a really good job of inflicting a painful groove in your rib cage over the course of a night.

One good thing about Central America is that wherever there is a road there will be a bus. Early the next morning as we were working the kinks out from our luxurious accommodations I heard something coming from the direction the car was pointing. I got Dad up just as a yellow Bluebird bus came around the next bend in the road. Dad flagged the bus down and with his rusty Spanish was able to tell the bus driver that we needed a ride back to San Isidro to try to find a part for the car. Ken and I were elected to ride the bus back into town with the Buick’s drive shaft to see if we could get a U-joint. Dad told us that the bus went to the town and stayed there for a few hours and then returned to a town about six or seven miles beyond our broken Buick in the afternoon. I grabbed the driveshaft and some cash and Ken I boarded the bus which was already almost full of the local Indian tribe members who were on the way to market. We shared the bus with chickens, a goat, and whole bunch of curious locals who were obviously wondering about the gringos who were standing in the aisle holding on to a large metal shaft that was taller than most of them. Since most of the local populace is much shorter than we were the buses are made with a lower roof line. My head was pressed against the roof of the bus and I’m only six feet tall – I towered over most of the population of Central America. Ken who was only about 5’8” was still tall by Costa Rican standards. It was a happy cheerful bunch who welcomed us aboard their bus.

It took about three hours for the bus to wind its way back up the 25 miles of dirt road to the town of San Isidro. The bus stopped at almost every dirt path that led into the jungle to some hidden settlement. By the time we reached town the bus was absolutely full and my neck was sore from bracing my head against the roof. At the town square the bus stopped and as everyone filed off the bus driver motioned for us to stay on board. With my pitiful Spanish and a lot of gesturing the bus driver communicated that he would drive us around town in the bus to try to find and auto parts store. He said since he had a three hour layover he’d try to help us find the part we needed. At the first parts store I was asked what kind of car and when I said “Buick” that obviously did not compute. They had never heard of a Buick so I said “GM” and that gave them something to work with. But with my extremely limited Spanish and no English spoken by any of the locals it seemed that there wasn’t a hope of finding a rear U-joint for 1965 Buick anywhere in Costa Rica. The driver took us to about four or five shops with the same results and finally pulled up in front of shop that specialized in rewinding electrical motors.

As we walked in the door we saw a bunch of benches with workers rewinding electrical armatures and pieces of electric motors scattered all around. The owner saw us come in and took one look at the driveshaft in my hands and said in English – “Put that over there in the corner and follow me.” Happy to hear a friendly voice in a language I could understand we followed him out the door and across the street to the local cantina. He motioned us to sit at a table and turned to the bartender and ordered four cervezas, waited until we had a bottle of Cerveza Imperial with its yellow label in front of us and then said “OK – tell me what you need.” That beer tasted wonderful after a long dusty ride out of the jungle and we explained that we needed a rear U-joint for a 1965 Buick – a GM car like a Chevrolet. After we finished our beer we walked back across the street and he made some calls. He told us that there wasn’t a part anywhere in town but he could get one put on the overnight bus from San Jose that night. He said come back tomorrow and he’d see what he could do. We told the bus driver we’d meet him back at the square and went shopping for some bread and fruit to take back to my parents and sister who were hanging out at the car.

Now we could have sent a note back with the driver and found a room in town but I thought it would be better to ride back down to the Buick and tell Dad of our quest in person. After another three hour bus ride we got back to find the family had enjoyed a nice day at the beach, eating bananas and relaxing. Dad said they hiked a mile or so down the beach and found the ruins of what had once been the hotel that was our original destination. It was a few huts with palm roofs that had fallen into disrepair and been abandoned for more than a few years. That night I decided to sleep on the ground behind the Buick – soft sand was preferable to the chrome strip poking me in the ribs all night.

The next morning we boarded the bus once again for the ride back up the mountain and by the time we got back to the electrical shop the driveshaft was waiting for us in the corner with a new U-joint already installed. The owner had really come through for us and I paid him more than twice as much as he said we owed him (something like $12). With a couple of hours to kill, Ken and I wandered around town and hung out at the square talking to the local kids. The Costa Ricans are just a great bunch of people – some of friendliest that I have ever encountered. Around two we boarded the bus for the trip down the mountain; locals, two gringos, a driveshaft, a pig, two goats and a bunch of chickens. Thirty minutes after we got back to the wounded Buick I had the driveshaft reinstalled. We loaded back up and dodged the lumber trucks on our way back to the Pan-American Highway.

 

[JackW]

Night cruise on the Panama Canal



Next stop Panama and our eighth border crossing of the trip. This one went relatively smoothly except the border guards were very specific about putting a stamp in Dad’s passport showing that he had imported a car into Panama and told him that he had to export the car or pay a heavy duty on it before he would be allowed to leave the country. This became important later. Panama is almost as pretty as Costa Rica but nowhere near as mountainous. Within a couple of hours we were crossing the Bridge of the Americas over the Panama Canal. It was exciting entering Panama City knowing that it was where my Dad had spent 12 years of his life from age 6 until he joined the US Navy at 18. After finding our way through another very crowded Central American city we found the hotel where the Balboa High School Class of 1944 was setting up the reunion home base. As we checked in we were each handed a coupon for $20 in chips at the hotel’s casino – I promptly grabbed my sister’s as she was only 15 and couldn’t gamble anyway. We checked in and went to meet Dad’s former classmates. We made quite an impression as we were the only ones who drove to the reunion. The big black Buick got a quick bath and we removed the roof rack so we wouldn’t look like the Clampetts anymore.

The next few days were a lot of fun as we toured the Canal Zone which was still under American control, drove to the top of Quarry Heights where my grandparent’s house had been and checked out the base movie theater and radio station that my grandfather had run. It was nice to see some of the places that had been featured in family lore passed down by my grandmother, Aunt June, Uncle Deb, and Aunt Carole and my father as they grew up during the thirties and forties. The Commanding General’s house was mentioned in several stories as my Dad was dating his daughter during high school. Tales of dad roaring around the Zone in his single seat Ford V-8 powered midget race car with the general’s daughter riding on the boat tail behind him were favorites.

Dad's first car - my grandfather imported a batch of midget racers to start up some dirt track racing on the horse ovals just before the war broke out - they were sitting in a warehouse and Pops gave one to my dad when he turned sixteen. He made him take it apart and put it back together before he could drive it. This is a Ford V-8 60 powered midget racer - no question where I got my love of cars from.




Some of Dad’s former classmates had stayed in Panama – one of them was a Canal Pilot that helped guide ships through the Panama Canal. One day (and you have to remember this was in February) a couple of the local guys took us out on Gatun Lake where we spent the day waterskiing and swimming in the Panama Canal. Another day we drove across the Isthmus to Colon on the Atlantic side of the canal. We toured the locks where Dad remembered diving off the lock gates with some of his friends and Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan) during a wartime morale boosting film. On the way across the Zone to Colon one of dad’s classmates pointed to a side road and told us up there was where the good marihuana used to grow. At the hotel casino I tried the slot machines, baccarat, roulette and blackjack and stayed about even until I got to the blackjack table. I stretched the $40 in free chips I had through a whole evening so it wasn’t a total loss.

The night of the big reunion party we were treated to an entire roast pig banquet followed by a cruise up a section of the Panama Canal on a party boat. The generator failed about the time the band cranked up so we had to tie up next to another ship and run electrical power over to our boat so the former classmates could dance. It was a special night sitting there on the Panama Canal watching ships pass by as the music (a lot of Mario Lanza) played.

One of the things my little Irish grandmother had loved was playing the lottery in Panama. She made me promise to play at least once while I was there so I bought two $1 tickets and won $100 with one of them. I used the proceeds to buy a new pair of Ray-Ban aviators to replace the ones that had disappeared somewhere on the trip down.

Driving in Panama City was not something we enjoyed; maneuvering a big black attention grabbing Buick through the city was sure to attract the attention of the Guardia, especially when it was being piloted by a long haired yanqui in his early 20’s. So rather than risk being pulled over every time we left the hotel we decided to hire a cab driver for our excursions into the city. The driver had fun correcting dad’s rusty Spanish and we quickly made friends. Dad had hoped one of his former classmates would be able to find some way to legally sell the Buick to someone in Panama and get the entry stamp removed from his passport. As the day grew closer to the time when the rest of the family would be boarding an airplane to fly back to Atlanta, Dad faced the prospect of standing on the ramp and watching us fly off without him. At this point Dad was ready to give the car away as long as he could get the entry stamp cancelled and our cab driver told us that he knew someone in the government who might be able to help. Dad told him that if he could get the stamp cancelled he would give the driver our not quite faithful Buick. The three of them, the Buick, Dad and the cab driver headed off downtown to work this miracle and a few hours later two of them returned. Dad had his stamp nullified and the cab driver wore a sour expression. It seems that the government official graciously allowed Dad to donate the Buick to the government of Panama in exchange for waiving any duties or penalties that might be levied. The poor cab driver got nothing.

We covered over 5300 miles in a period of just over four weeks in an overheating thoroughly unsuitable overlanding vehicle that did not appreciate the poor quality gasoline, high altitudes, steep grades and rough roads that defined Central America in early 1974. We have a picture of the hood up with one of us reaching into the engine compartment in almost every one of the eight countries we drove through. We never had a single flat and only needed the spare gas can one time. But the main thing was that even with those difficulties it still got us there and helped provide an adventure of a lifetime.

I also smile whenever I think of our old Buick giving its crooked next owner fits as it was very prone to overheating in traffic. The name of the government official that got our Buick was - Manuel Noriega.

 

[JackW]

Two of the reminders of this trip that sit on a shelf in my library to this day - the wooden peg that I found in a collapsed adobe in northern Mexico and the broken U-joint from the driveshaft that stranded us in Costa Rica for two days.
It was quite the adventure and my mom was great during the whole trip - she loved to travel and when things went sideways it didn't phase her at all. They are both gone now but we made some great memories.

 

[dragonbyu]

What an adventure Jack. Thanks for sharing.

 

[gnel]

That is such agreat story! I just got back from 3 weeks in Panama. Wow has it changed since I was there in 1985! You wouldn´t recognize the place.

Is the Noriega part for real?

 

[Todd780]

Very cool story. Thank you for taking the time to write this up and share the pictures.

 

[JackW]

That is such agreat story! I just got back from 3 weeks in Panama. Wow has it changed since I was there in 1985! You wouldn´t recognize the place.

Is the Noriega part for real?

Absolutely - he was Commander Torrijos right hand man during the early 1970's - Noriega was head of military intelligence and on the payroll of the CIA.
He was the man that my father went downtown to see about having the stamp cancelled in his passport - dad wound up "donating the Buick to the government of Panama."

Our family is still mad at Jimmy Carter for giving the Panama Canal away - he's a great man but he shouldn't have done that.... especially now that the Chinese have such an interest in it.

 

[gnel]

That's an amazing story! I know what you mean about the chinese. Very obvious difference now.