Paws in Panama
How dogs will welcome you into their hearts and homes
Photos and Story by Jane Thomas
In order to write these pieces I go through photos to jog my memory. It can be difficult to look back on a period of your life when you were happy and content, when the present time is an endless sequences of setbacks. But I suppose that is one of the reasons I travel: because it gives me a bank of memories to escape into.
This piece is about Isla Solarte in Bocas del Toro, Panama. For two months we would be the custodians of a home perched one hundred steps from the water’s edge and surrounded by acres of rainforest.
Before I went, I’d never seen mangroves. I’d never seen the way they can light up with bouncing beats of bioluminescence when you walk along a nearby boardwalk on a clear, moonless night. I hadn’t known what it was to sit in the hammock of an overwater office and watch a pod of dolphins dancing in a bay, every single day. I hadn’t known what it was to paddle for half an hour across a calm sea to a shed-sized supermarket, complete with miniature shopping carts to push around the miniature aisles.
Come to that, I hadn’t known what it was to play with a Rottweiler who was still very much a puppy and who had no idea – no idea at all – that he was meant to be a big and scary guard dog. Patron was immediate friends with anyone who appeared. Not that many did: just a few fishermen who came by sometimes in dugout canoes with their latest catch, and workers who tried to tame some corners of the garden.
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