All day running down the coast of Colombia
past unvisited cities
only distant mountains
spectacular as clay pits
green water and river weed
shallow seas
clouds and lightning
even this you can get used to
my suntan is done
I've had enough sun
between you and me
I've had enough sea
the calendar states
there are too many dates
and since we set off
we have gone far enough.
Heading west into the cauldron of a blind sea
Where sun melts gold, ice and snow into a one-way bay
Surrounded by many guns, thefts and holdouts
The quiet crisis of three decades of history
The steely mad jaw of Oliver North
Importing drugs to kill his own cities
In order to supply his own mass killers
To make a better idea fail
Created the new aristocracy of coca
With profit motives america can understand
And people they can do business with
Like Noriega.
And still west, into hell
lightning stakes into top-to-toe clouds
rainforest and nothing but rain and fire
the green flash of the tropical sunset
and full speed into the blackness of no lives
lived along the Panama shores
Darien closed and secret to itself
all we see in darkness
We are not of it
it is not of us
for humans from our lives
this is outermost space
because devoid of attention
you could die there slowly or late
no one would think
regret
wonder
share sorrow
another fall to rot
to the insect that devours
the all-powerful bacteria
virus & fungi
all things that grow and thrive in hell
multiplying and remultiplying in the haze of heat
and rancid, refreshless rain
patronise it from far away
but fear of here
It hates.
2155: The ship pushed on all day into the corner of the Caribbean. As the sun was setting between 1700 & 1800 we saw Panama and Darien ahead of us. There were great clouds obscuring the sun to the west and electrical storms within them, filling them up with the fire of tropical lightning. And with this, the second tropical sunset I have seen, I saw my first green flash. Only it wasn't green, it was an indeterminate colour, and it didn't, as I expected, cover the whole sky, but just unfolded across the dying sun.
(I also saw a dolphin earlier, through my binoculars, curling above and below the surface of the sea. But no one believes that either.)
We kept ploughing on at 20 knots into this hellfire corner. I stopped watching at 1830, and now we are continuing in the dark. There are occasional settlements on the eastern shore of this bay but on the western shore there is nothing at all. This is deadly Darien , one of the most dangerous places in the world, virgin tropical rainforest. It feels like we are entering a hot crucible, the furthest point south on this voyage.
It now appears we will be arriving in Moin at 8 o'clock at night on the 21st.
I had difficulty sleeping after about 4 a.m. and put the radio on what turned out to be a Bahamian gospel station, so at least there was some good black gospel music and I got to hear some Bahamian English. It is also where this ship is registered.
There was an electrical storm raging. It was so bright that at first I thought we were passing a lighthouse, but if there was one of those to starboard we would either be at Turbo or in deep trouble!
On the coast now you can see the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It might be the highest coastal range in the world, but these things are entirely contextual and subjective - just like everything else really - and they look less impressive than the Azores or Dominica suddenly being there instead of just ocean.
I'm wondering how I'm going to get on with filming in Turbo. If we have a boat full of trigger-happy soldiers, how are they going to take to having a camera pointing at them? Or anything pointed at them. And I don't want them 'confiscating' it. (I don't have a high opinion of soldiers generally, but especially those trained by the US to maintain their puppet regimes.) Perhaps I should adopt the Dennis Hopper persona from Apocalypse Now.
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