La Arena

Sunday, 2/10

I woke up early feeling really rested after a fun and late night of stargazing on our friend’s front lawn. I hurried to the glass paneled windows and peered out at the sun rising over the ocean. It was a radiant morning!

We spent the morning eating a lazy breakfast on the beach house porch and discussing our travels. The Waldens gave us big hugs and sent us on our way.

Mami, Danae and I drove through Penenome and Aguadulce, passing by several sugar cane fields. Because we were driving ourselves, we were able to stop in little towns along the way. One of our favorite (longer) stops was in La Arena.

            Known for being an artisan town, La Arena has rows of one-room shops brimming with pottery and authentic handicrafts. We were interested in visiting la fabrica to learn how the pottery was made, so we asked one of the vendors. He gave us great directions to the factory, which was basically two houses where they transformed the rough clay into fine pots or statues.

            














The father of the family business greeted us with a wide smile and welcomed us in to see the whole potter’s workshop. His daughter sat on a stool in the entrance way and carefully painted the intricate patterns on a fired goose statue. She explained that they sell the statues and pots to all different parts of Panama.

Then the father led us toward the back of the house, where we saw the oven where they fire and glaze the pottery. There were multiple cats lying beneath the rubble of broken pots and construction materials, and an elderly woman asleep in a chair. Their neighbor sat at a little table and molded the top of a clay pot with his hands, and another family member sat by the potter’s wheel, guiding the clay to take its imagined shape. They were so generous to welcome us into their shop and show us how everything was made. I observed that they had an outdoor kitchen, with rice and their traditional soup, sancocho on the stove. Ah, now I know what the interior of Panama is like. Very different than Clayton!!

            After our insightful pottery-factory tour, we walked by La Arena’s church, enjoyed a street meal and cereza (cherry!) ice cream.

There was John F. Kennedy school here, which I thought interesting historically. For Kennedy was the one who wanted Panamanian and U.S. flags to fly together, but he was assassinated before this could become the norm.