Serial Killers, Expats and Hippies: Where Will You Be Safest?

THE DEAL:
So, some of you may know that there are four ways to get to Panama from Colombia. One of them, to go by land, is nearly impossible (no roads, thus no buses) and quite dangerous (through the treacherous Darién Gap, a guerilla controlled territory), and thus stupid.  Another, the cheapest, is relatively safe but involves finding irregular passages on privately run mini-boats, and thus not terribly popular except with a limited class of Colombians and broke hippies.  By far the two most common ways are by air, the most popular, especially with business and tourist travel, and by independently-expat-owned sail boats that ferry backpackers through the San Blas Islands to Panama City. 
This last option is most popular with backpackers, but also by far the most expensive option at around 400-500USD for a 4-5 day trip.  
Now, in Colombia, I hung out in the ports quite a bit. Befriended the sailors.  Made contacts.  I had almost opted to run with a captian carting backpackers to Panama, but as his cook, for free passage.  But a better opportunity came up, which I shall get to in a moment.  I also had, through a series of connections, met a sailor with whom I nearly sailed the Pacific- but when we had lunch in the Bocas del Toro Islands, he had mentioned how not only did he want to see Nancy Pelosi dead- but he wanted to be the one to push her down the stairs.  You can check out his boat, Dances with Dragons so you know against whom to warn your friends should they feel like sailing around the world with a stranger.


MY CHOICE:
All right, so- the better opportunity:  I hitch hiked for two days through Colombia, from Cartagena to Turbo, whence I caught a boat to some little town whose name I forget and which I can't find on Google Maps, to Capurgana to Olbadia to El Porvenir (San Blas) to Playa Something or Other on the main land just north of the Panama Canal.  Although technically I sailed through San Blas, stopped to refuel a few times, and had lunch with some Kunas, I didn't snorkel off deserted islands or anything.  On the other hand, I did swim across the Colombia/Panama border- and had a quite different, more local, less backpacker, experience.


THE POINT:
When people learned what I was doing, they all said- 'how dangerous!'  'You can't possibly be serious.' 'Why?' et cetera, et cetera.  Now I can explain for hours how much cooler my trip was- even if I missed out on a few things, like deserted Caribbean islands.  And how safe I really was- how generous and helpful were the Colombians, and on and on.  But truthfully, there were many- even a few Colombians, who thought that I shouldn't be going to Turbo, and to be careful, bla bla bla.


THE SERIAL KILLER:
Well, I read the strangest link on Face Book.  My Australian friend posted a link with the headline: Serial Killer Javier Martin Captured in Santa Fe, Darien , and her status reading: 'so... they caught the captain we sailed with from Colombia/Panama last year...'  What the ---? And I read on...


TO REITERATE THE POINT:
I hung out in the docks in Cartagena for a month, meeting and befriending expat sailors, exchanging information and creating a network from which I could make contacts to sail the world.  I continued networking in the famed expat favoured islands of Bocas del Toro, especially popular among sailors who wait for clearance to cross the Panama Canal in these ideal islands.  It was here, in these ports, in which I passed nearly two months, that I was living close to two known serial killers.
To reiterate: when I found myself hanging around expatriots in tourist regions, I was in fact, in much more danger than when I hung out with hippies and poverty-stricken locals in the poorer regions of South and Central America.