Onwards towards Pnama city

Here we are in Panama city with some new experiences and adventure behind us once again.

We managed our 4 hour trek through what was described as one of the most scenic treks in central america. It was a beautiful area but not being too negative there was no wildlife at all. Not really what i expected. I least expected to see a variety of birds, spiders and little lizards which are usually highly abundant, but no not alot. I did howebver get to spend more time with Emma (hello Mrs Saunders glad you found this...), Chris, Euan and Debbie, in what was a fantastic environment and was a reasonable trek.

That night was to be my last night with any of the Raleigh crew as the following day we all go our own way. So we celebrated (or comiserated) the moment with some pizza and a couple of cool drinks.

The following morning saw us up at 0700 to catch the mini-bus come coach to David where Debbie and I caught a fairly luxurious coach to Panama city and the others made their way to the costa rican border. It was a 'moment' but we managed to hold back the tears....

7 hours later we made it to the city. I even got to see Casino Royale for the first time, it wasn´t quite the same in Spanish. Upon arrival at the bus depot which was quite an epic experience, there must have been some 100 plus platforms with buses coming and going to all sorts of places. we caught a taxi to our home for the next few days The Voyager International Hostel, whihc caused some confusion as i explained , the best i could, that the hostel was in one area of the city and the driver was adament he was taking us some where else. It is often a way of taxi drivers earning some more money by taking you to a 'friends' hotel and earniong commision. Thankfully this time ours was an honest fella and it turned out the hostel had moved locations 6 months ago...

During our time in the city we had tried to arranged a yacht to take us to Columbia via the San Blas islands but unfortunatly nothing workrd out in our time scale so we our now flying by a small Columbian airline...
Although that didn´t go according to plan as i booked the flight for this morning luckily i managed to change the details with 2 minutes before the plan flew!!!

Luck seems to be on our side at the moment. Two days ago we went for a walk through the old part of the city, which is wonderful. Semi-derelic but in the process of redevelopment. Wegot to see one of the cast of Prison Break doing a scene in an old castle. Debbie was pretty star struck and managed to get a couple of pics. Then we strolled of out of the old town towards the causeway an area that was reclaimed from the sea to protect the entrance of the canal. A road now links the main land with four islands.

Unfortunatly unbeknown to us we strolled into a very undesirable area of Panama, foolish on our part for not being more aware of where was safe and not so safe to go from the out set. It all worked out ok, as we were stopped by two very kind police officers (we now realised that there was a very heavy police presence in the area, two officers on every block corner!!!) A police car with lights flasshing pulled up next to us and advised us that they would give us a ride back to the safe area of town. Whoops a typical tourist moment. We were very grateful to the police officers who are very proactive in what they do. It}s ok mum we hadnt gone to far. An experience i can do with out doing again.

We did eventually make it to the causeway this time by taxi, a great place to view the city and the entrance to the canal. A strange site to behold is the ships lining up ready for their passage into the canal. Just like the planes lining up to land at the airports.

Today we went for a walk around the local national park, where we manged to see a few lizards, some small turtles in a pool and even a couple of the elusive toucans, but no i have no photographic eveidence. You will just have to believe me.

Im off to have dinner now, tomorrow we are off to the first lock in the dam and we fly to Cartagena tomorrow night. So i will contact you from Columbia next time.

Ciao

---

---