Panamania

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As we arrived in Panama city I thought landed in the states. There were drive through ATMs and skyscrapers everywhere. After six days on a boat we ended up staying at the first place we could find, but we soon realised it wasn't in the best neighbourhood and moved ourself to casco vieja, the old town. None of us were really ready to deal with the developed world just yet.

The old town use to be the place where all the rich people lived but do to crime a lot of people moved out. In the last few years it's become a UNESCO world heritage site and money is starting to be spent to restore it. It is very run down, but it's definitely getting better and in years to come I'm sure it will look great. There are tonnes of old beautiful building in need of some love. Great place to invest, if you've got some spare cash lying around, especially with the panama canal expansion due to begin in 2014.

We did the inevitably trip to see the canal and went to see the museum and various ship travelling through the miraflores locks. It was pretty impressive and quite interesting. Although I was hanging out with a shipping buff and he said it wasn't that spectacular. But for me it was certainly a bit of a contrast to the canal I live next to at home. Scale it up the Manchester canals up by a 1000 and it might come somewhere close.

All of us that got the boat from Columbia together with a few extras we'd met in the hostel ended up spending several days just hanging out in panama city. The locals institution, the coca cola restaurant was our regular haunt and the bars near the hostel were well used. It was nice just to stay in the same place for a few days. I didn't really have enough time before needing to be in costa rica to begin my final gap tour to go anywhere else, so it was nice just to have a few days in the same place fir a change. I hadn't had really any downtime since Arequipa.

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Photos

John had just spilt his beer
Not good if you're irish!!