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Published: March 13th 2007
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Panama Race Track
One of our many winners! Next was the Capital of Panama, Panama City and our last stop before flying out to Colombia on 10/03/07.
The city had all the attractions of a modern affluent city with lots of nice and expensive hotels, at least 5 different shopping malls, 2 of which are about the size of the Trafford centre, one of them probably slightly bigger. Michelle was happy!
We stayed at a basic hotel but nice enough for us, Centro Americano which had air con and cable t.v so I was more than happy. We were quite close to most of the attractions and it was cheap to travel around by taxi so was easy enough to get around.
We spent few days shoping around as the clothes are so cheap, is was like being in Primark! Easily the best place in Central America for shopping, it has all the main expensive shops too if your had monety to spend and Michelle was saying nearly half the price of home! We bought a few things to replace some of our worn out t-shirts as some of mine were looking a bit ratty with the pits stained by sweat and deodrant, nice! The most
No dummy!
The Jordan look must be in! I paid for a t-shirt was 3 quid!!
On the second day we visited the old town which was an experience to say the least. There are lots of nice old buildings to view and some good places to eat but the problem is it´s surrounded by a dodgy area so you have to be careful when walking about. We got there and as usually started walikng about and before long getting a bit lost, or should I say taking the scenic route to get where we are going! We could see the area stated to get a bit dodgy but thought we will find where were going eventually! Then a police pickup pulled up and told us that we are in a dangerous place and that if we keep walking around here we will get mugged, friendly place! The nice police man told us to get in the back of the piuckup and he will take us back to the tourist area. So we got in riding the back of the pickup with all the locals staring at us probably wondering what have the tourist been upto to get arrested! Funny but a bit embarrassing, suppose that’s what
we get for walking around! We then looked around the place the police took us, but decided to head to a square where the revolution against the Spanish started, No tourist here just dodgy people and we stuck out like city fans at a cup final! It felt like we were getting eyed up but we could have just been parronoid, but by this time it was like its just not worth it so we left sharpish in a taxi.
The next day we went to visit Mira Flores Locks on the Panma Canal. The Canal is one of the worlds great acheivements opening a direct route of travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. It took 34 years to build with a total of 80,000 men with 30,000 losing there lives from diseases like Maleria and Yellow Fever. The total cost of building was 640 million dollars a lot more than they expected. The canal itself is 51 miles long and rises 26 meters above sea level by a number of different locks. 12,000 ships on average pass through the locks per year with the highest toll charge to date being 250,000 dollers on a cruise ship
and the lowest for a swimmer, 36 cents who swam the locks! It takes a total of 9 hours to get through the locks a huge saving compared to the alternative of going around South America. The locks have been open nearly 100 hundred years and the majority of this time was operated by the US Government and was actually classed as US terratory. It was finally handed back to Panama in 1999. Thats a bout as much I can remember from the tour. It was great to see and hard to imagine how they managed to build it. We got to see a few huge cargo ships go through, seeing how the locks raised and lowered the ships weighing hundreds of tons. Wow I´m sounding like a right geek!!
One of the other things I was glad to see in Panama was a Horse racing track and we had a night at the races. It was brilliant, a few winners and got drunk in the process. There were 8 races in total and we won 4 with 2 seconds and 1 third not bad seems that I couldn´t work out the race card as very different from home. Just went off the betting and how the horses paraded. The only problem was the winners we had were evens or less so we didn´t make too much. Like at home we put our biggest bet on the last race 10 pound to win! It came second! and the horse we had for second in the forecast came first, gutted, if only it was the other way around we would of been quids in! The best thing about the night was the beer was 30p a bottle and a rum and coke 60p with the rum being poured like coke and the coke being poured like rum, very strong! So as soon as we bought the first few drinks it didn´t really matter if we were winning or losing we were still having a cheap night and getting pissed in the process!
A story for you. As this was our last stop in Central America we wanted to get rid of some of the souveners we have picked up along the way and other bits and bobs and planned to send home a package. The day before we went to the post office we were walking down the street and noticed outside some offices there were lots of empty cardboard boxes and thought that they would be perfect. As we got closer we noticed there were a few street people also collecting the boxes as they get a small amount of money for taking them to be recycled. We found a box perfect for what we needed and just as we were about to walk off an old lady approached us asking for money as that was her box! We were a bit surprised and I just started laughing and then she started going into details about the box, pointing out how sturdy it was by banging her hand on it and showing it from different angles, saying how nice it is, in english she actually said "very nice". I just found it very funny that this lady was tring to sell us a box that was thrown out onto the street and loved the idea that she seen the chance of making a bit of money. I gave her few dollars just for the memory of it all. I can just picture her going upto people on the street and going "Do you wana buy a box, its a very nice box"!!
Our final day in Central America finally arrived and we were off for our hour flight to Colombia. For some reason it feels like it should be longer. We bought the flight about a month ago and it cost us about 120 pound each based on us being students as we have been using our student cards since we left Spanish school in Guatamala, they have been priceless, we have had loads of things discounted since! The flight I still think is expensive but they know that there are only 2 ways of leaving Panama by air or by boat which is even more expensive. There are no roads that connect the 2 countries.
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