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Published: November 3rd 2011
Panama – a nice unexpected stopover
After not finding our perfect island setting on the Caribbean coast of Colombia we planned 10 days on an island off the Pacific coast of Panama. Before heading towards the island we spent two nights outside of Panama City at Monkey Lodge – yes, there were real monkeys there! We had a days adventure on the Gatun river passing the container ships on the Panama Canal in our tiny little boat. We also fed the monkeys on Monkey Island, walked to an old WWII American radio station, had lunch on our own private island and had an awkward moment hanging around an Embera Indian tribe.
Contadora Island
Contadora is part of the Pearl Islands, it has 6 beaches and 4 restaurants and not a lot else... perfect! To Will’s delight and Tory’s panic we took a 12 seater plane to the island. Other then eating, sleeping and sitting on a beach we also took a boat trip to Mogo Mogo island where they filmed the Survivor series, snorkeled off another small island, watched humpback whales from Villa Romantica restaurant while having our fourth spaghetti bolognese of the week, had a golf buggy tour
of the island, watched all the wealthy owners arrive in their private planes and helicopters, Will saw his first sea turtle whilst scuba diving and we met some really great people.
Panama City
We headed back to Panama City for one night before flying to New York and took in a half day City and Canal tour. We headed to the Miraflores Locks – along with an entire cruise ship full of Saga trippers! Read about the history of the Canal and watched a very cheesy dvd. The tour ended in the Casca Viejo (historic town) which has a lot of colonial influence from the early settlers although, much is under repair at the moment. We had our first and only Panamanian food in a restaurant named Diablo…interesting.
We left for New York tanned, relaxed and not sure how we were going to cope with city life!
Guilty pleasures: snickers from the mini fridge!
Horrible fact: the buttered microwavable popcorn that we have been so fond of as our evening meal contains over 1,200 calories (and we had been putting 2 or 3 bags together and considering it healthy).
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