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February 17th 2013
Published: February 17th 2013
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Havana to Panama City


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The City and its highways
Day 478 Thursday 31st January

Got up at 8.30 feeling like we could have slept till midday. I don’t know why but yesterday knocked the stuffing out of us and we both felt wrecked. After breakfast we took a long time to get into gear and head out the door to explore the city. Hadn’t planned on anything today other than just checking out our new environment, which was probably the best plan in the state we were in. Panama City has supposedly a population of 1.2 million but looks like it would be double that. Pedestrian wise, walking the streets the city doesn’t feel that congested, but the traffic is horrendous and the drivers are really, really aggressive. I am sure most would gladly run over their Grandmothers to get through an intersection.

By the time we got to mid-afternoon we were a pool of sweat wandering around in the 30 degree heat and so stopped at a Spanish tapas restaurant for a feed and a respite from the heat. The food was pretty good but the bill was a bit high…I guess we have to get used to things costing us a
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The second lock
bit more than they would in Cuba. Eventually we wandered back to our air con room to cool down and catch up on all that back log of internet stuff. Early evening we went out for a drink in a bar followed by a feed at a local restaurant. Shelley got a great seafood soup but my chicken dish was fairly plain, thankfully it was cheaper than lunch.



Day 479 Friday 1st February

Somehow we didn’t get to sleep until midnight and so we were pretty tired when we got up at 8 in the morning. After breakfast we headed off on a long walk to Casco Viejo (Spanish for old compound), which is the historic centre of Panama City. Along the way we stopped at a recommended tour agency where we booked a trip for tomorrow through the Panama Canal. The two options we had was a half day cruise that only took us through the Pacific Locks and then returned us by bus around 1pm or a cruise that took us all the way through to the Atlantic returning us by bus around 6pm. When the guy told us
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Inside a drained Gatun Lock
that the full cruise was only available once a month and that this was tomorrow we just couldn’t resist going the whole hog. Mum and Dad had given us money for Christmas so decided that this was a good use of the gift and so went “what the hell, we will go all the way”.

We walked along the foreshore of the bay to get to the old city it gave us a chance to take in the new modern city which is undergoing massive rapid growth. Since the US handed the canal back to Panama the place has seen phenomenal growth as a result of the 2 billion dollars raised every year by the transit of ships. We were told that the Government spends most of the money on ventures that generate more money rather than improving the life of its citizens. A new airport gets preference to schools, hospitals or even a proper sewerage system. A stormwater canal runs through the heart of the city that is nothing more than a river of raw sewerage and is absolutely putrid to walk past. From what we have heard this town is built and run on quick money and
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Shelleys choice in shoes
the other (or perhaps principle) money spinner is financial services. Appears lots of companies use Panama to “reorganise” their finances and we got the feeling that corruption is rampant. We heard how bribery is such a huge part of life that you even have to bribe the garbage men to pick up your rubbish…no payment, no rubbish collection. This sort of explained the large piles of rubbish around town. Despite a plethora of new shiny buildings the footpaths are worse than the back streets of Delhi. The current president is the conservative Ricardo Martinelli, who is part owner of all the fast food franchises and supermarkets in the country and you sort of wonder how his policies might be influenced by his personnel businesses. As much as this looks like a shiny gleaming beautiful city we soon started to realise that maybe not is all well in Panama City. It is sort of funny that the Spanish used to haul all the Incan gold from Peru overland from the Pacific across to the Atlantic for the fleets to send back to Spain, all at the sacrifice of the indigenous population. 500 years later vast sums of money seem to be
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"The Screw" building
passing through this nation with little impact upon the poorer sections of the population, it is as if the country cannot escape its past.

When we arrived at Casco Viejo we discovered the old town in the midst of a massive, and we mean MASSIVE refurbishment. Just about every street was torn up and every second building was being worked upon. It was a struggle to walk around with no footpaths and rumbling trucks trying to run us over. We are sure when the work is finished the old quarter of Panama City will be a first class tourist attraction but at the moment it is a real nightmare. We had lunch at a crap overpriced restaurant before walking to the extreme point of the town which is called French Plaza. It is here that there is a monument to the French effort to build the canal complete with a bust to Lessop the guy who started the ball rolling back in the 1800’s. At the monument some guy ran over to show us something and be our appointed guide (for a fee of course), which we didn’t want and said “No Gracias” he quickly went from annoying to
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Bridge over the canal entrance on the Pacific side
aggressive. We walked away but later on from a walkway above the monument he started abusing us and giving us the finger because we had ignored him…..welcome to Panama City.

After all this we decided we had had enough and so walked back. By this stage we didn’t have the best opinion of the city but I guess all cities are a bit hard nosed and can be kind of unfriendly. Got back to our room late in the afternoon and cooled down for a while in front of the air con. For dinner we went back to the restaurant last night and had another reasonable feed. When we got back to our room we sat up trying to work out our flights to get back home. Cheapest way ended up being the long way through Germany and Thailand, but couldn’t make the flight for Tuesday and we are now stuck here till next Saturday. To complicate matters even further the flight to Germany has us changing planes at Puerto Rico, which is as good as being in USA territory. We sat up to 1am in the morning filling out forms online so as to allow us to sit
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Looking back at the bridge
in the airport for a few hours waiting between flights.







Day 480 Saturday 2nd February

Up at 5.30 for our Panama Canal adventure and left the hotel before we could get breakfast. Had to walk 2 blocks to another hotel where we were supposed to be picked up at sometime between 5.45 and 6.15. As predicted by us we didn’t get picked up till 6.40, but later we discovered that this was because one of the earlier pickups had been given wrong information on when they should be picked up and so delayed everything. Wasn’t really too happy at standing in the dark for an hour waiting for a bus whilst passing taxis beeped their horns at us...not a good start to the day.

As usual we were the last to be picked up but from here it was only a ten minute drive to the docks out on the causeway where we were dumped at the office of the cruise operators. It was absolute chaos with a cramped small office packed with tourists trying to get their tickets for the day. It always amazes us
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Our Pilot boat coming alongside
how a company that has been operating for years can be so badly run, and we always stand back and look at the mess and within minutes can work out how they could do things better. This isn’t a statement to say how clever we are but just how the operators cannot seem to see the bleeding obvious.

After about 40 minutes of anarchy we were on board our boat for the cruise through the canal. The boat took about an hour to leave the harbour and cruise around the point and into position to enter the first set of locks called the Miraflores Locks. The French started to build the canal in 1881 and their plan called for a sea level canal that would enable ships to navigate from one ocean to the next through a deep cut passageway. They soon hit major hurdles, including thick Jungle, Malaria and Yellow fever and the Chagres River which cut across the projected route. The French struggled on till 1889, by which time 22,000 people had died before giving up and selling the project to the United States. The US with the aid of a Cuban doctor managed to reduce the
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A ship squeezing into the Miraflores Locks
risk from malaria and Yellow fever, and adapt another Frenchman’s idea for a canal that would incorporate the use of locks. By damming the troublesome Chagres River (which created the second largest manmade lake in the world) they established a lake across which boats could navigate and reduced the amount of earth that had to be dug out. The lake is 26 metres higher than sea level and so to get up to the lake the ships have to pass through locks that lift the ship up. On the Pacific side there are two locks at Miraflores that raise the vessels up to the small Miraflores Lake and then a kilometre further inland is the single lock of Pedro Miguel that gets you up to the full height of Gatun Lake. On the Atlantic side is the 3 celled Gatun locks which lifts you up to the Gatun lake/lowers you back down to sea level. Once inside a lock, water is either drained out to lower or allowed to drain in from the higher lake to lift, no pumps are used, which is hard to get your head around when you see a huge freighter slowly rising. Ships up to
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Approaching the Miraflores Locks
80,000 tonnes use these locks and they get about 14,000 ships a year using them. Each ship pays for the use and we were told it has to be in cash, with the highest charge being for a large cruise ship last year paying $480,000. The Canal is run by a private company that rakes in 2 billion dollars a year and hands over half to the Panamanian Government in taxes. At present there is about a 3 day delay in accessing the locks and at both ends ships are seen anchored everywhere waiting their turn. They are presently widening the channels and building 50 percent larger locks in an effort to increase the volume and work should be completed in 2 years.

Because we are travelling in a small boat we are allowed to jump into the lock with one of the larger ships, but apparently the tour company still pays a hefty fee. First lift was in the Miraflores locks that are a twin chamber and it is sort of weird as you are lifted up about 9m. It is slow taking about 8 minutes but you do notice it. After that we were served an early
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It is a tight fit
mediocre lunch and sailed on to the Pedro Miguel lock where we were lifted up into the Gatun Lake. Directly after the Pedro Miguel lock we sailed into the Culebra Cut, which is where the canal had to be dug through a large very unstable mountain. The Culebra Cut posed one of the biggest challenges of the whole project and it was an enormous undertaking. I had seen photos of it being dug out and so it was perhaps a bit disappointing to see it in real life and it looked nowhere near as deep as I had expected. To be fair the mountain has lost over 30 metres of its height and the whole thing has just about been doubled in width, and when you are sailing through it, it doesn’t seem that deep….from a distance though it does look awesome.

After the Culebra cut over half the passengers got off that had only paid for a half way journey, whilst the rest could sit back for the three hour cruise across Gatun Lake. Around 4 in the afternoon we reached Gatun locks and we were lowered back down to sea level via the three chambers within an
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The gates closing us in on our first lock
hour.

Up to this point the day had been fantastic and it was such a great experience to sail from one ocean to the next through what is regarded as one of the greatest engineering feats in history. As the great Palindrome states A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama; for us it was amazing. Unfortunately once we got to the Atlantic Ocean everything went pear shaped, and it may have been quicker for us to sail back through the canal to Panama City rather than get a bus. On the Atlantic side is the town of Colon, and we were forced to circle around the harbour for over an hour waiting to get a berth. A small luxury cruise liner was hogging the wharf and our boat couldn’t dock till it left, which was at 6.30. Once we docked we couldn’t leave the boat till our buses turned up and we discovered our guide couldn’t run a chook raffle, despite his pleas of “listen to me because I know best”. There were only two buses but which one you got on depended upon if you had a pink dot or an orange dot (handed out in the morning).
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Our companion ship moving into the second lock
What followed was worthy of a Marx Brothers film as people were shuffled back and forth from one bus to the other till people were getting really angry and were ready to throw punches. After 30 minutes of confusion we were underway only to be halted in the middle of Colon by some nutty religious cult who decided to block all the roads in town…..perfect timing. Sat in gridlock traffic for another hour till the police managed to move the ratbags off the road and we could drive back to Panama City.

When we spotted the city lights at 9 we figured that our troubles were over but they were only just beginning. For some reason our driver didn’t really know his way around town and there was no real plan or idea how he was going to drop a bus load of people back at their hotels. Over the next two hours we were driven around in circles sometimes at break neck speeds, straight through intersections, down one way streets the wrong way and our driver even managed to crash into the guard house at one of the hotels. As the night wore on he got more lost
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The Miraflores Control room
and more reckless and some of the remaining passengers got more agro. For us, well we are sort of used to it and to a certain point it was rather amusing. There was a poor young girl from the tour company on the bus trying to direct our driver (who never seemed to listen to her instructions) and also had to cop the full abuse of the passengers. We both felt so sorry for her as she was trying hard to sort the problem out and was near tears so as we got off we thanked her and told her not to get too upset. We were the last to be dropped off around 11pm and so got back to our hotel for a quick toilet stop and then headed out for a feed. Got a pizza and beers before crashing back in our room early in the morning



Day 481 Sunday 3rd February

Today is Sunday and so not much is happening in town so we decided to check out one of the huge malls. The mall was located about a 45 minute walk, which would normally be a pleasant
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Gates closing on the second Miraflores Lock
walk except the footpaths here are shocking, the traffic is really aggressive and there is heaps of road works going on. Once down at the mall we discovered it was huge and filled with lots of high end shops…Shelley was in her element. After travelling for 481 days and having passed countless thousands of shoe shops she finally weakened and picked up a pair of high heeled Guess shoes, which she assured me were “an absolute bargain”. To me it looked like a clear sign she was ready to go home and get out of those hiking boots.

At the end of the day we had a long walk back in the heat of the late afternoon, with Shelley grinning from ear to ear and just about skipping.



Day 482 Monday 4th February

We really should have probably looked at leaving town and seeing more of the country, but didn’t sort of feel like doing it and so we are stuck in a town with not a lot to do. There are a few sites around the place we may take in over the next few days but today we
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...closing...
went out shopping again and had a look around the commercial centre and some more malls. Panama City probably won’t go down as one of our more favourite towns and we sort of wished we were flying out tomorrow as originally intended, but unfortunately we are stuck here for the week.

For dinner we got a feed at a Japanese restaurant that served up small meals with big prices, all without smiles or graces.



Day 483 Tuesday 5th February

Another day in town and today we treated ourselves to some more mall time and a movie.



Day 484 Wednesday 6th February

Lots of things to sort out on the internet, booking our flight to Thailand, booking hotels and of course this bloody blog. Had some beers for lunch before hitting the computer in the arvo…it’s a tough life.



Day 485 Thursday 7th February

For what we did today see yesterday’s entry but we can add that we had sort of wished that we had left Panama City by now.


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...closed

Day 486 Friday 8th February

This weekend it is the carnival weekend all over South and Central America and we discovered that Panama is no different and throws a huge party as well. We were told that not much actually happens in Panama City but all the action is in the smaller towns around the country and that pretty much Panama City will be deserted with everyone taking off for other towns. We were warned that there was a massive exodus out of Panama City on Friday and Saturday and that the whole place was going to be a ghost town. We didn’t actually think that this was the case in fact didn’t notice any difference today. To remain consistent with the rest of the week we walked down to the mall, had a bit of a look around and then saw a movie. As per normal the traffic was manic and by the end of today we had come to the conclusion that Panamanian drivers are the most aggressive, worst drivers we have encountered on this trip…..these guys are crazy behind the wheel. We love our cities and we love walking but because
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Filled with water
of the traffic and bad state of the footpaths we found Panama City a fairly awful town to explore.

Got out of the movies at 6pm and wandered back to our hotel, getting a feed at a restaurant along the way. Once home we started our packing as tomorrow we are finally moving on and we were both glad to be getting out of Panama City. Panama sort of marks the end of our grand trip as it is the last destination in Latin America as tomorrow we start our journey home with our first hop over to Germany. Tonight was a bit of a sad moment for us to know that this was all coming to an end, but for Shelley it was extra sad as she was saying goodbye to warm weather and heading to a European winter.


Additional photos below
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In the second lock of the Miraflores Locks
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Pedro Miquel Lock
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Entering the Culebra Cut with the new bridge


17th February 2013

You have had quite a journey...
so much time on one continent. And I have enjoyed Following your adventures. I'm looking forward the reading you conclusion about the best and the worst...the must sees and must avoids...hopefully you are planning one! I'll never have time to do what you've done.
20th February 2013

A Conclusion
Have to admit that blogging every day for 500 days has been a chore and we would approach it differently for our next trek. Glad you have enjoyed it but sort of looking forward to getting home and having the time and internet to catch up on other travellers blogs like yourself....there is never enough time or internet when you are on the road. On the flight home i am hoping to put together a nest/worst of and stats if of course i dont just fall in to a coma. Thanks heaps Shelley and Scott
21st February 2013

You have been amazingly diligent...
Knowing how difficult it is to find high speed internet, you have gone above and beyond! I've gone through the same evolution, wanting to post everday...then posting as soon as possible after I get home. I'm about to do an RTW from 21 March to 16 April, doing the Silk Road and the Baltics...and will take my time. So please ignore my pressure, and go home and relax!
27th February 2013

Unbelievable!!!!
Wow!!! What an epic journey you both have been on. I must say i cant wait to see your smiling faces here at home, relaxed and satisfied with your acomplishments.Writing a daily blog on this trip is phenomenal, I must say I have throughly enjoyed your day to day accounts of the natural beauty, human treachery, the now and historcal past of what founded Sth America and still beats its heart today. You are both incredible, absoulutely incredible,thankyou for sharing your thoughts, frustrations, joys and saddness with us all. And as for Panama, wow, thats was so interesting, the ups and downs of how to get from one side of and ocean to the other. Enjoy Germany., and yes I hope you blog that too xxx much love

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