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The day before we left Chitre we made the effort of going to the bus station to find out the times of the buses to Panama and were told that there was one at 7.30am but we could not buy tickets until around half an hour before. When we arrived the following morning just before 7am, the desk we had been to was closed and their notice board said that there were no buses until 4pm! There were clearly people getting on a bus to Panama and it eventually turned out that they were just filling up buses and leaving when they were ready so we joined the queue.
We arrived into Panama crossing the Puente de las Americas at the mouth of the Panama Canal....more of which later. It was hot and humid and we were feeling rather lazy so we didn't really head out until around 4ish when the heavy rain had finished and then we just went for a nose around.
Panama City is large and full of skyscrapers, mostly recently built or still being built as there is a huge property boom going on. While we were there we read a newspaper headline which said
that nearly 1/3 of the population of Panama are foreigners. Most are Americans of course but there's a fair smattering of Europeans and people from almost anywhere else you can imagine. It seems to be designed like an American city as well, i.e. for cars! Crossing roads is difficult and walking to anywhere is not very convenient which makes it an awkward city if you don't have your own transport. Taxis are plentiful and reasonable but you have to negotiate the price every trip and some of them will not budge from stupid high prices so you just have to let them go. In addition none of them seem to know anywhere in the city, not even the largest streets.
We had 4 full days in the city which is not really enough time. Unfortunately quite a lot of this time was taken up with stupid admin things which kept going wrong and requiring us to find internet cafes/places we could send faxes from/banks, none of which were near where we were staying. The most irritating being when H received an email from the hotel we were supposed to be staying in when we got to Buenos Aires saying
that they were cancelling our reservation because they had workmen in who had run over....aaagh!
Anyway, we did see some wonderful things too. Within the city there was Panama Viejo, the ruins of the original city of Panama which aren't quite as impressive as we'd hoped and which turned out not to be free (or was the man wandering round the grounds that we had entered without being asked to pay just trying to scam us?), and the museum had moved and when we did find it, was closed on Mondays! Much more beautiful was Casco Viejo, a crumbling colonial neighbourhood that is gradually being restored which reminded us of Havana. It also had the most fantastic gelato shop! We spent much of the afternoon in a museum about the history of the building of the canal which had masses of information, unfortunately only in Spanish, but we managed to get a lot out of it. On leaving the museum we were struggling to get a taxi and found ourselves outside the tourist police office and got chatting to one of the policemen. He tried to help us get a taxi but with no success so instead offered us
a ride in a police minibus which was heading in the right direction and he said would drop us nearer our hotel where it would be easier. Little did we realise that this would be an hour and a half round trip to drop off various police officers at the start of their shift all over the city, in rush hour traffic. The policemen (all men!) were oggling all the girls on the street and making lots of jokes but were reasonably friendly. However, we could have walked home by the time they finaly drove somewhere near where we were staying.
One of the difficult admin things had been organising a day trip to an island in the middle of the lake which the canal goes through. This is now protected and operated as a research station by the Smithsonian Institute but they also allow a few public visitors everyday. The island was formed when the canal was built and the river was flooded to form a lake so that many animals fled from the water to the land of the island. There is a boat which takes people working on the island over from the mainland but this
leaves at 7.15am from some distance from the city so it was a very early taxi for us as there were warnings that if you were late the boat would go without you. While we were there more than half an hour early, this warning turned out to be true as 3 people who were booked on the trip turned up just as the boat was pulling away and he wouldn't stop for them. I would've been livid as, by my watch, it was not yet quarter past.
It was a hot and humid walk for 3 hours on the island which was beautiful and interesting but unfortunately there was not much wildlife out apart from a couple of howlers, an agouti and a couple of birds. Oh and of course, the obligatory insects which will always choose me as a home. After the walk I had to remove 4 ticks from my legs where they had hooked themselves in for a feed. Luckily they don't carry Lyme Disease on the island!
We also saw some of the research projects that are going on and had a slide show about the history of the island before getting the
boat back. There was one guy on the trip called Alejandro who was from Panama City and he offered us a lift back to the city in his car. He then proceeded to give us his own tour starting with seeing the cuyacos or small rowing boats which he rows in various races including one through the canal each year. He then took us to look at a very swanky hotel in the rainforest with great views over the river and then to one of the locks on the canal where we watched large ships being guided in by small trains and tug boats - fascinating. Alejandro was clearly proud of his city and seemed to enjoy showing us around and we had a great time, arriving back into the city much later than we expected.
Our final day we headed for the visitor centre at the Miraflores Lock, the one nearest the city. We spent more than an hour watching the ships navigate the locks and had a quick run round the museum but this didn't have nearly as much information as the history one (though was partly in English!).
From there we took a cab to
the Calzada or Causeway which runs from the mainland across 4 small islands just off the Pacific coast. There is another small reserve owned by the Smithsonian Institute where we spent the afternoon watching coatis, various birds and finally.......a sloth! I had been really hoping to see one on most of our other wildlife trips. They obviously don't move very much so are difficult to spot high up in the trees (though they don't run away either!) but there it was. And it even moved, well, a little, just enough to see its face. There were also some small educational areas with fish, turtles and starfish which H rather took to.
The other highlight of Panama City was curry - so good we went twice as we'd been rather deprived for the last few months.
And so ended our time in Central America. While it was hard to believe that our 3 months or so were up I think we were both ready to go somewhere a little cooler and a little easier. And a month in Buenos Aires was beckoning - but first we had to get there......
Espero que todos estan bien?
¡Hasta luego!
S + H xx
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