PANAMA CITY AND DAY TRIPS

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Hola a tod@s. I'm back by absolutely zero public demand whatsoever this time bugging ya'll with tales from a few more Latin American countries. I can confirm that I am still alive and despite what some people were thinking, I haven't been eaten by a monkey. Yet. More or less picking up from where I left off the last time the plan is to start off in Panama City and work my way up by land to Cuba where I'll be flying home from. This will mean taking in the delights that Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador (if I'm feeling brave), Guatemala (volunteering for a month), Belize, Southern Mexico and lastly Cuba have to offer. It sounds like a lot but with 5 months to fit it all in I should be able to manage it. Due to my hectic schedule up to this point (read: laziness) I've been a wee bit slow in getting around to writing what I'm up to. As I write this I'm actually sat in a hostel in Nicaragua on the beautiful island of Ometepe. But for now I have to think back to Panama. So, rewinding a couple of months...

I left the UK on the morning of 12th January destination Panama City. The flight left pretty early from Heathrow so I headed down the night before and stayed in an Easy Hotel room. After just a few hours kip I was taken to the airport still half asleep and pretty blurry-eyed and all I wanted to do was get on the plane to Madrid and relax a little. Unfortunately Iberia had other plans and told me they wouldn't check me in for the flight as I didn't have an onward journey ticket leaving Panama within the 90 days. As most people know, I'm not really a morning person so my overall mood before I was told this little gem wasn't that great to begin with. I questioned why this wasn't written anywhere on the Iberia website to which the guy replied it's the customer's responsibility to know these things. So I was made to buy an onward ticket – in this case to Miami – just to be able to show upon arrival to Panama. The cost was refunded – minus a 40 pound cancellation fee of course. Other travelers need to be careful with this and should think about buying a coach ticket out of the country in advance.

Other than that the flights were ok and I passed through passport control without anyone asking me anything about onward tickets. After such a long journey it was great to see a familiar face when Lis appeared ready with a taxi to take us to her apartment in the Marbella district of the city, just off Avenida Balboa – the main street that runs along the bay area. I spent the following four weeks getting to know the city and some of the surrounding places including trips to both the Caribbean and Pacific side of the country.

Having just come from the freezing cold UK, the first notable thing about the city was the humidity. Although the temperature never went above 30 degrees it was close to impossible to do anything during the afternoon hours – I realised this after about a week of having to take 3 showers a day just to feel semi-clean. I got around the city in two different ways – one life-threatening, the other semi-life-threatening. 'Los Diablos Rojos' are the deathtrap buses. They're old decommissioned school buses from the States – the style that Otto drives in The Simpsons all elaborately decorated and painted. It took a while but I managed to figure them out and took a few successful trips. They're neither comfortable nor safe and they go at a snails pace, but they are cheap! So most of the time I got around in taxis which isn't as easy as you might think. In most places in the World you hail a taxi, it stops, you say where you wanna go and the taxi takes you. Simple. In Panama City however a lot of the time they either don't stop or if they don't fancy going where you wanna go they just drive off. The other odd thing is that taxis are shared meaning you can be on your way somewhere minding your own business and a couple of strangers will jump in the same taxi wanting to go to the other side of the city! I got in someone else's taxi once and then another person got in after me making us 3 completely unrelated people going to 3 completely different places in the same taxi.

The first weekend I was there was Lis's birthday celebration. The night consisted of touring around the city in a Limo Bus – basically a luxury coach kitted out with a free bar, a dance floor, a couple of leather seats and even a plasma TV in the toilet. Classy. We went around the city although given that there was no open top I doubt anyone would’ve noticed if we’d just gone round the same block twenty times. The main attraction was the free bar and the dance pole – both of which were really well used.

During my time in the city I managed to see the main points of interest. I quite enjoyed wandering around Casco Viejo – the old part of town with plenty of character. Although I haven’t been to Havana yet, from the pictures I’ve seen I thought Casco Viejo looked pretty similar – cobble stone streets and plenty of derelict buildings in need of some TLC. I also went to Panama Viejo to see the ruins of where the city used to be and Parque Metropolitano, which is the park to the north of the city and it has quite a good view of the whole city from the top lookout point. Finally, no trip to Panama City I guess is complete until you’ve seen the canal. I’ve seen plenty of canals before and plenty of boats being raised and lowered so I wasn’t really expecting anything amazing, but I must confess that watching the huge cargo ships and cruise liners pass through was impressive. As it all happens you can listen to the commentary informing everyone of how it all works.

With one weekend we took a trip up to Isla Mamey on the Caribbean coast. We rented a car and drove it up past Colon and Portobelo to a point where boats leave for the island. I drove the way there, which was ok once we were on the motorway, but getting out of the city was a tad nerve-wracking. Still, I managed to get us there without killing anyone so I was happy enough and the island was well worth the trip. On another weekend we again rented a car and this time headed down to the Pacific coast to a place called Pedasi. From there we hopped over to Isla Iguana and the next day continued further south to Playa Venao. For a moment it seemed like we were going to spend more time there than planned when the designated driver decided to go swimming with the car keys in his pocket and lose them! There wasn’t much we could do except call the company and get someone to make the 6 hour journey with the spare set of keys. But just as we were preparing ourselves for a super late arrival back to the city some other tourist miraculously found the keys and handed them in. The poor guy from the car company had already been driving 3 hours! Playa Venao was nice but Isla Iguana was really quite beautiful.

The only other wee trip I did was to “El Valle” – a cute little chill-out town two and a half hours from the city. I went there for two days which was enough to go to the natural hot springs where I put some mud on my face and soaked in the warm water for a while, see the Chorro El Macho Waterfall where I swam in the baltic natural swimming pool and finally visit the slightly depressing “zoo”. The only good thing about that zoo was the frog enclosure in which I got to see the endangered Rana Dorada (Golden Frog), the symbol of Panama’s fauna. But I have to say that the rest of the enclosures were a little bit sad and it didn’t appear that the animals were particularly looked after.

I’ve uploaded a selection of photos to Flickr from my time in Panama City and also of subsequent trips to San Blas, Boquete, Bocas del Toro and Puerto Viejo (Costa Rica). I’ll get around to writing those blogs soon, and I promise they’ll be a little shorter! Copy and paste the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13183189@N06/

Ciao for now.

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