Blogs from Panama City, Panamá, Panama, Central America Caribbean - page 21

!Hola! Finally a sunday afernoon to send out some news. We've been go go go since we arrived, hardly sleeping at home so I have little time to get on the net! Classes started monday and we had our one and only lecture in a classroom, making groups and talking about our projects and papers for this first class we have, called Environmental History of Panama. Tuesday we took off for a 2-day trip in the mountains in the West in the province of Veraguas, leaving at 6am. We travelled to a sugar cane plantation and an old abandoned Canadian mine site and received lectures in spanish from people who work or had worked there. We stayed in a little mountain town called Santa Fe for the night and spent the whole next day there talking ... read more

Managua, Nicaragua, a martes 22 de septiembre del 2009. Saludos a todos. Pues aquì sigo en la calurosa, pero agradable, Managua. Iba a ser una escala "tècnica" para descansar y peluquearme en mi camino hacia Honduras (hubieran sido varias horas en autobùs desde Panamà y habìa que descansar las piernas), pero justamente ahora que estaba por cruzar se le ocurriò al loco del ex presidente hondureño Zelaya entrar ilegalmente a Honduras un dìa antes que yo (se hubiera aguantado una semana el infeliz, pero ni modo), y ahora ya tienen toque de queda (todos encerraditos durante tarde y noche) y cerraron la frontera a transporte comercial y de pasajeros (hace unas horas)... Claro, en las terminales de autobuses dicen que pueden verder el boleto, pero que no garantizan la salida del autobùs... Como no quiero gastar ... read more

We wanted to spend some more time in Panama but we had already spent way more time in Central America and we were eager to reach Colombia. In Panama City we explored the old city which was destroyed by Captain Henry Morgan in the 1600s. Some of it had been rebuilt but there were a lot of buildings with collapsed floors either filled with garbage or quite contrastingly, plants and trees. Everywhere you looked there were stark contrasts. You would see a fine dining restaurant next to an ancient abandoned building, and next to that an equally decrepit crumbling building but with several families living in it. As beautiful as it was, it was quite a dangerous area where we could not go out at night. A group of 15 big guys were robbed at gunpoint ... read more

Today we took a cab to the Panama Canal. Unfortunately our timing was off and we waited for over an hour with no signs of any boats passing through. Finally, a couple of very large boats approached so we were able to get pictures but had to leave before we actually saw one pass through the locks. We also made the mistake of cheaping out and only buying tickets for the observation deck for $5 instead of the $8 general admission which meant missing out on the 3-story museum and the theater. So if you ever take a trip to the Panama Canal, just pay the extra $3 - this is not the time to get cheap, especially when you may be waiting an hour and a half for a boat to arrive. Tonight we learned ... read more

A Banana Bridge forms the border between Costa Rica and Panama. For miles and miles on either side of the border there are vast banana plantations with blue plastic bags covering the bunches of bananas hanging on the trees to ensure that they reach our supermarkets in pristine condition. Going down to the border there are container depots everywhere including the Man from Delmonte - its the first real industrial area we have passed for weeks, everywhere else has been pristine, green tropical countryside and little villages. The banana bridge is what it says - basically a bridge across the river to carry the train that carries the bananas. Being a railway bridge its got train tracks down the centre and a couple of planks on either side - well there are planks most of the ... read more