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Published: August 13th 2006
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Intro to Las Tablas
Under Construction.
Our Experience
We had a pretty quiet trip to Las Tablas. The bus was air conditioned, and it didn't stop much until we neared Las Tablas. It did, however, take quite a while, and by the time we got to town it was very much nighttime. This wouldn't be all that bad, but this town is pretty small and our book only listed one hotel. Fortunately, an English-speaking woman (she sounded and looked American) who lives in Las Tablas told us about a good clean hotel and then even grabbed a cab for us. We got to the hotel just fine, and it turned out to be fairly reasonably priced and probably one of the best rooms we've stayed in. We thoroughly enjoyed our night in A/C-hot water bliss.
The next morning, we had a couple options: 1) catch one of a few buses down to the far southern coast to Pedasi and hope there would be a bus back or 2) figure out a way to get to the beach nearest the town that the book mentioned. We started off the day (after breakfast) by attempting option 1. The problem with option
1 was that Las Tablas doesn't have a central bus port. It has lots of random bus stops and a few places where buses gather (one small note: when I say buses here, I mean little minivanish things). So, our first order of business was to figure out where the buses to Pedasi were located. After asking a random driver of some other bus, we were pointed to a yellow bus parked all alone in the Parque Central. Said bus was empty. So we waited. After about 30 minutes, I decided this might not happen, and went to find a taxi to ask how much it would be for a ride to the local beach (another small note: when I say local beach, I mean a beach that is most definitely not within walking distance. Las Tablas is just kinda near the coast). This proved to be more difficult than I thought. I stood at one end of the square and watched taxis go by on the other end. Unfortunately, when I moved to the other side, the taxis stopped going by and started driving around the end of the square where I was previously located. Lila found this extremely
amusing. Once I finally got ahold of a taxi (by almost jumping out in front of it), I found out that it would cost us $6 to get to the beach. Not all that bad. It's turned out to be a good thing I found that out, because while I was on my epic quest to flag down a taxi, the drive of the Pedasi bus had appeared and told Lila he wasn't leaving until 2PM. This meant that chances are we would not be able to make it back that day, and we had already paid for our hotel room. So, we made the decision to abandon the Pedasi idea and go with the taxi to the beach. Option 2 here we come. The only problem was, I had clearly not been thinking that morning, and I wasn't wearing anything remotely appropriate for the beach. We decided to walk back to the hotel to grab some things and so I could change before heading out.
While we were walking back to the hotel, we starting thinking about how we'd get back from the beach. There wasn't a bus that we knew of, and neither of us know enough
Spanish to actually call for a cab from there. And actually, for all we knew, there might not even be a phone out there to call a cab from. This beach might be just that: sand and water and nothing else. Then we got to the hotel, and the A/C was cool, and the hot water was warm, and the room was big, and the conversation was interesting. Then we thought about the cab ride and getting back from the beach, and we finally decided to just take the afternoon off and rest. It turned out to be quite relaxing, and we ended the day at a great pizza restaurant a few blocks east of the center of town. Before we went to bed, we decided that our plan the next day would be to get all the way to Boquete.
We woke up a bit late the next morning, but shortly after breakfast we began our journey. To get to Boquete from Las Tablas, one has to change buses at Chitre, Santiago, and David. We started out in a minivan sans A/C. Then we moved to a small bus with A/C, and from there we graduated to a Greyhound bus. But... we had to sit on stools in the middle of the isle. We were glad to actually have a bus take us from Santiago to David... but can you believe they keep stools for extra passengers to sit on for a 3.5 hour trip! It was ridiculous. About 1/3 of the way a man gave me his seat (see... nice Central Americans!!) and about 1/2 Joe got a seat. As you might imagine, the remainder of the ride was better. (Our last bus was my personal favorite - a good ole US school bus!)
The entire trip took most of the day, but we eventually found ourselves getting out backpacks off the bus in the center of Boquete - at night and in the rain. At least we made it more or less without any problems.
Up Next...
Boquete baby!
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