Day 89 - Venturing outside the compound...

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Since there is absolutely nothing to do within several miles of our hostal - with the notable exception of Miraflores Lock, which we visited yesterday, we caught a bus downtown. Unfortunately downtown Panama City doesn't have an awful lot to offer and to make matters worse it is spread along about 10 miles of ocean. We decided to restrict ourself to one small bit a 3 mile long causeway that stretches out into the Pacific. A hundred years ago there was a clump of 4 small islands of shore, but when they built the canal they put a lot of the excavated earth and rocks to good use by constructing this causeway. This wasn't with one eye on the needs of 21st century tourists but rather was just because they needed a 3 mile long break water to stop the Pacific entrance to the canal from silting up and becoming to shallow for the enormous ships that pass through here.

The length of the causeway seems to be the subject of some debate, when we asked one group of people how long it would take to walk along we had replies including "15 minutes", "45 minutes" and "I had to stop 3 times to catch my breath". We won't put this bunch on our 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' phone-a-friend list.

They've clearly invested heavily in tourism infrastructure (bars, restaurants, shops and so on) but the important missing ingredient seems to be the tourist. It's like a ghost town.

Still, we enjoyed ourselves, getting our trip through the canal sorted out for tomorrow. We had a nice lunch but then had to endure the fuss they make when you pay with a $50 bill - name, address, passport number, signature, moody waitress and serious-looking manager. It may be true that it's not a first world country, but since $50 bills are what ATMs hand out, they might as well just get used to it.

Then we caught a micro - a minibus that is a very familiar sight in cities over here - back to the edge of our compound / gated community, and spent the whole evening in the hostel with our babysitter (we're the only people staying there, but some chap sits there channel surfing in the vain hope that someone else will turn up).

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Comments

[Edilsa Batista Hinton]

Sorry,you didnt like Panama. I supposed you had better stayed in the U.S,right?