Panama

Panama city

We flew to Panama City via Miami.  After a week of “cold” weather we were back to the heat.  We shared a cab with yet another Canadian, who happened to speak some Spanish.  He translated whatever our driver had to say, and which was that the area where our hotel was located was not particularly safe to walk at night.  We contemplated briefly whether to change to the hotel where the Canadian was staying, but it was more expensive, and we decided to stick with what we our original choice.  The hotel turned out to be iffy, but pretty close to the old town, Casco Viejo.  We took a quick shower, and headed out.  The part of town where we stayed was unimpressive to say the least, but was not a complete dump.  It had a few hotels, a few corner mini marts, and some big buildings that seemed to be half-abandoned.  Luckily, after walking about 5 minutes we discovered a nice walking path along the waterfront which led right to the old town.

Right behind was the cityscape of the “new” Panama City.

Old town was very pleasant to walk around.  It had a vibe that I coined Cuban, even though we’ve never been, but I think that’s what Cuba should be like.  Colorful, but poorly up kept buildings, some of which had no insides, just the outer walls.  Those that were in good shape usually turned out to be a restaurant, or a hotel.  

We quickly discovered that we were not in Asia anymore.  The prices here were significantly higher.

The next day we headed to Miraflores Locks, i.e. Panama Canal; visited the museum, learned about the history, and the future, saw a big ocean cruiser go through, took some pictures.  The construction was impressive, even though it is not as huge as I thought it was going to be.  I was hoping to see another Hoover dam.  

This was our opportunity to catch up on the 7th grade Social Studies class. (Especially for those who didn't have schooling in the U.S.) The history and the importance of the Canal is vast and impressive. If you want to learn (or remind yourself of it) check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Panama_Canal 

In the evening we headed to a place that sounded good from description, and judging by our tourist map was not far away.  After walking for about an hour on some shady streets we gave up on that idea, and ended up having dinner in the old town again.

2012.01.07 Panama City

 

Boquete

Next morning we took a bus towards Boquete.  That is we took a bus towards David, and from there we’d go to Boquete.  While waiting for the bus we met a couple of Russians from Israel, Daniel and Ben. Luckily for us Daniel, who by the way is a girl regardless of the spelling of the name, speaks Spanish fluently, and knows a lot about the region because she works as a tour guide in this area.  As Julie discovered, "Donde esta la biblioteca" is one of the very few things that she remembers from hischool Spanish. And this particular phrase proves useless as we are never actually searching for a library.

Boquete is a cozy little town that’s a favorite with the American expats of retirement age.  It’s got large communities built specifically for that purpose.

Things to do in Boquete include walking about the town, enjoying the mountain air, drinking local coffee.  For everything else you need to actually leave Boquete, which we did not realize before we came.

There are a lot of other activities that you can do – hiking, biking, white water rafting, visiting the hot springs, but all of them require either booking a trip, or getting there by some way of transport.  Booking a trip is quite costly, at least we did not see anything that looked cheap.  Getting, say, to a hot springs by bus would take about 2 hours, one of which we’d have to walk, and the bus only goes about 3 times a day; the other option was to get a cab that would cost us about $60; the third was of course a tour, that cost $30 per person.  We almost did a cool 20km hike, we were even ready to split the cab with the Russians to get us to the trail head, but then we read online that the trail was not maintained since 2009, and there was a good chance it would be at times “missing”.  So we ended up just chilling in the town instead.  On the last night we were there, a local fair of flowers and coffee started, and we got to enjoy what sounded more like a rave till about 4am.  The next morning we had to get up at 7am to catch our bus to our next destination, Bocas del Toro.

 

2012.01.09 Boquete

 

Bocas del Toro

Daniel and Ben left a couple of days before us, as soon as they learned that the hike was off.  They were heading to Costa Rica, so we did not expect to see them until some time later.  But when we got to Bocas del Toro we ran into them on the street.  Turns out when they saw the archipelago from the bus window they decided to make a detour, and stop by the islands.

Bocas del Toro is a small beach town on Isla Colon.  We heard that 5 years ago it was quite different, without any tourists, and primarily fishing industry.  Now it’s full of restaurants, hotels, and tourist agencies.  On our first day we decided to stop by the local hospital because my poison oak was not getting better even though I was out of my steroid pills, and the hospital was nearby.  The hospital was as one might expect it to be in a small fishing village, but luckily the doctor was not there after 4pm, so we promptly left never to return (poison oak got better the following day.)  

On our second day we headed to Bocas del Drago, a better beach, which was about 13km away.  Daniel told us about a local bus that would take us there.  We boarded the bus, as did the other 40 passengers, never mind that the bus was built for 20.  Luckily the ride was only about 40 minutes once we were moving – we were waiting for the bus to be sufficiently full before we started moving.  The driver kept stopping picking up passengers along the way, and somehow they all fit.  At one point Julie was sitting in my lap, at another somebody’s bag was sitting on my shoulder.  The beach turned out to be OK, the only outstanding thing about it was the multitude of starfish.

The weather was unfortunately windy, and not extremely sunny, so as soon as the nearby food vendor decided to test the limits of his very old and crappy stereo, we headed back.

The following day the plan was to take a tour to see the dolphins, to snorkel a bit, and to chill on a beach on a nearby island.  Unfortunately the morning greeted us with a heavy rain, so unwilling to waste an extra day we left the island heading for Costa Rica.

2012.01.13 Bocas Del Toro