Panama City 9th – 17th September

 

After a 9 hour trip from Boquete (which should have been 7 hours, if it wasn’t for a fallen tree on a truck, totally blocking the road) we arrived in Panama City and ended up at a hostel called Zulys, which is alright but nothing to write home about. The good thing about it is the location, which is very central. The bad thing (s) – I genuinely believe the owner, Zuly was not taught how to smile in childhood – she is grumpy, rude and everything is far too much trouble…not sure about her career choice but there you go. Anyhow, it was adequate, and we arrived late in the evening, so we got on with it.

For the first couple of days, we had to sort out stuff which required a larger city, like insurance forms, posting stuff home, etc – snore! We did make it to Albrook, the big & super cheap shopping centre, which is awesome – think jeans for $5. On the 11th, we had a little ‘holiday’ on the San Blas Islands, which is three hours drive from PC – see previous blog entry.
Returning from the San Blas,
we explored Panama City, going to the Casco Viejo (the old town), which is beautiful and makes a great contrast on the skyline to the equally fabulous modern skyscrapers that are popping up along the sea front. There is an excellent path which goes all the way between the two & makes for a great afternoon walk. We visited another shopping centre, the multi-plaza, which was definitely a playground for the rich and more of a window shop for us, or at least until we get jobs again! The highlight of Panama is definitely the canal. We went to the Miraflores Lock, which is where many ships pass through from Pacific to Caribbean and vice versa, depending on the time of day. They have an excellent museum, which is really informative and well laid out. You can stand and watch the boats coming through, although unfortunately for us, there was a 2.5 hour gap with no boats when we were there, so did not see any. Despite this, it was still a very interesting morning and comes highly recommended. In the evenings we went out for dinner with our boat captain, Tony, to a fun Lebanese restaurant and then an Italian one the next night – always nice to be shown where to go by a local!

In summary, Panama City is a fun place, with a very apparent American influence – a good place to end our Central American adventure before hopping on a flight to pastures cooler, namely, Chile. JG