Panamá

After Colombia almost anywhere would have been a bit of a let down. So no surprises, Panamá was pretty ordinary.

Panamá is famous for the Panamá canal, a narrow stretch of water cut through the isthmus between North and South America to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific ocean. It was built around 1914 by engineers from the United States and imported labour other countries. Today it carries about 5% of the world's shipping and about 20% of the sea freight to the United States. What you see as you fly in is about 100 ships anchored in the bay waiting to come through the canal. The bay has skyscrapers built right to the water's edge. At the canal, acres of containers are stacked up about 4 or 5 high with massive cranes for loading these onto the ships. The Panamá canal area was leased to the United States for about 90 years. The USA invaded here militarily in 1989 to protect its own interests.

Panama used to be a part of Colombia and when we were here they were celebrating their independence day. The price of independence from Colombia was paid for by a new dependence on the United States it seems.

Panamanians are a very relaxed bunch of people. Nothing seems to matter much to them. When we arrived at the airport we were told that we could not go through immigration because we needed to fill out another form. So we asked where the forms were and were told "over there". So we went around looking for the forms, up some stairs, and still had no idea. A couple of other tourists we met got the same treatment. After about 10 minutes of unproductive searching I went back and asked again, only to be told again that they were "over there". Welcome to Panamá!

Eventually someone came and helped us out so we got through and got a taxi to our accommodation. It was in a 5 storey building and the reception was on the top floor. The lift was out so we had to lug our 21 kg packs all the way up the stairs. The temperature would have been about 30 degrees and the humidity probably about 95%. It was pouring with rain outside. Welcome to Panamá!

While here we met another Tasmanian (from Launceston) who was on one year's leave from the Army, on a $5000 round-the-world airfare that gave him 20 stopovers ... not bad. He had been serving in Afganistan in infantry. He seemed like a good bloke but bragged a bit about all the blinders he'd been on. You get that I suppose if you have served in a war.

After a day or so we headed out of the capital city, into the countryside, to an area called El Valle (the valley). El Valle is a small village sitting inside an extinct volcano. It is surrounded by steep sided mountains covered in tropical forest. Many wealthy Panamanians come here for their holidays. We got off the bus where we were supposed to stop and tried ringing our accommodation from the public phone but it wasn't working. So we felt a bit stuck. In the end we went into a nearby restaurant and paid them $1 and got through, and were then picked up and taken to our room. The place we stayed at was called the Golden Frog named after the local amphibian species. It was really nice, good rooms, great garden, good service, no complaints really, except that it was about 3 km out of town, and they didn't serve meals, only breakfast.

In Panamá, at this time of the year it rains heavily each day. One day we went and visited a serpentarium (snake enclosure) that was only about 1 km from where we were staying. Unfortunately we got lost walking back and caught in the rain. It *really* poured and we got so wet so quickly that it wasn't worth trying to shelter in the end. We ended up walking past a bunch of locals in a bus shelter 3 times and I can only guess how stupid they must of thought we were. In the end we paid them $1 to use their phone to ring the people at our accommodation to come and get us.

We also went on a canopy tour in the forest that involved a guided walk up a steep hill on a muddy track in very humid weather then coming back down on a series of flying foxes. This was pretty good but expensive, just over $US50 each for about an hour.

After a few days we headed back to Panamá City to our dodgy hostel. There was no evidence that it had ever been cleaned at least when we were there. One good thing though it had air conditioning. Here we met up with Mikayla who arrived about 4 hours late from Costa Rica. Kim was getting a bit worried.

Our next destination in Panamá was Bocas del Toro (Mouths of Bull) which involved staying on a remote tropical island. We had to catch a bus at night and arrived a our destination feeling a little delirious at about 6 am. The air conditioner on the bus was going flat out all night and it ended up feeling really cold on the bus. It isn't normal to feel cold here.

After we arrived we were whisked off in a taxi to where the boat left from. Then we had about a half hour boat trip to the island followed by another taxi ride on a very rough and wet, muddy road to our accommodation. We were lucky to make it, the road was that bad. Apparently the taxi got stuck heading back. We had cabins built into the hill right beside and above the beach. It was quite hot here most of the time and even more humid. Everything felt damp from the humidity. Interestingly, there were hardly any mosquitoes.

While we were here we went snorkeling. You could see some small colourful fish swimming around the rocks. Its a long time since I've been snorkeling, it was great, it made me think about getting a diver's license when I get back. The thought of sharks did enter my mind a few times. Another time I did a short walk through the bush here. About four dogs followed me. The bush was really tropical with bananas and coconuts growing wild.

We saw a family of locals, possibly indigenous people, arrive on the beach to harvest a heap of coconuts and some bananas. One bloke sat out in a long skinny boat while the rest of the family were on shore. One of the girls would swim out with bags of the coconuts. The kids were having fun playing on the beach. An idyllic setting really, at least until they chucked their plastic coke bottle into the water as they left.

Before we left we did a tour of the Panamá Canal interpretation centre and watched some ships coming through. The water is on different levels and you see large doors opening after the sections are filled or emptied. The whole system is gravity fed and works really quickly.

Another highlight was a visit to a huge shopping mall near the bus terminal. It was absolutely massive and would take more than a day to see it all. We both lashed out a bit here and knocked the budget around a bit, but oh well. This photo is of just a part of the food court section.

Catching up from Nicaragua

Since the last post we have travelled through Panama and Costa Rica. We are now in Nicaragua. This place is amazing - huge inland freshwater lakes and active volcanoes. It has been hard to get near a fast and reliable Internet connection for a couple of weeks now, so it is difficult to update the blog. But I will get around to it. We are still alive and well. It is very hot and I am even getting a suntan. I reluctantly admit that I have had to wear shorts for the first time in years!!!!

Colombia

When we were planning this holiday, much of the research we did depicted Colombia as being very dangerous, so we didn't plan to come here originally. Fearing kidnapping, corrupt military, drug lords, thieves, plagues and pestilence, we thought it would be better to be safe than sorry and stay away. However, after we arrived in South America, we spoke to quite a few tourists that had been through Colombia and every one of them spoke so highly of the place that we began to change our minds. Other than that, almost every day on the television, we saw advertisements for Colombia showing beautiful photos and ending with the slogans, "The biggest risk you will take, is not wanting to leave", and "The biggest risk you will take is falling in love". A final factor was making a mistake with our travel plans in Chile, which meant that we bypassed the top of Argentina and the salt pans of Bolivia, that we originally planned to visit, meaning that we had another week or so up our sleeves to spend some time checking out Colombia.

We arrived at the airport about 8 pm and saw heaps of police and military types. People were being checked, searched and sniffed by the drug dog as they were arriving. We knew to catch the authorised taxi to our accommodation in Bogotá and this all happened very smoothly. The next day at breakfast, we met some European tourists that knew a bit about Colombia and spoke Spanish pretty well. They were friendly and helped interpret the breakfast menu. Also they had been to Ecuador and shared our opinions about how it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. While discussing Bogotá they told us about an area called Zona Rosa, which had lots of restaurants, was pretty safe for tourists and worth a visit.

Zona Rosa was great with street dining, markets, different types of restaurants including Middle-Eastern and Mexican, shopping malls, the usual people on the street selling cheap Rolex watches, sunglasses, mobile phone covers and other stuff that you never ever want to buy. We also visited a part of the old city in Bogotá that has a large museum full of artifacts that date back to pre-Columbian civilisations. Most of the tings on display were made from gold and some date back as much as 2000 years. Gold was highly valued by these people because it did not tarnish and reflected the sun. As these people worshipped the sun, having gold was like having a small part of the sun that could be carried around.

After Bogota we went to Cartagena (pronounced 'Carta-henya'). Cartagena is a bit like Surfers Paradise, but on the Caribbean coast. This was probably the best experience of the trip so far. Imagine crossing Spain with Africa and you pretty much have it. Black African-looking people dancing on the streets

to the sound of drums and their own singing. The streets are very narrow and the buildings are of a Spanish style with small balconies facing the street on the first floor. It was really hot and humid most of the time we were here. Cartagena has a pretty interesting history dating back to the 1500's involving conflict between the Spanish and the English, looting by pirates, even Sir Frances Drake got into the act. These wars and raids caused the Spanish to build a huge wall around the city which still exists today.

While in Cartagena we stayed on an island about 2kms off the coast of the main city at a resort. Most of the time we were here we had the entire resort to ourselves. I read the guest book back for about 10-15 pages and didn't see one Australian entry. However on the second day we were here a couple of Australians from Sydney turned up. The female Australian asked me where we were from and when I said we were from Tasmania, she said "well you can't help bad luck I suppose". Thankfully I managed to get in a small dig. I quickly said to her, "well, I used to like Sydney too". Then the bloke asks "what do you mean used to like Sydney?" my kind nature kicked in and I kept my mouth shut, rather than saying "that is until I met you two". When you are overseas generally speaking people are fascinated by Tasmania and know something about it, especially the Tasmanian Devil. Australian mainlanders however pity us, and from my perspective the feeling is mutual. Try going overseas and saying that you are from Victoria, Queensland or New South Wales then expect the next question to be "where's that?".

While we were on the island we met some of the locals. The lady that ran the resort was really friendly towards us and so too was the security guard that worked there. These were the first people that I managed to actually converse with in Spanish, however, the conversations were pretty basic. Much of the time I was comparing my suntan with the lady, as she was pretty dark skinned, and I am so white, it became a bit of a joke between us. I kept saying that I would become 'bronseado' today which means suntanned. She didn't like having to look after too many guests and didn't go much on Americans ... I wonder why? The security guard had a really easy job, just sitting around most of the night and occasionally shining his torch near the pool. We were shouting him beers and he was pretty keen to drink them, despite having to carry a .38 calibre pistol as part of his job. He even invited us to his house, not far from where we stayed, and we met his wife and children. The whole time we were there we had to rely on our Spanish to communicate so it was pretty challenging.

We got into a bit of a routine on the island. Sleeping in until about 9 o'clock, then breakfast, Kim would swim in the pool in the morning but I retired to the air conditioned room and catch up with writing the blog, mainly because the sun would be out in the morning and it was very hot, probably about 36-37 degrees. After lunch, sometimes I would have a quick siesta then go for a swim in the pool. I ended up swimming about 60 laps on one day without stopping, which would be almost a kilometer ... not too bad for an old bloke :). I also was teaching Kim a bit more about swimming.

(I´ll fix this photo later)

After about five days of this we returned to Cartagena and spent some time walking around the city. One cultural difference that was hard not to notice was the different attitude towards alcohol. Near where we stayed there are open plazas where people congregate surrounded by shops. Some of the shops are like milk bars back home that also sell alcohol. Heaps of young people were going in and buying beers and spirits. They even open the beers up for you. Then people would go out onto the street or into the plaza and drink. The police were present the whole time either in a van, or on motorbikes or just on foot. The strange thing was that there was no yelling, no fighting, no glass breaking, just the gentle buzz of conversation, despite heaps of young people drinking straight spirits. Maybe Australians could learn from this. It also seemed like a good way for the police to improve their image with young people, just by being there and talking to them while they are having fun.

While in Cartagena we walked around in the warm nights, through the historic and narrow streets and not once did we ever feel in the slightest bit of danger. People were getting driven around in horse-drawn carriages and there were almost no cars on the streets. Almost everyone we met was friendly and wanted to help us. You could really start to get used to this place. The advertisement was ringing true, we weren't that keen on leaving.

Finally we headed back to Bogotá and did a couple more trips to Zona Rosa and the old city. We visited the old city and walked past the highly guarded presidential palace. We also visited the local art gallery which featured original works from Picasso, Monet, Salvador Dali, Renoir, Chigall and Colombia's home grown artist Fernando Botero.

I would love to come back to Colombia one day ... on a scale of 1 to 10 it gets an 11.