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.