Panama

10 February 2008
Costa Rica / Panama Border, Panama
                The bus to David was another big van, which was filled to the brim with people.  The ride to David was to take around 2 hours.  Once again “Manuel” was incorrect.  We got to David about 45 minutes later, Perfect!  Arriving in David we got on another bus to Boquete, a small town in the mountains.
                Arriving in Boquete around 9:30, we began the search for a place to stay.  The first place we wanted to stay in had no vacancy.  The second and third options we had elected to try out of the book had no vacancy.  This was not fun.  We then began asking every hostel/hotel we came across about vacancy.  We finally came across a place with a room open, but there was no hot water.  Granted it was only for $10.  We decided to use them as a back up and checked two other places.  There was a hostel with two dorm beds available in opposite rooms.  And there was a hotel with a room with 3 beds for $30, but no bathroom in the room.  We went back to the room with the bathroom with cold water, and unloaded our bags.  Finally our bags were off our backs, but we were starving.  Leaving San Isidro, neither of us were really hungry so we had only had a pastry, and juice.  Throughout the day we nibbled on crackers and peanut butter, but we had not a meal all day.
                Luckily we stumbled upon a pizza restaurant that was open every day until 11:00 at night and since it was 9:40, this was perfect.   We ordered a medium pizza to share, and a couple of beers.  This was heaven.  After dinner we crashed for the night after the crazy travel day.

11 February 2008
Boquete/Panama City, Panama
                Today was to be our first day apart for a bit.  We were going to try and get Anna on a coffee plantation tour and Doug needed to do some research for filing taxes this year (somehow Anna came out ahead on this deal).
                First we needed to do some laundry.  With everything gathered up we began walking to the coffee shop with a bag of dirty laundry.  There was a place on the way up that said they could have it all done by 5 pm.  We left it with them.
                While continuing to walk up to the coffee shop we were fighting our way through rain.  By the time we reached the coffee shop the front of both our clothes were completely drenched.  Anna inquired about the tour and was happy to learn there was still room for her to join.
                While waiting we met some nice girls from San Diego.  They had just started a little vacation up through Central America.  We traded traveling info and then said our farewells as Anna went off to do the coffee tour and Doug went off to do taxes.
                Doug went down the hill and found an internet café and worked taxes and also did some flight research on flying from Panama City to Cartagena.  The main airline looked pretty expensive, but there was a small Colombia based carrier that provided flights much cheaper, unfortunately their web page was only in Spanish.  Doug can read enough Spanish to make sure the main details are correct, but there is also a lot of fine print and not being able to read that kept him from putting down $300 plus dollars.
                Around 12:30 Anna was back and we had a decision to make.  Doug had looked up the weather and the raining wasn’t going to stop for the next few days.  Boquete had a lot to offer (we where both really looking forward to a hike up to the continental divide where you can see both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans while standing on land) but with the weather the way it was we reluctantly decided to move on to better climate.
                We got back to our hotel and checked out about 5 minutes late, thankfully the lady running the place was very understanding.  With our bags on we headed up to the laundry place hoping that maybe our clothes were done early.  When we got there we discovered they hadn’t even begun yet.
                “Manuel” said there was a nice garden right next to the coffee shop we were at this morning so we hiked back up the hill.  When we got to the garden it was a little strange because the place is essentially a private residence that allows people to just walk around and look at the garden.  As we made our way around we found a beautiful property with myriad tropical plants, fun sculptures and ponds loaded with fish.  The camera came out and we snapped a bunch of photos as we made our way through.  Near the end we received permission from one of the workers to take his photo.  As we left we found it strange that there was no entrance fee and not even a place to ask for donations.  It was very generous of family that lived there.
                Back into town we stopped for a juice before heading back to the internet café so Anna could make a phone call.  Just as we were about to go into the café a guy was outside on his laptop.  He said there was an unsecure network to his friends work and that we could jump on.  Doug did some work on the internet while Anna made her call.
                After a bit we were getting restless and decided to check on laundry again.  It was only around 4 pm, but we thought we’d give it a try.  Once we were there the lady said she had just put it in and now it would be ready at 5:30.  Uuuurrrgghhh.
                Not sure what to do for an hour and half we walked until we found a neat little bakery.  Inside Anna found some good looking food and when Doug found out these guys also had wireless, we settled in until it was time to get laundry.
                When we arrived back at the laundry place, the lady was in the middle of folding our clothes.  We quickly stuffed our bags and went to the bus station.
                The bus back to David was about half full and we were able to put our bags in the back.  When it arrived in David we were directed to the end of the bus terminal for our bus to Panama City.  Thankfully the bus was leaving in about 30 minutes so we got dinner, chicken, rice and our first bag of popcorn since before we left.  The chicken and rice were fine but the lady burned our popcorn and it was barely edible.
                Once on the bus the assistant put on a pirated copy of “I Am Legend.”  Neither of us had seen the movie before so we were happy to see a new movie.  Unfortunately the sound would frequently cut in and out.  And it required the passenger right in front to reach up and touch the volume button every time it cut out.  After doing it about 15 times in 5 minutes he gave up and the bus watched the movie without sound.
                It was about 2:30 in the morning when we got to Panama City.  “Manuel” said it was probably a good idea to take a cab so you didn’t get mugged on the bus, so that’s what we did.  When we told the cab driver the hotel we wanted to go to he went through his routine about how the hotel is dump and it was in a bad neighborhood and we should go someplace else (like the hotel that pays him for every tourist he brings).  As we set off in the cab he seemed pretty adamant about taking us someplace else.  Oddly enough though he tried to drive right by the place we wanted to go.  We told him to stop and take us back.  He gambled that they didn’t have rooms by asking the security guard for availability, but the guard had his own agenda and told us how the rooms were clean with bathrooms and cable TV.  As the taxi driver unloaded our stuff he whispered that it wasn’t safe.  We paid and went on inside.
                Our cost a total of $20 per night and it had clean white sheets, cable TV and scolding hot water in the shower.  The cab driver had definitely been pushing his own agenda and not worried about ours.

12 February 2008
Panama City, Panama
                The day started around 10:00, due to arriving in the city 7 hours prior.  We slowly got ourselves together to explore the city.  The book said the best times to go to the Panama Canal were:  9:00-11:00AM, and 3:00-5:00PM.  It was decided to go to the canal in the afternoon.
                The hotel was located in the middle of the cities three main sections.  We decided to walk towards the bank district, this was the newest section of the city.  Walking along the water the new section looked just like the book said, Miami.  There are large high-rises, with more being built.  Continuing on we came across the Hard Rock café located inside a mall.  It was hot out, and we wanted some air conditioning.  Inside we found a Cinnabon, WOW.  This sounded good. 
                After the cinnamon role, there were many expensive stores to explore.  A couple hours went by, and we went on our way.  The city did not feel foreign to us.  There were expensive cars, the streets were clean, and the people were nice.  This felt just like the United States. 
                It was about time to start heading towards the Canal.  We left the bank district, and got on a bus.   Then we had to catch another bus that would take us close to the canal.  The Miraflora Locks (Part of the Panama Canal), was about 40KM outside of the city.  Getting off the bus at the locks sign, it was another 15 minute walk to the canal.
                Arriving at the canal we paid the museum fee, and went inside.  We wandered through the museum learning how the canal began, and its history.  It took many years to build what Doug calls a “modern miracle.”  After getting through the museum we went outside to see the locks.  They are very large.  About 15 minutes later the locks were prepared for two very large ships to pass through.  The first ship was the largest able to pass through the locks.  The second was a cruise ship, full of Europeans.  It turns out the ships have to pass through two different set of locks from one end to the other.  The first set of locks from the Caribbean Sea brings the ships up, and the second set into the Pacific (the set we were watching) brings the ships back down to sea level.
                We watched the two ships go mostly through until the visitor’s center closed at 5:00.  Then we took the bus back to close where we were staying.  It was time to find some food.  Well we were hot, sweating, and starving.  This was not the time to be indecisive.  We must have walked around for close to two hours, before settling on sushi.  After dinner we splurged for a taxi back to our room, showered, and crashed for the night.

13 February 2008
Panama City, Panama
                Doug was up first and turned on the TV.  The local station was showing live footage of construction workers protesting (lighting tires to block roads and throwing rocks at police officers while the cops shot tear gas back).  When Anna woke up we turned up the volume and thought we heard that the protests were only in Colon (the city at the other end of the Panama Canal).
                We got dressed and headed to a travel agency we saw down the street.  We needed to get information on flights from Panama City to Cartagena, Colombia.  While we were walking there a police officer stopped us and asked us where we were going.  We pointed to the travel agency which was about 50 yards away.  He let us go.
                We went into the travel agency to get our tickets and they mentioned that the protests were all over Panama City as well as Colon.  That being the case we decided that we would get our tickets for that night to play it safe.
                On our way back to the hotel we saw people staring down towards the water where a lot of the construction projects were.  We looked down that way and instead of seeing cars going down the main street, it was people walking and running.  Then as we neared the hotel we saw a bunch of barriers set up to prevent cars from going down the street (these were normal barriers, not flaming tires). 
                We hung out at the hotel for a bit and tried to get access to the internet, but eventually gave up and went searching for one on the street.  After sending messages home we went back and checked out.  With bags on we went looking for lunch and found a little Italian place.  Next we headed off to check out an artesian market.  Then we finally decided to head to a brand new bus station that was nearby.  This bus station had a mall across the street, an equipment guard and a movie theater.
                At the bus station we dropped off our bags and headed to the movie theater to go check out “Cloverfield.”  This was the first new movie we had seen since leaving the U.S., and it was in English.  Then we wandered around for a while checking out this massive two story mall.
                Around 7 pm we picked our bags up and grabbed a bus to the international airport.  The bus dropped us off about a quarter mile from the terminal (but only cost us about a $1.50 USD).  We checked in and headed through security.  While getting our passports stamped we met a 50+ year old guy from Texas who was with his newlywed wife from Costa Rica.  Being such a small terminal we ran into them for the rest of the night.
                We found our gate and then went to find some food.  There was only one food place in the entire terminal.  Then after a short wait we boarded our flight.  The air line we used was a Colombian based airline called “Aires” and they use propeller based planes instead of jet engines (using this small airline saved us about $200 total).  The flight was uneventful and about an hour later we landed in Colombia.

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