Bienvenidos a Panamá!

We arrived in Panamá City on Saturday night after 12 hours of travel, 3.5 of which were spent in the Houston airport. It was a good day, though. We got a taxi to our hostal – Mamallena. It’s a great place Ant found online and booked for a few nights so we’d have a place to start. We decided to change our plans some and will be in

the city for a full week, so we almost had to move to a new place, but fortunately found out yesterday there was a cancellation so we will be able to stay until we head to our next locale. The best feature for us is the kitchen – we’ve been making our own meals, which we always prefer.

We've already been busy visiting sights around the city. On our first day we took time to just walk around the neighborhood. We are located in a great spot that is close to a major road with buses passing continuously and not a far walk to reach several interesting spots. We also took the day to readjust to the tropical climate, though in top form, ginnie again started off a journey with a bang not focusing on drinking enough (not feeling thirsty and not being conscious of the heat played a role) and we had a bit of a bout of dehydration. Fortunately, Anthony packed rehydration salts and after a dose and a rest, she was back up to speed and learned her lesson.

We now purposely bug each other frequently to make sure we are staying hydrated!

The sights so far:

Panamá Canal

We could not come all this way and not see ships pass through the Miraflores Locks to enter the canal. There are two good times to see the large ships: 9am and after 2pm. In order to ensure we did not miss anything since we were navigating the buses for the first time, we opted for the afternoon slot so we could leave early and just spend time at the museum and visitor center while we waited for a ship. We spent the morning walking in Cinta Costera, a beautiful seaside park with great city views and a completely relaxed feel.

We quickly boarded a bus after a delicious lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with yuca (aka: cassava) chips and made our way to the Albrook Bus Terminal. In all our travels through Central America we

have not been to such a ginormous terminal! It was as long as the neighboring mall, which looks bigger than any we have back home and had buses to pretty much anywhere from here. All the way at the far end was the spot for the buses passing by the locks. Anthony noticed a taxi stand, so rather than wait an undetermined length of time for the next bus, we opted for a taxi. The first one tried to get double the typical fare (which we had asked about before leaving) so we declined and immediately got the next one who gave the fair price of $5. (Panamá uses the USD, called the Balboa here, which makes it easy for now!). A lady in the taxi who spoke English told us to make sure we did not pay more to get back since this was a good price and told the driver what the other taxi tried to charge. Once she reached her destination, the driver gave us great information on where to catch a bus to get back and was really helpful with other questions we had.

Once at the locks, we purchased a full ticket which gave us the access to the museum and the top floor viewing spot. We headed out to the bleacher view area and since ships were still a bit outside the entrance, we decided to walk through the museum. Good thing, too, since we hadn’t realized we had entrance to a higher viewing spot at that point! As we made our way to the 3^rd floor of the museum, we saw a ship had entered the locks and immediately rushed to the 4^th floor and outside to the viewing area and squeezed in to a spot. The whole process is just an incredible engineering feat! Watching the water drain and the locks open and the tugboats and trucks (on train tracks) pull these gigantic ships was amazing. Ginnie took 165 pictures to capture the whole experience! The Auriga Leader ship you see closest was filled with over 5000 Toyota vehicles and paid $254,300.35 just for the initial fee, then $300 per wire for 12 wires with the trucks, then $2000 per tugboat for 7 tugboats, and who knows what else! All ships have to pay in cash 72 hours in advance of their entrance and absolutely no credit is accepted. During the day, from different parts of the city, one is able to see long lines of boats moored as they wait their turn to enter the locks and make a transit. It was well worth the visit.

Cinta Costera

This seaside park is one of the best parks we’ve visited. It has lanes for cyclists, runners and walkers and rollerbladers. It’s also right along the sea with incredible views of the skyline of Panamá, which is much taller and longer than either of us anticipated. Our first impressions when driving in on Saturday were that this was a massive city; it’s definitely bigger than Boston. The park has places to sit and relax, portable bathrooms (something we both find positive in a public place), recycling for everything, and is super clean – clearly people respect their environment here and that’s a nice sign. Our camera decided it had enough of pictures and the battery went on us, so we plan to return again, perhaps for a sunset stroll.

The walk to Cinta Costera passes right by an enormous hospital compound with the general hospital, a maternal hospital, and a children’s hospital. The street also has lots of pharmacies and a funeral home (which makes sense from a business perspective, but is sort of sad). We were impressed with the hospital facilities.

Amador Causeway

Wednesday we took another interesting and crowded bus trip to the Amador Causeway. This links three islands to the city and was created with the land dredged from the formation of the canal. It’s 3km long and we walked nearly the entire length. It also happened to be the first day the sun was out in full force without cloud cover and we both burned slightly (despite ginnie’s copious use of SPF 50 sport sunscreen!). There is a decided lack of sunbrella use in Panamá City, so that did not prompt us to get one!

The causeway provided more views of the city and we saw La Puente de Las Americas (Bridge of the Americas) and many more ships awaiting their entry to the canal. We enjoyed the scenic stroll (both now having a touch of shin splints and ginnie with blisters galore – oy!!) and took a LOT of pictures. We came out in order to visit the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute on Culebra and see their Centro de Exhibiciones Marines. When we arrived, we were quite hungry and in need of more water – we quickly entered the small shop and got ice cold water and Gatorade – refreshing! We sat at picnic tables by the turtles and had our power lunch (yep, more PB and yucca chips!). We explored El Centro and saw turtles, starfish, lobsters, an eel, and the lightning fish that is not native to Panamá but came with Hurricane Andrew in the 90s and has been eating a lot of the smaller fish in the region. We learned that Colombia is working to actively remove these fish from their waters since they wreak a great deal of havoc on the local marine life.

We were ready for a bus back to the city after several hours of walking, but it was a while before we saw one pass us going into the islands. We continued to walk toward the city and once the bus returned we flagged it down and squeezed in. The wonderful part of having lived in Belize and traversed the buses there is the preparation it gave for the packing in of as many people as possible to a small space – we are good at the bus travel!

We found a grocery store that sells “exotic” foods and they have Amy’s pizza, so we made a spinach pizza for dinner and spent time playing around with ginnie’s new favorite program, Picasa. Yes, we know, we’re late in the game on this, but for whatever reason we didn’t use it before. Better late than never, now ginnie’s hooked and has been making collages and correcting color balances on photos for your enjoyment.

We’ll try to post regularly with photos and new experiences. There is much more to see and do in the city, as well as in other parts of Panamá, so we’ll keep you posted right here J

Paz y Amor!