Panama

The flight to Panama was uneventful, save security confiscating my half-inch safety pins and breaking the half-inch mini-file off of my fingernail clippers. I`m not sure what they were thinking. I felt like grabbing the teeny, tiny blunt little nail file and assuming a fencing stance in front of the soldier and asking "Tiene miedo?" but that`s really never a good thing to joke about in airports.

 

I had read a number of immigration horror stories on the internet about entering Panama, especially from Colombia, but it was a breeze for us. Nobody asked about onward tickets to leave the country, a yellow fever vaccine, or for us to show sufficient US dollars to demonstrate "economic solvency." Nothing. I guess when you fly in on an absurdly priced Copa Airline flight, they just assume you`re not a bum planning to stay.

 

We arrived early in the day and headed in to Panama City with lodging as our first priority. We went first to Casco Viejo, the old city, and tried a place highly recommended in the guide book called Loca`s Castle. That none of the locals knew where it was should have been our first hint. When we finally found it, it had a sign hanging off the front that said it was closed for renovation and there were some old people staring out of the second story windows, watching us. We later found out that despite Lonely Planet saying it`s one of the best backpacking hostels in Panama City and has a lively bar, etc, the place has never been open. It is a retirement home, will become a hostel sometime in the future, but isn`t closed for remodeling, isn`t open, has never been open. I`m pretty upset that LP, whose information is always at least a year or two out of date for publishing, time between editions, etc, would think it was acceptable to take on faith that something would be open by the time the book was published and lie about it, making up some bogus review. I`m not the only one who wonders what kind of favors or cash the owners gave the LP writer.

 

With other, actually open, existing, hostels booked full, we ended up at a cheap hotel for USD$25 a night. USD, incidentally, is exactly how we paid. Panama stamps some of their own coins, for quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies, but they use US bills exclusively. They call the currency the "Balboa," but it`s all just older US printed bills. Alden was quite surprised by this, but a whole handful of countries do it, a handful of which are here in Central America.

 

We went and saw the Miraflores locks on the Panama Canal. Panama has a nicely executed tourist attraction there, with staggered ticket pricing, a gift shop (including canal earrings), multiple floors with decks to view the locks, a small theatre with a video offering a short history of the canal in multiple languages, a restaurant, snack carts, an announcer on the PA system giving a running commentary on the boats and more tidbits about the history in both English and Spanish, etc. Tour busses are lined up outside and the attraction seems to be as popular with the locals as with foreigners.

 

Unfortunately, it`s not so exciting to see. The lock system is big, sure, but it`s like any other lock system. The sizes of the boats that fit through it are impressive, but everything moves very slowly. We stayed for almost forty-five minutes and in that time, a very large boat moved approximately 200m closer to the entry to the first lock. That`s it. Nothing opened, nothing closed, nothing filled or drained. Amazingly, some people in the crowds clustered on the rooftop deck were holding video cameras in the air, filming what promises to be the most boring vacation footage ever. I pity their friends.

 

In the afternoon, we had lunch at a mediocre vegetarian restaurant and marvelled at the ridiculous sundries and junk at an East Indian import shop. Upstairs, they had a bunch of large animals carved in wood, many of which we couldn`t figure out. They a carved dog / rodent of unusual size which we were told was a rabbit. They had a more identifiable kangaroo that looked like it had a cow`s head and fingers from the Roswell autopsy.

 

After that, we went to the Albrook Mall and died in retail hell. The mall is 380,000 square meters (not feet) and seemed to have no end. We walked for hours, passing Zara and Diesel and Levis and a Abercrombie knock-off called Moose. The mall is so expansive that it has multiple instances of the same store. There were at least three of a local electronics chain, and two of another, spread out here and there. Kiosks sell donuts and ice cream and snow globes and digital photo printing and sunglasses and video games. There`s a multiplex cinema and a full-size supermarket. The primary food court, which ought not be confused with the multiple other ancillary food courts, was an enormous cavern surrounding a huge carousel. It had local fare, pizza, gelato, etc, but also a Burger King, Wendy`s, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins, Quizno`s, Subway, etc. To make all of this worse, the entire mall was crowded with Christmas shoppers. Huge throngs of people milled about, some stores had lines to get in to them, cell phones companies had sponsored huge Christmas tree displays with "sexy elves" girls in mini-skirts, a Santa display was set up charging USD$4 for pictures with a rotund white guy wearing a fake beard. It had a line. Kids were screaming, running, sleeping in strollers and their parent`s arms. People were toting so many bags they had to hold their arms out to their sides with bags staggered every inch or so up their forearms.

 

Alden bought some clothes. We bought a funny birthday gift for our friend Rachel. I tried to find fancy cell phone that I want to buy: HTC`s TyTN II. It`s USD$800 through an importer in the US and I`ve tried to find it in Sydney (no luck), Beijing (no luck), and now Panama (found it, but for USD$1030). I guess I might try in Costa Rica. Costa Rica is the most affluent country in the region, although Panama City is the richest single city.

 

That night we decided to head up to an archipelago called Bocas del Toro, near the Costa Rican border. Unfortunately, buses weren`t leaving until 8p the next night, so we got stuck in Panama City for another day. Breakfast, wandering the city, checking out of our hotel meant we had our backpacks with us and mobility was limited. The bus station is, of course, part of Albrook Mall! Right outside the mall, across a 25 meters of taxi lanes, there`s a bus terminal that`s probably a quarter mile long with hundreds of buses to every part of the country and transnational into Costa Rica.  It has a large food court full of Western fast food restaurants, rows and rows of shops, etc, and then nice little departure lounges where you wait for your bus to start boarding. It`s all done in the same style as the mall. We were exhausted from the previous day at the mall and didn`t want to walk around with backpacks, so we hit the cinema. I watched Beowulf (terrible, and with much more to the story than I remember reading in high school), and then Alden joined me to see a romantic comedy from the same people who did "There`s Something About Mary." (The small audience roared with laughter and giggles at a queef joke, but the subtitles were too fast and I missed what the word is in Spanish. Shucks. That`d have been a sterling addition to my blossoming Spanish vocabulary.)

 

We slept on the bus that night, a 9 or 10 hour journey that should`ve put us in to Almirante around 6a or 7a. Alden woke me up some time after 5a because the bus had stopped and the driver was announcing something. We were on the side of the road in the middle of the jungle. It was dark out. The bus had blown a fuel line and couldn`t continue. Other buses from the same company would come along eventually and we would transfer to one of those, space available. Over the next 20 minutes, the sun started to rise and a local colectivo bus pulled up behind us. I waded out into the throngs of mosquitoes (literally, I smashed one against the bridge of my nose and smeared blood everywhere) and got us two seats for USD$2 each on the already overly full bus for the last 45 minutes into Almirante.

 

From there it was twenty minutes on a speed boat to Isla Colon, the largest island of the archipelago and the location of the actual town of Bocas del Toro. The island is lovely, hot, sticky, touristy. Tanned white people in board shorts and hand-woven bracelets prowled the main drag, some with surf boards, some looking like they were nursing hang overs. There`s a popular hostel here called Mondo Taitu that has 80s night and cheap drinks and the like. Other bars do similar things, putting up flyers around town for Ladies Night or a Pajama Party. We only stayed for a day, visiting a "butterfly farm" which ended up being closed and a beautiful, deserted beach full of starfish that left both of us with copious bites from flies or sand fleas or something (?). Alden has probably 40+ spread out over her back, arms, legs, butt, etc, even areas that were covered by her tankini swimsuit.

 

The next day, we caught an early boat back across the water and up the river to Changuinola. From there, a mini-bus colectivo to the border, la frontera. Exiting Panama was easy and the actual border crossing is 120m or so walk across a large bridge spanning a river. The bridge used to be for trains, but people have nailed down two by sixes and two by eights onto the railroad ties. On the Costa Rican side, we had some hassle with showing proof of onward travel. (Alden has an e-ticket and we had to go to a nearby pharmacy with internet access and print off the confirmation page. Of course, they knew it was for a ticket for the border and gouged us for USD$3 to spend five minutes and print one page.) On the Tico side, a bus to Puerto Limon (where Columbus docked) and a transfer to San Jose put us here late last night.

 

We`re in San Jose now, about to go out and get breakfast, explore the city, etc.