Panama

Panama City is a very cool place.
It has pleasantly surprised us for a number of reasons. First of all, contrary to what our ancient guide book states, it is incredibly cheap. We ended up in the Caledonia area, where the main road is lined with super-cheap clothes shops where everything seems to cost a few dollars; freshly squeezed orange juice on the street is 25 cents, portion of patacones something like 50 cents, a whole pizza $2.60!!! Our hotel room, complete with TV, air-conditioning, towels and soap, $12!!!!! While our area is pretty run-down and ugly, there are areas which are super modern, incredibly modern. An entirely new area, Paitilla, has been rebuilt about 4-5 years ago literally from scratch, with high rise buildings and incredibly spotless shopping centres. We hate shopping centres but because we were looking for a new camera we went to one - the Multiplaza Pacific. That was well impressive, top brand names beginning to end, from Cartier to Mandarina Duck to... Sony!! We arrived in Panama with my camera still operating on a paper clip and Gregory´s one not working at all. So we took mine to the Sony Service Centre (where they repaired it within 24 hours for a very good price, urrah!!) while Gregory´s was beyond economic repair, which meant...new camera for Gregory! We decided to buy an underwater case to go with it, however they sell the kit separate from the underwater filter - which is the one that makes all the difference - and this filter was only in stock in this Multiplaza place, so there we went. We actually felt very insignificant and poor in this mall, it was really really not like Central America at all.

Anyways! Apart from camera fixing and camera shopping, while here we went to visit the Canal at the Miraflores Locks. It was interesting to see how it operates, lowering these huge ships through the locks, and visiting the museum etc. Since 1999 the Canal is administered entirely by Panama - the US has pulled out - and now they are looking at expanding it because ships nowadays are a lot larger than back in 1914, when it started to operate. Can you believe that? Something like that excavated and built a century ago.

Today we went to walk around the San Felipe area, which is meant to be the old colonial part of the city, and this was pretty disppointing. It is really old and decrepit - not much colonial about it, certainly nothing like Cartagena - but they seem to be restoring it pretty seriously, given that most of the buildings were under scaffoldings. It seems that Panama has had a real injection of money lately and they are building and restoring the place like crazy. They also seem to have some real aggressive plans to attract foreign capital and investment, with already an increasing number of retirees from the US who are investing in bed & breakfasts and small hotels all over the country. These immigrants, together with the many others and especially Colombians, have caused a surge in the real estate market and construction industry. Panama even has ´residency programs´to attract foreign capital, like the ´Retiree Visa´, the ´Reforestation investor´, etc, depending on how much one earns or invests you can get different sets of benefits.

A small note for backpackers who would like to leave their luggage at the hotel for a few hours then collect the luggage later and take the night bus to another destination. We stayed at the Hotel Aqua Marina in 5 de Mayo and we wanted to check out at 3pm (normal there) and put our luggage in deposit. The manager does not have a deposito and will not take responsibility for anyone luggage which means that you may have to pay for another night into a cheaper hotel and not use it or do as we did go and play pool for hours followed by the internet to use up the time, carrying our luggage with us. The hotels in Plaza 5 de mayo are not really geared for backpackers, no tourist information whatsoever , the plus side is already written above.

From what we can see and read in 3 days, Panama in general is one of Central Americas best kept secrets, you have nice people, big city life, unspoilt rain forests to explore and beaches, and its quite cheap.

Tonight we are taking a bus to San Jose in Costa Rica - 15 hours in total - it should be a pretty good bus, especially if we go by the standard of the bus station... the biggest, most modern and spotless bus terminal we have ever come across!!

The fish market in Panama City is not to be missed!

Lunching at the fish market restaurant with David and Evelyn from our boat voyage

The Panama Canal at the Miraflores Locks

View from the Casco Viejo, old town

Local artesania and Kuna molas - we have bought enough!

One of the famous ´red devils´of Panama - awesome and truly beautiful

The Roxy lived up to our expectations in all senses - it was a very good boat and I suffered severe sea sickness throughout the voyage, the whole 36 hours of it. If I think that El Joshua would have done the same stretch over three days, I guess I should not complain too much...
Apart from the sea sickness, everything else went really well. We got the biggest available cabin, with a double bed and really comfortable, and a nice bunch of people travelling with us. It was Ulf and Christine, the boat owners (Swedish), plus 4 other passengers in addition to us: Alison and Jennifer from Canada, and David and Evelyn from France and Switzerland.
Ulf and Christine are retired and have been sailing on their new boat for a couple of years now. They really like Cartagena and San Blas and so they have decided to stop here for a while and take backpackers back and forth to get some spending money together, but especially to mix with a different bunch of people and get some company- it sounded like they were a bit fed up to discuss water pumps performance with other sailors... Best choice! None of us had a clue about sailing and boats. They served us really good quality food throughout, with freshly squeezed orange juice every morning, beef fillet and giant crab!!

So we spent the first two nights and one whole day at sea, and then we had two days in the San Blas archipelago, which is a long stretch of tiny islands to the north-west of Panama, in the Caribbean sea. The San Blas islands are also known as Kuna Yala and they belong to an indigenous community called the Kuna. The Kuna have obtained governamental independence from Panama and are very autonomous and culturally separated from the rest of the Panamians - they do not like to mix with outsiders at all and have a very distinctive culture and traditions.

In San Blas we went to visit 2 different snorkelling spots - Coco Bandero and Dog Island, the latter with a really nice ship wreck. The coral reef in San Blas is very healthy and there are a lot of different corals and fish.
When we first arrived in the San Blas islands, our first impression of the local Kuna people was not very pleasant. It seemed to be a dollar-per-step economy, where they were approaching us constantly wanting to sell fish, molas (their local weavings), asking for money to snorkel the wreck, to put down the anchor, you name it. We had just started to have enough when Ulf took us to one of the inhabited islands and we had a chance to get to meet them in their homes. While from the boat the islands look absolutely overcrowded and dirty, when you actually see them from within they are really neat and tidy and after the first 2 minutes of them expecting $1 per each photo taken, they relaxed and it turns out that they are actually very friendly and pleasant people. The old lady in the hammoc below did not even want us to take a picture, and once we had sat down and started chatting and looking at the molas etc and bought a couple, she started jumping around smiling and joking.

Things went really well and we had a chance to both snorkel and meet the Kuna. The weather was very changeable and generally overcast - it let us swim and get a bit of sunburn but denied us a barbecue on the islands, which could have been very nice. At times we felt that the journey was too organised, in that Ulf obviously had taken this whole business of transporting travellers very seriously (he is a very professional person) and planned everything quite carefully, like getting to the islands at a specific time, having the mola top vendor to show up promptly, visiting the local community etc. Somehow we don´t think that this would have all been so smooth if we had gone with Freddy, who on the other hand would have probably made the whole thing more spontaneous and unpredictable. Possibly more fun too, but certainly not as comfortable as we had it.

Overall, we had a great trip. From San Blas we had to take a small boat up the river for 40 minutes or so, and then a jeep all the way to Panama City though Panama´s virgin forest, which was also quite enjoyable and gave us the opportunity to travel through some primary forest.

Here are the usual pics -

Our group

Ulf and Christine


One of the islands of Coco Bandero

Dog Island with tip of wreck emerging from the water

Alison, Jennifer and Christine cleaning the giant crabs

Kuna village

The molas