BootsnAll Travel Network



Panama City

On Sunday evening we made it to Panama City and arrived at our friend’s house whom we met at the El Salvador border.  You might remember an earlier post of ours about a family of Hummer drivers that were required to pay many hundreds of dollars in bribes in order to get into Guatemala.  We’ve been in contact with them over e-mail and they offered us a free place to stay and we couldn’t pass them up.

The skyline of Panama City is very different from all the other Central American capitols – it is full of skyscrapers.  Most people advise to just pass through the capitols in Central America, but Panama City actually has some interesting sights to see.  One is the Panama Canal.  Our friends Fernando and Alegria live about 5 blocks from the Canal and we can here ships passing through the locks when they blow their horn.  We went up to the locks and watched a few container ships pass through one of the locks.  It’s kind of neat to think of all the goods that go through this canal and where they end up – probably quite a few of them end up in my living room.

Fernando and Alegria also have 3 boys ages 3, 5 and 6.  The first night we were here there was another family over for Sunday dinner with their son (age 31/2) so there were 6 boys all between the ages of 2 and 6.  6 little boys sure is a trip, but they all had so much fun playing together.  Sunday dinner was spectacular – typical homemade Latin food, rice, beans, ground beef with raisins and a soup made of some vegetable I’d never even seen.

We also took a bus ride around the city.  We were tying to get to a travel agency to book our flight to San Blas, but we got on the wrong bus and had a nice hour long tour through the city (including the old town) in one of the Red Devils (old American school buses painted in bright colors).  Last night we attended a free concert in one of the parks on traditional Panamanian folk music and dancing.  Alegria is really knowledgeable about the city and Panama and it was interested to hear her explain about the dancing and costumes of the dancers.  Plus the weather in the evenings is so pleasant it was just nice to be outside in the evening.

What has also been cool is taking rides in their 2 Hummers around the city.  One of their Hummers has a total of 4 TV screens.  At one point one of Alegria’s sons was upset because he couldn’t see the movie playing.  She said to him “There are 4 TV screens in this car and if you can’t see it I just don’t know what to tell you.”  I’ve never had the opportunity to ride in a Hummer, but I’ve had more rides in the last few days than most people will have in their lifetime.  It’s funny that we had to travel to the 3rd world to have that experience.

One of the most amusing things for me is that Fernando bears an uncanny resemblance to John Turturro – think of Jesus in the Big Lebowski.  Today when we went to the hardware store we saw Fernando’s Hummer parked outside, but he was no where to be found.  All of the sudden he appeared and was standing right next to us.  Two seconds later he was gone and his Hummer too.  Did you ever see that movie Mr. Deeds where John Turturro plays the sneaky butler that comes and goes without a sound?  The parallels between Fernando and this actor are crazy!

Our next stop is Isla Pelicano in the San Blas islands.  Today we picked up some rope and yesterday we bought a hammock to sling between palm trees on our island.  We fly out tomorrow morning bright and early at 6 AM and are staying for 3 nights.  From what I’ve heard about these islands I expect this might be one of the highlights of our trip.



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