Panama City and a day trip to Isla Grande with consequences....

Panamanian buses in the rural areas (and urban too for that matter) were usually old US school buses that had been repainted and put into commercial use. We got on one of these to go from Puerto Lindo through to the port town of Colon. After only an hour we rolled into Colon, a port with a "Free Zone" where no tax is applied to goods at all. We had been forewarned that due to high unemployment, the town was very unsafe for foreigners. The town didn´t look particularly inviting when we drove through it and there seemed a high degree of poverty with most of the housing needing some serious renovation and paintwork. Upon reaching the bus station, we grabbed our things and booked onto the next available bus to Panama City leaving in 20 minutes. We huddled together like frightened herd animals at the terminal until given permission to board.

Just over an hour on the bus and we were in Panama City and safely at our hostel, Luna´s Castle. I get dumped into a room with strangers while the rest of the group all manage to share in one room (I didn´t take it personally). The hostel was very large and decorated with the street art of a resident of the place. The artwork was really excellent and walking through the maze corridors of the hostel actually made you think you were in a museum. There was also a downstairs theatre where people could watch movies for free. The hostel was located in the Casco Viejo district of Panama City. this is regarded as the "Old Town" and has some good examples of Spanish architecture.. It is also a safe area as the president´s residence is located here.

A school bus and a notice for the pupil code of conduct

Casco Viejo

After a short rest I met up with Angelica and her sister Rita who took me to a local mall where we had a sushi lunch. Later we drove down to the "Causeway", a road bridge linking 3 offshore islands that used to have military and educational uses. We hired some "bicycles", mine was a sort of wheelbarrow shaped thing that you needed to use your hips to turn. I almost ended up in the bay a few times until I found out how to use the brakes! Dinner was with the family at a Chinese restaurant followed by some late night bowling action where I nailed my best score ever of 183!

Me and my self-propelled wheelbarrow

Rita and her son Roy on far more stable and reliable transport

En route to securing a career best score of 183

I was very kindly invited to stay at Rita´s apartment on Avenida Balboa (on the beachfront) for the next few days. She owns a great place on the 29th floor overlooking the bay area... definitely a nice location and view! Even after 3 days back on land I was still having a swaying feeling from the boat. I knew I wasn´t going crazy when the Aussie girls also complained about it.

A view over the bay from Los Delfines Tower

Nice place

Bacardi and Cola... this is where you can DO IT... DO IT (private joke)

A day trip is planned to Isla Grande. We actually passed this island on our boat trip into Puerto Lindo so the drive there was all very familiar to me. I was taken along with the entire family of 15. Upon arrival, everybody packed into a water taxi and we were driven through to the island. Basing ourselves at a restaurant/recreation area right at the dock, we put on swimming gear and snorkeled around the nearby reef.

Water taxis on the beach

Isla Grande dock

Getting ready to explore the reef

Raul, Angelica´s half brother, showed us around the reef. He was actually the first Panamanian surf champion in his youth and he knew all the surf breaks in South Africa probably even better than I did! The water was very very clear and warm and we saw some interesting corals and fish.

Angelica

Raul

After a while spent frolicking, some people go off on a boat to do some banana boating with the little kids. I decide to put on my flip flops and walk out onto the reef with my fishing rod. I spend a while messing around until I decide to step across to a rock that is a bit too far. I slip and my flipflop pulls off and sinks into a deep hole in the reef. I jump in, determined to retrieve it and in the ensuing mish-mash of me, fishing rod, reef and crashing surf, I manage to kick some coral fairly hard and leave a lovely gash in my foot. Returning to the restaurant with only one flipflop, a cut and a sulk on my face I am attended to by one of the family who is luckily a nurse. As the island "obviously" doesn´t have any proper bandage and only carries small baby plasters we are forced to use masking tape and napkins to stem the bleeding and cover up my foot until I can get it seen to later. This doesn´t phase me too much as I feel no real pain and I have some lunch to take my mind off it. A short while later we all leave for Panama City again. Rita, Roberto, Angelica and myself divert to Clinica Yee (the family run Ophthalmic clinic) where Rita stitches me up with some local anesthetic. 3 stitches later and I am good to go. Dinner is at a restaurant and I need to buy some cheap footwear. $1.50 flip flops that are 2 sizes to small for me are the only option at the local supermarket so I go with that.

Getting prepped for surgery

I frikken HATE needles!!

3 Stitches later

Angelica, Rita and Roberto with the patient

As I had seen next to nothing of the tourist sites of Panama City, we went to the Panama Canal. We arrived just before closing so didn't get to visit the museum but we did see a couple of ships moving through the lock and got a great explanation from a helpful worker there. For an average ship weighing around 35 000 tons it costs in the region of $150 000 to simply pass through! Effects of the recession were clearly visible as a lot of the ships were less than half full of containers when a year ago they were all moving through at brimming to capacity. The design of the canal is French, however their initial attempt at construction ended in failure and it was completed by the US in the early 1900s.

A ship passing through the lock

A ship approaching the lock

Wikipedia has the following to add:

The Panama Canal is a man-made canal which joins the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, it had an enormous impact on shipping between the two oceans, replacing the long and treacherous route via the Drake Passage and Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America, A ship sailing from New York to San Francisco via the canal travels 9,500 km (6,000 miles), well under half the 22,500 km (14,000 mile) route around Cape Horn.

I have been through the locks in the South of France on the Canal du Midi and these were similar in design, just about 100 times smaller than what I was seeing at that moment. They make about $5 million a day which is pumped back into the country so it is a pretty profitable enterprise!

This is the back of the boat on the left and it is sitting in the lock. Those little train thingies on the sides pull the ships and cost around $2 million each.

On the advice of Raul, we decided to head across the country to the Bocas del Toro Archipelago for a couple of days on some tropical islands. We book onto a TicaBus and get packed.