The End of the Road . . . For Now

The rest of my two-month long trip consisted of my final two days in Panama City.  I was running out of things to do, people to do them with and interest in doing them.  In fact, I had more interest in finding a place to watch the Manchester United – Chelsea Champions League rematch than anything else.  (By the way, I took no photos from the final two days so I’m just going to put up random photos from the trip.  Lord knows, I have tons from which to choose.)

It was Monday morning and I decided to walk towards downtown Panama City.  I didn’t really have any directions, but I figured that just walking towards the big buildings would get me there.  That’s always worked in the past.

Lo and behold, I ended up back in the same building that I was in the day before – the one with the Hard Rock Cafe.  I wasn’t interested in that again but it also was in a mall so I thought I’d take a look around.  I got there shortly before ten and nothing was opened until ten but the casino.  Nevertheless, it had free wifi so I just hung out for a little bit.  I also checked out the food court and saw that it had a lot of televisions showing sports.  I decided that in a jam, I could watch the next day’s match there.  After getting some coffee and breakfast, I went back to the hotel.

Later in the day, I texted the last two friends that I had left in Panama City about getting some lunch.  By the time I got a response, it was pouring outside.  We decided to wait until the weather cleared but it never did.  Ultimately, we opted for ignoring the weather and going to Hooters for some wings.  We ordered fifty, expecting the tiny wings that I’m used to getting at Hooters in the U.S.  Instead, we got the hugest chicken wings that I’ve ever received in a restaurant.  And we got fifty of them.  We got through about half of them.  I brought the rest back to my hotel and said goodbye to my final friends in town.  At long last, I was the last man standing.

That night, I did nothing but eat leftover hot wings for dinner and watch some television.  In the morning, I went and got breakfast and some provisions for the long trip to begin that evening.  I also tucked away some valium for easy access before my flights.  In the early afternoon, I headed back towards downtown and stopped at Bennigan’s Bar & Grill, thinking it would be a good place to watch the Chelsea match.  Their food was so-so, their televisions were good but I didn’t have any sound, so I watched the first half there and then walked a little bit down the road to the mall to catch the second half.  At this point, it was close to 4:00 pm and I had an 8:30 pm flight, so I walked back to my hotel, grabbed my stuff and caught a cab in the rain to the airport.

The Panama City airport wasn’t too bad; at least it was much better than the reviews that I had read about it had led me to expect.  Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me bring any water on board the plane.  I took my valium and slept pretty much throughout the flight to Miami.  I arrived in Miami at around 2:00 am and ended up hanging out in front of the US Air counter until it opened at 4:30 am to get my ticket and transfer my luggage.  From there, it was another valium, another nap on another plane, this time to Charlotte, and then another plane to Raleigh.

This is how the trip ends.  Not with a bang but with a whimper.  My next trip will be to Washington and maybe New York in a couple of weeks.  I don’t know if there’ll be another big trip before I move to Buenos Aires in June, but I’ll update this site occasionally in the meantime.  It’s been fun.

On My Own (Sorta) in Panama City

By Sunday, April 10, the organized portion of the trip was over.  I was still in Panama City, and would be for a few days, but I had to figure out things to do on my own.

Actually, I wasn’t completely on my own.  Some people from the group were still milling around so I usually had people with whom I could do things.  On Sunday, I was toying with the idea of going to Casco Viejo (the old town) because that was the only thing in the world other than the Panama Canal that I knew about in Panama City.  While I was toying with the idea, I ran into some people downstairs who were toying with the same idea.  Once we realized that Casco Viejo was within walking distance (about 35 minutes), a group of six of us decided to head down there together.

We had to walk through some of the dirtier parts of Panama City to get to Casco Viejo.  Once we got close, however, things cleaned up quite a bit.  Just before we got there, we crossed a bridge from which we were able to get great views of the Panama City skyline.  The views would have been much better if the weather had cooperated, it was raining off and on all morning, but they were impressive, nonetheless.

Once we got to Casco Viejo, we ducked into a restaurant for some coffee and to escape the rain.  Once the rain passed, we walked around for a bit.  My Australian and English friends from the prior legs of the trip (remember them?) had told me that there wasn’t much to the Old Town and that I shouldn’t expect much.  All-in-all, I suppose they were right, though I do think that I enjoyed it a little more than they did, despite the weather.  I did some last minute souvenir shopping and then we walked into downtown.  (For the record, that’s where I stopped taking photographs on this trip.)

By the time we got into downtown, we were starting to get hungry and my long-time roommate from this trip still needed to buy a t-shirt from Panama.  We decided to kill two birds with one stone and stop by the Hard Rock Café.  (Believe it or not, this was the first time in my life that I had ever been to a Hard Rock Café.)  (Sorry for the “é” in Hard Rock Café, but my autocorrect is adding it on it’s own and I don’t feel like correcting the autocorrect any more.)  I had some buffalo wings that were the hottest on the menu but still weren’t very hot.  Or very good, for that matter.  But the beer made them passable.

After lunch, I returned to our hotel to get my stuff and move to my new hotel, which coincidentally was only about two blocks away.  Finally in a room by myself, I turned on the television and air conditioning, watched ten minutes of the final round of the Masters and then fell fast asleep.

That night, those of us who remained in town went to a so-so restaurant where I had some spicy shrimp and more Balboa.  Afterwards, I said goodbye to the two guys with whom I had shared rooms with throughout most of the trip since they were leaving in the morning and I went back to my hotel to try to figure out what to do with my last day-and-a-half in Panama City.  What I ended up doing will be in the next post, but don’t expect anything exciting.

Panama City and the Big Ditch

I’d like to say that I was excited about going to Panama City since it is supposed to be the most cosmopolitan city in Central America but I have to say that after over two months of traveling in this part of the world, I was looking forward most to having the trip come to an end.

We left really early from Santa Catalina in order to get to Panama City early enough for people who were planning to fly out the next day to see the Panama Canal in the afternoon.  At least we tried to leave really early.  Our van got a flat tire on the way to pick us up and came a little over an hour late.  Still, our connecting bus waited for us and we were able to get to Panama City by 2:00 pm.

We decided to meet a little later and head to the Panama Canal.  We went to the Miraflores locks and museum in what was light rain at the time we left.  We arrived, paid the $8 entry fee and went up to the observation deck.  At that point, Hurricane Miraflores hit and we kept going back and forth between torrential jungle downpours and semi-sun.  I took some photos and had some lunch – a semi-decent hot dog and a beer – but I can’t say that I was overwhelmed by the experience.  Not quite underwhelmed, but pretty much just whelmed.

After the observation deck, we went downstairs and watched the ten-minute Panama Canal movie, in English, and then we went to the Panama Canal museum.  Once again, whelmed.  The movie and the museum both spent way too much time and money showing off what the Panamanian government hopes to accomplish with the canal by 2014 (additional locks), and not enough time on the history of the canal and its impact on international trade.  But, whatever.

That night, the final farewell dinner of the trip was planned.  If you recall, I’ve never attended these in the past and I was undecided about attending this one until the final minute.  In the end, I decided to attend, I think mostly because I didn’t think it was going to be nearly as painful saying goodbye at this point.  Like I said, I was pretty ready for the trip to end.

We went to an Argentine restaurant and I was expecting some great steak.  I was pretty amazed when I arrived and I found that the only types of meat on the menu were Panamanian and American.  I had good steak – the American steak – but it still was a far cry from the Argentine beef I enjoyed in 2009 and I plan on enjoying in a few months.

 After dinner, about half of the group went out for post-dinner drinks.  I was up for the dinner but I really wasn’t interested in the post-game show.  Too many guys, not enough girls, and I knew that the people that I liked in the group would be around for another day or two and that we would all end up seeing each other again – at least the ones that I cared about seeing again.  I called it a night and contemplated what I was going to do the next three days in Panama City.  Meanwhile, there was the cliché last night hook-up within the group, but it didn’t involve me so there’s no point in my going into it here.  Rather, I’ll wait until the next entry and continue to talk about myself.  I like doing that.

Chillaxation in Santa Catalina

As I sit in Miami International Airport at 3:00 am, waiting for the US Airways counter to open so my Central American trip can officially come to an end, it seems like a good time to continue writing about the final week of my trip.  If I remember correctly, I’m up to Santa Catalina, so let’s talk about that.

We left Bastimentos via water taxi at around 9:00 am to the mainland.  I got a little wet and my ass was sore in the hour it took us to get there, but that was just the beginning of the trip.  We took a couple of buses and a private van and ended up in Santa Catalina early in the afternoon.

Santa Catalina is the smallest town we visited throughout the trip.  In fact, it’s kind of hard to call it a town.  It’s a series of surf huts along a beautiful beach on the Pacific coast of Panama.  We stayed at one or the other Surf Oasis(es) and checked into our hut.  For the first time on the trip, I was roomed with somebody different – a Canadian man in (I think) his seventies.  I fell asleep almost immediately and was awakened by my new Canadian roommate at 4:20 pm because he said it was time to start drinking.  Obedient to my elders to the end, I relented and he ended up buying drinks and cigarettes over the course of the next eight hours.  He was toasted, but at least he was a nice, happy drunk.  Around midnight, I took him back to the room and he ended up getting up around 6:00 pm the next day/evening.  This was the most interesting part of the trip to Santa Catalina, but this isn’t his blog, it’s my blog, so I’m going to go back to writing about me.

Actually, there’s not that much to write about with respect to me.  I drank with my new Canadian roommate that night, had some dinner, and went to bed.  The next morning, I went to breakfast and then I walked into “town” for some provisions with a few other people from the group.  The walk was up a gravel road and took about forty minutes.  Once we got to “town,” we could see that there really wasn’t much to it.  There was one main strip with empty stores and a few surf shops.  The people I went with stopped by a restaurant for some juice while I just grabbed my provisions at the little minimart in town and then I went back to the shack by myself.

View from my hammock

I’d like to tell you that I went swimming, but the waves were too strong for me to be interested.  I’d like to tell you that I went surfing, but that would just be a boldface lie.  For the most part, I spent the rest of the day sitting on the hammock outside of my hut and watching people, crabs, and listening to the almonds from the tree directly in front of our house fall on top of our tin roof and then roll onto the beach in front of us.  It turned out to be pretty much nothing but a day of pure chillaxation.  Not the most exciting way to end a trip, but not the worst way, either.

There’s absolutely nothing exciting to report about Santa Catalina but it was very beautiful.  Perhaps I’ve been jaded by all of the beautiful beaches I’ve seen since visiting Hoi An in Vietnam in November, but I felt like I was taking it for granted and that bothered me.

The night was short because we were meeting at 6:00 am the next morning in order to head to Panama City, the final stop on the Central American tour.  I’ll start on Panama’s capital in the next entry.

Coffee and Bad Music in Boquete

After Bocas del Toro, it was time for one last trip into the mountains.  For this, we went to Boquete.

There’s not really a lot to Boquete.  I learned that it was 100 years old because there was a centennial celebration planned the weekend after we were there.  There were a couple of pool halls, numerous restaurants and some hotels.  We stayed in a hostel in the center of town.  Surrounding the town are numerous coffee plantations that make the best coffee in Panama.

After our arrival, we went to a bar next door to the hostel and I had some so-so wings.  More importantly, I found a place to watch the Champions League match between Manchester United and Chelsea the next day.  In the evening, we went to a pool hall and shot some pool and drank 75-cent beers.  Yes, you heard me right, 75-cent beers.  It was the cheapest beer that I’ve had since Cambodia.  The highlight of the evening, though, was when my new Australian friend and I put about four dollars into the juke box and played the worst songs we could find for about an hour-and-a-half.  We had some ABBA and Elvis Presley and stuff from the 70s that we figured would piss people off.  Ultimately, all it did was chase away all of the locals.  There were also some tourists who came in midway and thought that the music we were playing was what was popular these days in Panama.  Sorry, Panama.

American, French & Italian

The next day, we took a tour of a coffee plantation.  This probably won’t mean anything to you, but the plantation we visited grows seven types of Arabica coffee beans and Geisha coffee beans, which evidently produce coffee that cost hundreds of dollars per pound.  I ain’t ever had coffee that good, but that’s what they sell it for.  We did get to go through the entire process of turning the coffee beans into coffee and did get to sample some of the Arabica coffee blend.  All-in-all, it was pretty interesting and the coffee was good, so it was a nice way to spend an overcast/rainy morning.  (For the record, all of the photos that I took in Boquete, and in this entry, are from the coffee plantation tour.)

When we got back, we took our coffee tour guide’s recommendation and went to a place for lunch where I had fried chicken and rice and beans.  Very popular in Central America, it would appear.  After that, I went back to Baru (the bar next door to the hostel) for some beer and some fútbol.  It was all good until the match ended and the bar started playing Journey Live on the television.  Hell, maybe the crap we were playing on the jukebox the night before actually is popular in Panama these days.

The scroon in action.

 That night, we went to a Peruvian restaurant called Machu Picchu (because all of the Peruvian restaurants in Central America are called Machu Picchu) and I had some seafood.  It was pretty good, but nothing to write home about – although, it’s apparently enough to blog about.

The next morning, we were leaving at 8:00 am, so we had a little time for breakfast.  I walked down the road to the Shalom Bakery and had a bagel with cream cheese (something I hadn’t had for quite a while) and some coffee and then we were off to the surf beaches of Santa Catalina.  I don’t really have a ton to say about Santa Catalina, either, but I’ll do that in the next post.

Reunited And It Feels So Good

Okay, where was I.  I think the last time I wrote, I was up to Bocas del Toro waiting to see if my English friend was going to show up.  She did.  (I have no photos for the next few days except for a few I took from my hotel room balcony and some pictures of beer, so that’s what you get.)

I got up around eight in the morning, grabbed some coffee and worked on my blogs for a little while.  I was debating taking a water taxi into town and then there was a knock on my door.  She made it.  She had a harrowing experience getting from Panama City to Bocas de Toro.  I could go into detail here, but she could write her own blog if she wanted to do so.  Anyway, she finally got there and she was soaking wet since it had started raining while she was on the water taxi to Bastimentos.  I greeted her with some jerk chicken that was left over from the night before and I think all of her ills were cured.  Well, many of them, anyway.

Some other folks stopped by our room to say hello to my English friend.  A small group of us went back to Roots for lunch and some $1 Panamanian beers.  I really wasn’t in shape for conversation, but somehow, I managed.  After lunch, we went back to the room and chillaxed until we went into town to schedule some dives (not for me) for the next day and hung around for dinner and a few drinks.  We also got some provisions that we brought back to Bastimentos.  The rest of the night was spent drinking and stuff with us and a few other friends.  Actually, the night ended up ending kind of early.

The next day, I took a water taxi into Bocas del Toro to meet up with the people diving.  We went out to lunch and then a few of us went to a local bar with a pool table for some more $1 beers.  Before too long, it was down to me and my English friend sitting there for a few hours continuing to drink.  Ah . . . just like old times.  Afterwards, we walked around Bocas looking for anybody we might know.  We didn’t find anyone, so we grabbed some wine and hopped a water taxi to Bastimentos.  As soon as we got to our hotel, another boat pulled up beside us.  Everybody else was heading into town for dinner, so we just jumped from one boat into another and went back into town.

After dinner, we went back to the pool bar that we were at earlier.  My English friend, who still had the bottle of wine that she had bought earlier, stole a corkscrew and we ended up splitting her bottle of wine outside, talking with a few others who would occasionally come out to join us.  Our Quebecois friend made friends with the Quebecois owner of the bar and he gave us a round of shots at the end of the night.  If you’ve been following the blog at all, you could probably see what’s coming next.  God knows I saw it coming.  As soon as my English friend took the shot, I could see her mouth beginning to water.  I practically carried her to the balcony so she could throw up in a bush instead of on our fellow travelers.

 

Soon thereafter, after my English friend tried to get some jerk chicken from a homeless guy who refused to accept a kiss from her, we hopped a water taxi and returned to the hotel.  We had a nightcap and that was the end of the night.  In the morning, I was taking off for Boquete and my English friend was staying behind, so I had to say goodbye all over again.  It was good to be reunited for a few days during the last leg of the trip but it was over and it was time to move on to the final week of the trip.  We’ll continue on that note in the next entry.

Hellacious Border Crossing into Panama

After Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, it was time to leave Costa Rica behind for good and cross into Panama.  This turned out to be one of the longest, most painful border crossings I’ve ever endured.

The infamous Bridge of Death.

The bus ride to the border wasn’t so bad.  It was only like an hour-and-a-half long and we got there still thinking that we might get to our destination in Panama in time for a normal-hour lunch.  We got our stamps out of Costa Rica pretty quickly and all was going well.  Then we loaded up for our trip into Panama.  This required crossing the Bridge of Death.  The Bridge of Death is a long bridge crossing a river from Costa Rica into Panama.  It is held up by steel beams and held together by horizontal, rickety boards that don’t feel like they are able to support a human being’s weight.  In between the boards are gaps in which you can see down to the river.  There are vertical boards as well for large trucks to use when they cross.  I crossed with all my stuff, probably around fifty pounds of it, on my back or in my arms and I had to concentrate with all of my might on each step to make sure that I wouldn’t fall into the river.  The whole trek probably only took three or four minutes but it seemed like an hour.

Once across the bridge, the ordeal was just beginning.  We ended up standing in line for over ninety minutes in the hot, midday Panamanian sun while the folks at the border tried to figure out what to do with a group of eleven tourists trying to come into Panama.  In retrospect, we probably would have gotten through much quicker had we just gone through immigration individually, but instead we sweated through the process until, finally, we were allowed into the country.

After the border crossing, things got much easier.  Ostensibly, we were heading to Bocas del Toro, an island on the Caribbean coast of Panama.  We drove about ninety minutes to the closest part of the mainland to the island but when we arrived, we learned that we instead were staying on a different island – Bastimentos.  Don’t get me wrong, Bastimentos is a charming little island, but there’s not really much to do there.  We checked in to the hotel and, after a while, my new Australian friend and I walked around looking for something to do or eat.  We did come across this bar/restaurant at the end of a pier that looked reasonable.  We went there for lunch and some $1 beers (Balboa) and it was a good enough time.  But there really wasn’t much else to do or see.  There was a beach that I later heard was beautiful close by but I thought I’d have time for that later.  I didn’t.  After lunch, I headed back to the hotel.  I had a double room to myself, for now, because my English friend was going to make an appearance and I had an extra bed for her to crash in.

Shortly after dark, we took a water taxi to the island of Bocas del Toro.  It isn’t a huge island, but it still was considerably more bustling than Bastimentos.  We had dinner there, I finally had ceviche and it was delicious, and then we stopped off for supplies before returning to Bastimentos.  (I wish I had a picture of the ceviche but it was too dark in the restaurant for my iPhone to take a photo.)

That night was jerk chicken night on my balcony along with a bottle of Argentine malbec wine.  I still hadn’t heard from my English friend, but that wasn’t too surprising.  I was hoping that she was getting into town late and that I would meet up with her the next morning.  Was I right?  We’ll find out in the next post.