Panama City
Panama City is stinking hot and with little deliberation we decided the best way to see it was on a city tour on which we get ferried around the city in an air conditioned minivan.
On the city tour we were taken to a range of places but were given little information about them so I can’t tell you too much about what our photos are of. I can, however, tell you that we stopped to get ice cream and Marcello got a giant sundae which made him very happy.
I did learn later what the significance is of the Herons (white birds) outside the Presidential Palace. Apparently if they fly away the city will fall…seems to be a fairly large responsibility for those birds.
And what would a Panama City tour be without a visit to the Panama Canal?! Also, since Marcello had seen a documentary on the building of it he’d been adamant that we must see this engineering marvel and any planning for our itinerary from him is more than welcome.
The Canal itself….it’s big, the process is slow but it is rather impressive. For those of you who are interested they are in the processes of expanding it and plan to have a 3rd channel (there are currently 2) completed by 2014.
Bocas Del Toro
Bocas is a collection of islands on the Caribbean quite close to the mainland at the very north of Panama. This is where we ha d our first experience with sand flies. Other travellers had been warning us about sand flies for months and for good reason- the little buggers are absolutely vicious and leave you looking like you have chicken pox.
In typical Latin style all beaches were difficult to get to and often involved multiple forms of transport e.g. boat, taxi and 45 minute walk. An absolute highlight was when our ute-taxi got stuck in sand and the driver put MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” on full blast on the stereo and made Marcello and Ed get in the ute tray and jump up and down and bounce the ute around like a car with hydraulics (I was assured this was the best technique to get us through the sand). Kate and I felt like we were in a cheesy 80s/90s Hip Hop video clip as we sat in the back seat of the bouncing, blaring car.
On our final day in Bocas we did a tour which promised Dolphins, tropical fish, Sloths and Red Frogs (poisonous apparently). For once, everything that was promised was actually seen (well in the case of the frog only Chel saw) and our expectations were exceeded.
