The Comeback Tour

We were met at Panama Tocumen airport by Senora Xiomara who we would be staying with for the coming week. We had already arranged to do a week long Spanish course in Panama City with a homestay with a local family and Xiomara was our lovely hostess. We had travelled in all our heaviest clothing to save space and weight in our packs so were entirely unprepared for the heat and humidity that hit us outside the airport! The first thing we did when we got to Xiomara's was to take a lovely cool shower. It seems that hot showers are rare in Central America but with this weather you can see why. The rest of our first day in Panama was spent feeling shell shocked and jet lagged. Xiomara has a kind of open air, undercover living space in her house so we 'chilled' there for the afternoon trying to acclimatise.

We got to the Spanish Panama school at 9am on Mon 27th as instructed all ready and eager to learn some Spanish. We got given what appeared to be some kind of assessment of our current linguistic abilities. I say 'appeared to be' as no-one was really telling us a lot. So, we spent half an hour or so muddling through and quickly realised that we were going to need the most basic possible level of tuition for the week. After that we were given a timetable of our classes for the week - starting at 1.30pm that afternoon. We were a little dismayed by this as we had no idea what we should do with ourselves all morning. The administrator suggested we travel through the city to look around the ruins of Panama Viejo (old Panama). This alarmed us not a little as we had no idea of the geography of the city, ways to get around and, as yet, no spanish whatsoever!!! So, instead we hid ourselves in an internet cafe for the morning!

When they started our classes went well. We had 2 lovely teachers - Urbana and Nancy. Urbana's lessons were slower and made us feel like we might actually get the hang of this thing sometime this year. Nancy was tougher and although her lessons were more challenging, ultimately we got a lot from them. We had 4 hrs of lessons each day for 4 days which might not sound like a lot but we covered a lot of ground and took plenty of material away with us so we feel as though we now have the groundwork on which on build a language! Time will tell......

Our first impressions of Panama City left us reeling. Obviously it is incredibly hot and humid with cracking thunderstorms almost every afternoon for an hour or so. It is also unbelievably noisy. Drivers use their horns here like we use indicators in the UK. We learnt that the horn is a way of letting other drivers know that you're coming through, passing, turning, about to hit them etc etc. They also have a street called Via Espana which is the main one-way thoroughfare of the city. Old American school buses clatter along Via Espana belching out Kyoto-cringing emissions. These buses also use any kind of horn, siren or klaxon they can lay their hands on to drum up custom. And they are an airbrushers dream - fairground 'art' gone mad. Couldn't get any photos unfortunately as we weren't yet sure whether it was a safe place to get cameras out. We already stood out like the Gringos we are without drawing more attention to ourselves.

Back to Mon 27th - after classes we were invited to attend a salsa dancing class with other students from the school. We were taught by a very sweet and impossibly rhythmic latino lassie who made the dance look incredibly easy - which it is really, you can`t think about it too much! By the end of the class we were all very tired and sweaty but had had a great laugh. We went for some food after the class with an american girl and an australian lady who were also taking classes at the spanish school. We got a taxi back to the house where poor old Xiomara was sitting up waiting anxiously for us as we hadn`t been able to let her know our plans and she was worried in case we had got lost or mugged in the city. We felt really bad but she waved our apologies aside.

Before classes on Tues 28th Xiomara took us down to Panama Viejo which is the original site of Panama City which was ransacked by Henry Morgan, a Welsh pirate, some time in the past - history was never my strong point! The ruins were quite impressive as you can see from the photos in the Panama album. From Panama Viejo we then went to the Amador which is a causeway of reclaimed land connecting several small islands at the far end of the city. It`s a good place to watch the ships line up ready for entering the Panama Canal, looking back at the city skyline and admiring the tropical fish in the marina.

We spent the morning of Wed 29th studying some Spanish before our classes which impressed Xiomara no end. Between classes we sampled a churro at Manolo`s. Churros, which are a Panamanian speciality, are hot dog shaped donuts with a kind of gooey caramel filling and apparently Manolo`s restaurant is the place to get them. Yum.

By Thurs 30th Oct we felt confident enough to take a walk around town before our classes. We went to a great bookshop to get some Spanish materials and have lunch. Our last classes went well although we were sad to be finishing as we had enjoyed the teaching and knew we still had so much to learn. That evening Xiomara and her daughter Izabel took us back down to the Amador to watch some traditional Panamanian dancing. Izabel used to dance with this troupe so explained what the dances meant - the costumes were incredible as you can see in our photos. There was a lot of stamping of feet and yodeling involved but it looked pretty complicated and we really enjoyed this taste of culture.

We didn´t have any more classes so on Friday 31st Xiomara took us on a tour of the city. Naturally no trip to Panama would be complete without a visit to the canal so that was our first stop. We went to the Miraflores locks where there is a great visitors´centre and we saw a couple of ships coming through the locks. It´s really incredible just how enormous the locks are and quite cool for James and I as both our fathers have been through the canal with the navy.

After the locks Xiomara took us to the famous and beautiful Casco Viejo which is very reminiscient of Havana and is undergoing quite a facelift but remains one of the poorer parts of the city. We went to the church with the Golden Altar behind which there is quite a story. Apparently when Henry Morgan (the naughty Welsh Pirate remember?!) was going around claiming stuff for himself the local priests covered the golden altar in mud so that Henry Morgan wouldn´t see it´s worth, and thus saved it. I don´t think it´s solid gold,maybe gold leaf on wood, but beautiful all the same. We also checked out the President´s house and generally got rained on a lot!

So Sat 1st Nov was the day we were to leave Panama City and our lovely host family. Xiomara drove us out to the bus station to catch a coach to David in the northern end of Panama. Unfortunately we miscalculated slightly. This weekend was the national celebration of Panama´s independence from Columbia and it seemed as though half the city was trying to get on a bus out, either to the seaside or to visit family. The queues for bus tickets were so long we had to wait literally hours for our turn and then found out that the next bus didn´t leave for David until midnight (this was at 11am). So, poor old Xiomara drove us back to her house, feed us up and then arranged for a taxi to take us back to the bus station later on that night. We were a bit miffed at the late hour of the bus journey but happy that we got to spend some more time chatting to Xiomara and Izabel.