Arriving in the city amidst a torrential downpour having just been outrageously over-charged for a taxi didn’t leave us pre-deposed to like Panama City. The staff at the Panamerican Hostal didn’t give us the warmest of greetings and in the end we were glad they only had a room available for one night. This is a brand new hostel which I’d like to say will be good when it’s complete but I’ve a feeling they’re aiming for the pretentious minimalist approach. All the windows had been left open so we had a puddle in our room and the bathroom over-looked a building site. It was just as well it was raining when we grabbed much needed showers as later, when the weather cleared, the workmen could see right into our bathroom. Pull the blinds I hear you shout – you don’t get such basic furnishings in trendy gaffs. The whole place had the air of a converted institution; something on the lines of an old TB hospital or a mental asylum. Should you feel the urge to follow in our footsteps it’ll cost you $35 for a private room and a shabby self-service breakfast. Hotel rant over let’s move on to telling you about Panama City – it’s a building site. Well the small old section is but more skyscrapers are being added to the extensive modern area of the city. The authorities have obviously realised that people will pay good money to visit old colonial sites especially if they have a UNESCO tag like neighbouring Cartagena. Unfortunately Panama has probably left it too late to win any historic awards; what remains of the facades are being propped up and the interiors have completely rotted away. That said the buildings that have been rebuilt have been done very well and accurately reflect how they would have looked in their hay-day. In five years hence visitors will find a very attractive enclave in a busy, chaotic modern city. We never intended spending long in Panama but before heading towards the border we couldn’t resist going to look at their famous canal. There are service buses to get you there but we didn’t want to hang around, besides which a return taxi fare of $12 is very reasonable. Even arriving before the ticket office had opened meant we had to share the experience with hundreds of others. We paid $8 each for a ticket that gave us access to the viewing deck, museum and auditorium for a short video. We didn’t bother with the latter as the museum was very informative and on the viewing deck more information was relayed out via speakers. We were lucky enough to be there when a bulk cargo ship went through and it’s incredible to think of the millions of dollars’ worth of machinery and equipment involved in each ship’s passage. Massive feats of engineering such as this never cease to amaze us and the technical operations of it all are fascinating. I’m sure for those people who understand it all it’s quite mundane but we were very impressed. On collecting our bags from the hostel we went straight to the bus station – well when we finally flagged down a taxi that would take us. Once there we got bundled onto a bus bound for the border which was actually further than we’d planned to go that day. We were hoping to stock pile some dollars as we had a trip in Costa Rica booked and the cash point in the city hadn’t been working earlier. There was bound to be ATM’s on the border so we would get more money out there – or so we thought. The machines in Panama didn’t give us any cash so we crossed the border into Costa Rica hoping it was just a temporary technical problem with the Panamanian banks. In actual fact the bank had decided to put security blocks on our cards leaving us in a spot of bother to say the least. We found somewhere with wifi so at least we could contact the bank and explain our situation. Their response? You need to phone us. Easier said than done in a part of the world where everyone has mobile phones so there are no IDD places and phone boxes don’t accept international calls. Being the sensible and slightly cautious people that we are we’ve made sure throughout the trip that we had some emergency dollars on hand. Not only were the bank not to know that but there we no money changers so we couldn’t get any Costa Rican colones. Luckily dollars are readily accepted but again that the bank didn’t know that. In the end we moved on to Neilly the nearest town where we could only hope to find a phone. Steve walked the length and breadth of the place twice but no phone was to be found. By this point we were feeling furious (Steve), upset (Me) and not surprisingly a tad concerned. In the end an expat American came to our rescue as he’d seen us wandering about looking less than happy. We explained the situation and he said he would have willingly let us use his phone but it had been stolen the previous day. However, he did talk to a lady in a restaurant who asked us to place some credit on her phone before we could use it. We weren’t looking for charity we just needed someone to help us out of a sticky situation. To cut a long story short Steve got through to the bank, explained the situation and got the security blocks lifted; then he had a rant at them. I especially liked the bit where he exaggerated and said we’d been stuck in no-man’s land and had to spend the night on a park bench. The reality is this could have been the truth had we not always made sure we had an emergency fund. The person Steve spoke to didn’t even react when he told them that they’d put us in a potentially dangerous situation. We’d carefully outlined our travel plans to the bank before setting off to avoid this – believe me they’ve not heard the last of it! All-in-all not a good start to our Central America section of the trip - did things improve in Costa Rica?
