Panama City

15 - 18 June 2011

On Wednesday we left Cartagena, flew to Bogotá then on to Panama. It seems silly that we needed to fly all that way (660km + 770km = 1430km) rather than the direct 470km! Travelling without a laptop has been very annoying, so we picked up a laptop at the airport. Our 7kg bag weight had gone out the window!

Thursday we took a bus in the afternoon down to Casco Viejo (the old city) and walked down to the main square. From here we planned our site seeing and started out at the Canal Museum. It was really interesting however no photography was allowed! We walked down to the waterfront and did a quick tour of the area, the latest James Bond was filmed here, not Bolivia. There was a massive contrast between a crumbly old area and the modern city located across the water.

One of the old facades remaining.

The church.

Overgrown shell.

Down at the waterfront.

Hotel next to the water.

The new city, thoroughly modern.

Friday we did our primary goal in Panama city and went to the canal. While this was meant to be easy, the bus system to get out there is infrequent and fairly slow. We made it to the canal in time to see the last ship go through for the morning.

The building name says it all.

One of the Mitsubishi locos.

Gates opening

Opening...

Upper lock filled with a ship.

Lock filling up.

Tug boats

Moving off, rear loco to stabilise.

We watched a movie on the canal before going through the museum. After the canal we waited at the bus station to try and catch a bus out to the wildlife park. This took around an hour, the buses wouldn't stop & when they did they weren't going our way! A taxi stopped and said $15, before quickly dropping down to $10 when we said it was too expensive. A bus would be $0.35! We ended up heading back to town, sharing a taxi with a family from Colombia.

We waited in a line for around 40min at the bus station to try and book a bus to David (not pronounced like the name) before finding out that you cannot book a bus ahead of time! This meant we would need to get up early the next morning to buy our tickets just before the bus left.