Farewell to Panama City

Feb 15

Today was catch up/chill day. We slept in, had a simple breakfast and did laundry. I ironed some items until it got too hot. I worked on the blog and Ron edited then added photos and posted the blog. We stayed in most of the day but decided to go to a nearby recommended restaurant. It said on the website it was open until 9:00 when we arrived we were met by two employees who said they were closed. Ron pointed to their sign to no avail so we went back to the Italian place where we had eaten last week.

Feb 16

Panama City este cerrado (is closed!)

Today I read about Carnival in Panama. Apparently it is as big a deal as Rio and New Orleans. The website said “all seriousness and work stops”. I now believe that is why we couldn’t eat at the restaurant last night. Today there is hardly any traffic and most retail shops are closed. All banks are closed, many pharmacies are closed. Medical offices and labs are closed. The list goes on and on…many restaurants are closed except all those awful US chains like Subway, KFC, Pizza Hut. There is a daily parade and parties with lots of drinking, culminating tomorrow with Shrove Tuesday. One of the traditions here is water throwing: fire hoses, water balloons and buckets are dumped over your head and it is all part of the ‘fun’. Only problem is your cell phone, watch and camera could get ruined so we haven’t yet participated but I think Ron wants to venture out.

I spent the morning doing our sheets and towels laundry and writing emails. Afterwards Ron had cabin fever so we walked down the street to the biggest mola shop in Panama. It was overwhelming, frankly. The owner claims to have over a million molas but I think that is a figurative term, not literal. Still there were way too many for me to plow through. I spent about 45 minutes looking and found three I liked. I was lucky as she was discounting them by 30%.

I fell asleep after lunch and when I woke up Ron had cabin fever so we took a cab to Trump Tower and all those high rises downtown. OMG. It is so sterile with many high rise apartment building and no shops or businesses. Trump Tower had a hotel in it and that was about all we saw in the way of commerce. 

We stopped for a cold drink at a Mexican restaurant and went to a grocery store then walked back to our apartment and rested briefly before going out for a great meal at a Lebanese place a few blocks away.

Feb 17

PC is still closed. No way to get a manicure or much of anything else today. In the afternoon we decided to head down to the park where the carnival was. When we arrived at 2:50 we were instructed to go to the entrances to the left or right of the street we were on. When we got to the next entrance we were told to come back at 4:00. No one could enter until then although there were people inside and some coming out. We looked around for a place to get a cold drink as it was quite hot by this time of day ...and humid too. We walked around for about 15 minutes only to discover we were in some kind of industrial area with no restaurants around. We gave up and came home. While eating dinner in a place with big screen TV’s we were rather glad we missed the carnival. The stage show looked very local. Two young men in our apartment said they had gone and were not impressed so we didn’t feel like we had missed much. I guess if you were drinking alcohol and partying it may have meant more.

Feb 18

Wayne and Dana met us at 9:00 this morning and we took a taxi to Parque Natural Metropolitano, a huge national park that stretches across Panama almost to the other coast, paralleling the canal and Gatun Lake. We walked for a couple of hours to a lookout that gave us a panoramic view of PC, the bay and the canal. 

We came back to town and had lunch together at a local eatery (cafeteria) that our taxi driver had recommended as a local favorite. After lunch we said our good byes and we came home while Wayne and Dana wrapped up some shopping they needed to do. I finally managed to get my manicure/pedicure in the late afternoon after a shower and rest from our hot walk.

Feb 20

First European bridge in the Americas (1520)

Today we got up early, had breakfast and headed out to Panama Viejo. This is the original site of the first European settlement on the Pacific. It was founded in 1519 by a Spanish conquistador. For the next 150 years it profited from Spain’s bullion pipeline which ran from Peru’s gold and silver mines to Europe via Panama. All of the major Catholic religious orders were here: Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians. The best houses and convents were built on the narrow strip of land along the beachfront.

In 1671 1200 pirates led by Captain Henry Morgan plundered, divided up or destroyed the city by fire.  For the next three centuries the abandoned area served as a site for building materials. By the time the government declared the ruins a protected site in 1976 most of the area had been dismantled. Now it is a UNESCO site and there is excellent signage with drawings of recreations of the original site. We spent a couple of hours walking through the area and got pretty hot even though we finished by 11:00.

Afterwards we walked through an artesian market admiring carvings, more molas and beautiful basketry. If we weren’t traveling I would have been tempted to make some purchases as the craftsmanship is excellent here.

Feb 21

Today was another slow day.  After a leisurely breakfast and doing e-mail, etc. we started organizing our belongings for packing up as tomorrow we go to Boquete.  Later that morning we went for a coffee.  After coming back to the apartment we did some more packing and had lunch, finishing up the meager groceries we had accumulated. In the afternoon went for another coffee and gateaux .... just to pass some time. Then we came back to the apartment to post this blog segment and finish packing before going out to dinner.  Tough life, I know!