Panama City
PANAMA
Adios a Central America!!
By LYNDI
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Not 4 hours after leaving our beautiful, comfortable, air-conditioned, beachfront room at the Royal Decameron, Aaron and I found ourselves staring at each other in a little, stuffy, cramped room in Panama City with mosquitoes buzzing around our heads. We’d had our week of glory and fun in the sun – now it was back to life as we knew it. Ah well, it was good while it lasted.
Panama City is a vibrant and modern city at the southern end of the Central American isthmus, and for most travelers – the end of the road. Beyond Panama City to the east lies the famed Darien Gap that separates Panama from Colombia. Technically, you can travel through the Darien – you just probably won’t come out the other end. If the mosquitos and diseases don’t get you, the FARC probably will. If the FARC doesn’t get you, the guerillas probably will. If the guerillas don’t get you, the insurgents chasing the guerillas might. And if you survive all these odds and they don’t get you either, you’ll probably get hopelessly lost as there is zero civilization there and will never be seen nor heard from again. With these odds, Aaron and I knew our first task in Panama City would be to determine how we would be continuing our journey and getting to Colombia – via plane or ship. Many travelers reach Panama City with a good idea of what they will be doing. Aaron and I were clueless and spent a lot of time trying to figure it out.
Since we’d already done the Panama Canal when Aaron’s parents were in town, there wasn’t a lot left on our “to-do” list for Panama City. Which is a good thing since we filled our days just running errands. Our first task was to find a decent hostel. Our hot, stuffy room that we used our first night was not bearable for more than that – so we spent about 5 hours the next day walking around the city looking for hostels that had either moved or no longer existed. Upon discovering that every hostel in the city was either a complete dump or in a really dangerous part of town, we admitted defeat and began to walk back to our dumpy hotel. When we were two blocks away, we stumbled across the Balboa Bay Hostel – unadvertised in any guidebooks – with bright, clean rooms, free internet and free breakfast. Granted, we wasted 5 hours of our time searching in vain for recommended hostels, but we ended up alright at Balboa Bay.
Our next task was to figure out how we would get to Colombia. As I mentioned earlier, we could take a one hour flight to Cartagena, Colombia for about $200 or take a 5 day cruise through the beautiful San Blas Islands on the Caribbean coast for $385. It sounds like an easy choice, but when we consulted our trusty and faithful guide (you may know him as “Google”) we ran across tons of horror stories where anything could go wrong on the open seas: captains trying to smuggle drugs, captains not actually knowing how to sail ships – just trying to make a quick buck, crews that didn’t pack enough food and/or water and just let the passengers starve, or actually getting lost at sea for days on end. There isn’t actually a service to or from Panama – just boats that have a little extra room so they take on extra passengers. Very recently, some captains have discovered the money-making opportunity and will sail once or twice a month between the two countries – even making a little cruise out of the trip. This is what we were looking for, we just had to be careful who we chose.
We asked at the popular youth hostel in town called Luna’s Castle to see if they had any recommendations. The girl working the desk informed us they had a ship leaving the next day.
“Wellllll… we wanted to spend a little more time in Panama.” Then she said it is the only ship they’ve never had any complaints about.
“Well…. we need a little time to make a decision.” Then we were told that in fact, this ship – the Stahlratte – had been the highlight of many passengers’ entire journey.
“Gee… that’s nice, but it’s pretty spendy.” Finally she told us that the ship looks like an old pirate ship.
“Sold.”
So with that out of the way, we had half a day left in Panama – and in Central America. Instead of making the most of it, we dodged the torrential downpour that had been passing through for the past few days, went to the local mall for the biggest, fattest ice cream cones I’ve ever seen, and went to a local pub where they played back to back Bryan Adams hits (no – that’s not an oxymoron, thank you very much).
And with that, our Central America journey came to an end. It amazes me when I look at a map – because the entire Central American sub-continent is sooo small, yet it took us nearly 5 months to traverse it. At this rate, it will take us 8 years to get through South America. So it’s about time we get started.
