Panama City by day (took this pic the morning we left Panama City - not the most appealing shot in the torrential rain)
Panama City by night
Showing posts with label Panama City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Panama City. Show all posts
Monday, July 26, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
It’s best if I never leave room 7 - Ricky Geltch
Luna’s Castle is a full on maddhouse. Making our way to Casca Veijo, we arrived hearing and reading stories about the place, but had no idea until we set in. For $13 a night we were presented with: Free breakie, a movie theater, $1 beers upstairs, free wi fi, beer garden connected to the Relic Bar (public bar that serves 50c beers and $1 spirits in happy hour) and keys to our beds in Room 7...
We joined forces with a pretty solid Aussie crew, where we turned Luna’s Castle into Luna’s Circus for about 3 days. Thursday, Friday, Saturday we turned things up, enforcing an Aussie influence on the rest of the Hostel.
Things really escalated up on Saturday. Hitting the beers most of the day, we rounded up the troops to Room 7 late in the afternoon to get right down to business. A few hours of getting full on, and a session of beer bongs at happy hour, about 10 of us followed a few local girls lead to a local club ‘The Loft’. Definitely out of place, but too loose to care, we hit the DF hard, using smooth Spanish compliments and ripping dance moves to try our hand at possies of local chickas.
Panama Canal
A trip to the Canal is a must for any trip to Panama City. Its a textbook tourist mission, but once there, you’re amazed by the scale of this engineering structure. We took a $6 cab ride from Luna’s Castle to the the Midaflores locks, and $8 for the full tour. We got there just in time for a massive oil tanker the ‘Asopos’ to pass through the locks.
The tanker enters the lock, pulled by 4 guides on a track. Once gate 1 is closed, water fills the lower chamber making the tanker rise. The ship continues to rise until the water level in the upper and lower chambers are at the same level, which at the point gate 2 to opens.
Once open the tanker passes through into the upper chamber, this process happens again - however the upper chamber water level must now rise to the same level as the rest of the Canal. The tanker passes through gate 3 then progresses on north through the Canal. The whole process takes about 30mins. Chatting to a local lad who priced this tankers movement through the Midaflores locks at $300k. The locks operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Generating around $4 million a day at Midaflores alone, you begin to realise the massive potential of this developing nation.
An expansion project of Midaflores locks has recently begun west of the current locks. The focus is to ease pressure on the current locks, get bigger ships through and in turn more money for Panama. The project is costed at $5 billion over 7 years.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Tricked up transport system
These bad boys are the public bus system - decked out with rad paintings, rims, air-horns, disco lights and a massive sound system. For 25 cents you can pimp to most places in the city.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The money coming in
There’s an absolute truck load of money coming into Panama City. We we’re so surprised how new the city is, not to mention that about half of the buildings and skyscrapers are under construction. We initially thought this was a huge US investment, similar to Costa Rica, but found out from an ex-pat engineer that the majority of construction comes from Columbian and Iranian money. The country has some big plans for tourism (as we discovered from Jenny our Tourism Commission hook up) and has begun a new expansion project on their main source of revenue - the Canal. Seems as if Panama has some big plans for the years to come and they definitely have the financial backing to make it happen.
Panama Viejo
The ruins of the original Panama City. Its the oldest European city on the Pacific coast of the Americas founded by the Spanish in 1519. For about 150 years this city was the epicenter of the Pacific, a gateway for gold in Peru and a major trading post for East Asia. In 1671, a bad arse Welsh pirate by the name of Henry Morgan took hold of the city, taking its booty, riches and foreign goods, then reducing Panama Viejo to rubble. Although some pretty amazing history can be told through the stones, the ruins now lie within a full on ghetto. Big contrast from the wealth of once, to the weather board shacks of today.
The Panama Viejo Cathedral
North view of the city
The Jesuit Convent aka nun city
Map of the old city
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Panama City circles
After a long flight with stop overs in Atlanta and Ft Lauderdale, we finally made it to Panama City (not to be confused with Panama City Florida) at 1.30am. Thanks to our streetsmarts aka Lonely Planet we had free airport transfers to Hotel Marparaiso - only slightly more than a hostel, it saved us being stuck in a Spanish speaking airport in the early hours with our limited Espanol.
Wanting to get amongst it early, we smashed through our free Continental breakfast (2 bread rolls, coffee and an orange juice) and set off for a trek around the city coastal path. Needing a map to maximise the day, we focused our journey on finding the IPAT or Panamanian Tourist Info Centre. After getting lost through the heavy part of the city and suffering under the 32 degree heat, we stumbled upon the Mercado de Mariscos (seafood markets) Shit yeah.
In the restaurant $12 got us a 2 whole fish and rice - pretty damn awesome. Downstairs in the markets, huge pargo (red snapper) to Corvina (sea bass) were on sale for $2-3 pound. King prawns 20cm long for $5. Giant Caribbean centolla (crab) for $5 a pound. If you’re stoked on certain produce downstairs, you can buy and take it upstairs to the restaurant to cook for a little extra. Over lunch we needed to re-group. We needed to get to the tourist info centre and a spanish school while seeing the interior of the city. Jimmy had a basic map, so we put it to use and set off for round 2.
Something we learned on day 1 was Panamanian's have a pretty unique way of giving directions. This was both to our advantage and disadvantage - we got shit lost, but walked through the majority of the interior city and by the end of the day have most of the streets wired. Panamanian’s don’t use maps or use street names to base their knowledge of their city. If we wanted to get to Gran Morison Shopping Centre, the local would direct us by the major street (Ave Espania) the shop on the corner (Nike Store) then use shops as location pins (Sony Store, then Grocery Store, use the overpass, then left past the 2nd hand electronic store. Locals have limited knowledge of streets (calles) as most of them aren’t marked anyway.
Took us a couple of hours to find what we through was the Tourist Info Centre, but on the 6th floor of an office building turned our to be Autoridad de Tourismo Panama (Panama Tourist Authority). Arriving at reception and using our western innocence on a quest for a map, we were shown through the Tourist Authority office to the desk of Jenny .... - Regional Coordinator of the Panama Tourism Authority. Strangely excited to meet us, Jenny unloaded a wealth of knowledge and list of personal contacts around the whole country. Also gave us the inside word that Panama secured a WCT Surfing event in 2011 at Sanata Catalina, and gave us the contact of a local event organiser. After exchanging emails and cell phone numbers (frothing) we set off for round 3. Find a spanish school.
More getting lost (at one point we found our way wandering the halls of universidad internacional (International University) collecting smiles from the local chickas and more getting the city totally wired, we eventually found the spanish school in a street banging with bars and restaurants. Getting a few prices and assuring the chicka we’ll get back to her, we hit some more beers and got back to the aircon of the Marparaiso.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)