City Life Is Not For Us!
OK - so, it's no surprise that Dave and I are not looking to move to a city of any kind but Panama City is definitely out of the question!
We arrived without any issues on Saturday and aside from waiting for our bags for 5 minutes while they were sitting on the other side of the carousel, we got through the airport quickly and once outside were customarily accosted by every guy that wanted to give us ride to the hotel. I had previously read that you should just walk to the right and catch a white taxi at the end of the curb but man getting there took a bit of persistence. and a lot of "No, Gracias" before we got to the end of line and were on our way to the hotel. I have to say that's often the one thing that I don't like about traveling, especially to areas where tourism is key, the aggressiveness of people that want to sell you something or otherwise get your money. But, such is the way it is and I just have to keep politely declining their offers.
The first couple of days we spent in the city and just chilled a bit and did a couple of things.
We took the obligatory trip to the Miraflores Locks to see a couple of the ships pass through. It's quite a thing to see how they process the ships through the locks and even though it can take a ship, cargo or cruise, almost all day to travel through the locks, it saves eight days by having to take another route and even the expensive $200,000+ (yes, that is two hundred thousand dollars per transit) transit fee is still a deal!!
We also went fishing on Lake Gatun for peacock bass and like most vacation fishing trips we did not do so well. Dave caught a small one in the morning but that was about it. Our guide though, who was hand fishing with string around an old coke bottle caught a nice size peacock bass and a tilapia. I guess we should have put down the poles and tried hand fishing as well..LOL. It was neat while we were in transit on the lake that we passed some of the huge cargo ships that were going through the canal at the time.
Anyway, once again Dave and I have sworn off paying for fishing during vacation because we usually don't do too well - we'll see how long that lasts.
Our other adventure in the city was to the Parque Natural Metropolitano. This place has a few different walking trails with some wildlife to be seen. There is a trail that goes up to an observation point that allows you to see all of Panama City but that was a little too steep for our liking. We did however get to see a nice view of the city from one of the easier paths that we took. We also saw a variety of birds, some coati who are members of the raccoon family, and luckily enough some monkeys. We were lucky to see as much as we did because we didn't go to the park until about 9:00 am and usually you have to go early to see more but overall we were happy with our sightings. Thankfully the paths are shady because even with that it was a hot and sweaty walk through the trails.
Tuesday we will be off to the Caribbean side to Bocas del Toro and hopefully we get there without issue since i received an email on Monday from Air Panama telling me that our 2:30 flight was cancelled and we are now on the 5:00 pm flight...fingers crosssed.
We arrived without any issues on Saturday and aside from waiting for our bags for 5 minutes while they were sitting on the other side of the carousel, we got through the airport quickly and once outside were customarily accosted by every guy that wanted to give us ride to the hotel. I had previously read that you should just walk to the right and catch a white taxi at the end of the curb but man getting there took a bit of persistence. and a lot of "No, Gracias" before we got to the end of line and were on our way to the hotel. I have to say that's often the one thing that I don't like about traveling, especially to areas where tourism is key, the aggressiveness of people that want to sell you something or otherwise get your money. But, such is the way it is and I just have to keep politely declining their offers.
The first couple of days we spent in the city and just chilled a bit and did a couple of things.
We took the obligatory trip to the Miraflores Locks to see a couple of the ships pass through. It's quite a thing to see how they process the ships through the locks and even though it can take a ship, cargo or cruise, almost all day to travel through the locks, it saves eight days by having to take another route and even the expensive $200,000+ (yes, that is two hundred thousand dollars per transit) transit fee is still a deal!!
We also went fishing on Lake Gatun for peacock bass and like most vacation fishing trips we did not do so well. Dave caught a small one in the morning but that was about it. Our guide though, who was hand fishing with string around an old coke bottle caught a nice size peacock bass and a tilapia. I guess we should have put down the poles and tried hand fishing as well..LOL. It was neat while we were in transit on the lake that we passed some of the huge cargo ships that were going through the canal at the time.
Anyway, once again Dave and I have sworn off paying for fishing during vacation because we usually don't do too well - we'll see how long that lasts.
Our other adventure in the city was to the Parque Natural Metropolitano. This place has a few different walking trails with some wildlife to be seen. There is a trail that goes up to an observation point that allows you to see all of Panama City but that was a little too steep for our liking. We did however get to see a nice view of the city from one of the easier paths that we took. We also saw a variety of birds, some coati who are members of the raccoon family, and luckily enough some monkeys. We were lucky to see as much as we did because we didn't go to the park until about 9:00 am and usually you have to go early to see more but overall we were happy with our sightings. Thankfully the paths are shady because even with that it was a hot and sweaty walk through the trails.
Tuesday we will be off to the Caribbean side to Bocas del Toro and hopefully we get there without issue since i received an email on Monday from Air Panama telling me that our 2:30 flight was cancelled and we are now on the 5:00 pm flight...fingers crosssed.
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