Bus to the Big City

Start the day in our pink paradise. Cheese omelette sandwich for me for breakfast, plenty of jalapeños too, quite tasty – much better than the instant cappuccino.

Walk into ‘town’ to pick up some body boards but they’re closed today – not having much luck with surfing this trip. We’re leaving at midday so four of us walk down to the beach anyway, time for a quick swim before we go. The hotel dog decides it’s a good idea and comes with us.

The tide is a long way out which means there’s even more hot sun to hop across. The water is lovely as ever, the sun hasn’t quite warmed it up yet so it’s slightly cooler but very refreshing. All too soon we have to say goodbye to all this and head back to shower, finish packing and catch the bus to Panama City.

The first hour or so is through lots of lush green countryside, then we turn onto the Pan-American highway and head for the big city. After about 30 minutes we stop in Santiago for a snack and toilet break. We get surprisingly good coffee and cakes from a bakery on the edge of the bus station.

Back on the road for another couple of hours. To the north there’s a range of mountains that form the spine of the country, and the continent at this point. The clouds cling to the peaks which look very jagged wherever they poke through.

We stop again in Coronado. It’s getting late for lunch now so we just get some emergency shopping – pencils for Florence, sun-cream for me.

On the last leg of the journey, there’s a sudden heavy rain-storm but it doesn’t last; as it clears we’re suddenly on a bridge high over the Panama Canal. The continent is only 50 miles wide here, the Caribbean is 40 miles to our North, Panama City and the Pacific are on the south side.

We turn off the highway and join the traffic queue heading into the city; we’d been warned that this would happen. In this area, the Canal is everything. We can see it in the distance through the trees, we pass a couple of cemeteries created for the workers who died in its creation. A lot of the buildings we pass are former US military accommodation now lived in by locals; it’s doubtful they were painted in so many bright colours in their former existence.

Our hotel is in the mid-town area between the high-rise offices and apartments of the financial district and the old town. We have an hour to settle in then we’re out for dinner. Taxis take us to a marina created on reclaimed land in the Canal mouth – they had to do something with all the spoil from the excavations. The roads around the city are very good, one takes us around the old town on a road built on a continuous breakwater to keep the waves way form the fragile old buildings. The marina has a large number of very expensive yachts for us to choose from – one has a helicopter on it – very ostentatious.

There’s a nice breeze from the water. In the distance we can see the lights of the offices. This is officially our last night meal even though the trip has one day to go – we have to leave in the middle of the night on Sunday morning so we need a quiet night tomorrow. The food is good, pasta and pizza for us – with a nice Chilean Pinot Noir to help it along. Brayan wants to learn to enjoy wine – he isn’t impressed with this one.

The big news in Panama today is that the former dictator, Manuel Noriega, is being allowed out of prison and to live under house arrest in preparation for an operation on a brain tumour. He has been in prison since his capture in 1989. The US invasion was deemed by the UN to have been illegal, he hid in the Vatican embassy in Panama City where the US were unable to touch him. They set up a helicopter landing pad next door and bombarded him with loud music – said to have included ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ – Guns n Roses and ‘I Fought the Law’ by the Clash. After ten days he gave himself up.