Panama City y Portobelo de Panama, 26-31 de Deciembre

PANAma.........PANA MA aa.........!
Well, it had to be obligatory didnt it!? This became the anthem for each day we were in the country, I guess one of those when in Rome Van Halen must do's.
Crossing the Equator mid-flight from Ecuador, we ended 3 months of continuous travels north from the bottom of Chile! Just touching Central America, Panama marked a "U" turn in our route map, as from here we headed back south to Colombia via the Caribbean.
Of course, we also were super excited arriving to Panama as it meant the realisation of our plan to meet up with Dan the man from San Fran!

Panama City

 We stayed in San Felipe which is the historic centre and most interesting part of town; the rest of the city now a young high-rise mecca, most of which has sprung up since Panama's take over of the Canal from the US in 2000. The new city was reasonably chaotic, devoted to the car and pretty unhospitable to pedestrians - as we found looking for ATM's and casa de cambio's (exchange houses), in preparation for 10 days away from banks and communication on the Caribbean.



 
Of course no trip to Panama would be complete without a visit to the famous 80km canal (yes whilst playing Van Halen's - Panama).
We visited the Miraflores locks which are close to the city and have a pretty extensive museum alongside which kept us entertained for a few hours. The MEGAstructures component obviously keeping myself particularly excited. Still an engineering marvel (if you're into that kind of stuff),  at 33m wide and 320m long most of the worlds ships are constructed to fit these dimensions. 

A third and larger set of locks is currently under construction to allow ships up to 55m wide pass the canal, which will more than double the container capacity on these new ships. We found it hilarious that you could buy beers and hot dogs on the viewing platform while you watch ships moving through the locks.

Lower Miraflores Locks.



Upper lock in action....wait for it.....




THERE it is!




Each ship is hualed through the lock with these engines.



San Felipe - now under much redevelopment, old heritage shells like this one are being refurbished.



Some even come with trees already inside!




Portobelo
From Panama City we jumped on a bus for Portobelo, the meeting point for the start of our boat trip south to Colombia.

Portobelo - the well above average rains for this time of year caused catostrophic landslides - such as this one at the entry to town which took out several houses.
You can see how muddied the usually clear waters were.





Portobelo for us marked the start of the Pirates of the Caribbean, this is the main fort in town that was used in attempt to blow them up....

Dan and I holding fort.

The local buses were awesome in Panama, all of which were pimped-out old U.S. school buses. Massive 6 cylinder engines with loud twin exhuasts, and much louder sterios.

Unfortunately more wet weather and high seas prevailed so the trip was delayed by a couple of days. Having felt like we had conquered the towns attractions in the space of an afternoon we were lead to resort to serial bakeryism - we frequented it for their fantastic cinnamon scrolls, chicken or 3-meat sandwhiches, 35c ice creams and as it happens it became a BYO.

The hostel was also pretty hilarious, run by drunken sailors for drunken sailors, it certainly set the scene for what was to follow on the Caribbean! We were told the first night when we rocked up with our own beers that the hostel was actually more of a bar/restuarant and not a hostel....this was of course one of the drunken sailor/owners rants.  His rant later progressed to him telling us how he tried to trade his wife for a 40Amp generator...!

The funniest part was when checking out after 4 nights bunking down at this bar/restuarant, and requesting the staff to triple check our bill, we were not charged for any food! Tight ship.

Dan had just purchased a new point and shoot, so with some spare time we tested out its functions. This was the bogan fish eye filter.

This was the feminine pop art filter.

Now, Dan being Dan, it wouldn't be holiday without passing out somewhere cold on the floor. In this scenario, Clare and I were woken in the middle of the night to "Hey guys, have you got a band aid...?" Naturally we were quite taken by this absurd question and post-turning on the light, Clare was required to administer first aid, and I, moral support from a pale and horizontal position. Dan had flaked out in the tile bathroom (not drunk), suffering a nasty pirate gash to his forehead. The most convenient part was that the nearest hospital was directly over the road! Seven stitches later at a grand total of $1.70, he was as good as new.  

Dan sporting a white version of what some of the locals wore.