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.

Montanita y Guayaquil, 20-26 de Deciembre

40 minutes down the coast from Puerto Lopez was the party & beach town of Montanita, which is where we set up camp for 4 days prior to Xmas. This is a cool spot thats just 3 x 3 blocks big!
Our vitamin D, cocktail and seafood consumption took another upward spike - with feliz hora being all day we thought it rude not to make the most of the local specialties.

Main drag of Montanita

  

Main beach



Cocktail alley - all these little stalls open conventiently in the avo for when
you're especially parched from a day at the beach.

This is a quick and easy blog to write as our days were spent at the beach.
Atlast, for the first time, we gave surfing a proper go.....learnt the hard way not to let go of my board and copped a minor injury to the face but this didn't deter from the fun of it. That'll teach me for letting go of the board! Otherwise Montanita put on some perfectly sized learner waves and we caught the bug. Loved it!!

Last sunset on the west coast of SA for us!

Juan our favourite cocktail maker and our new Canadian buddies Heather and Brandon.
$2 grande mojitos in hand.

Guayaquil

Christmas eve morning we headed back to Guayaquil for Xmas as we had an early flight up to Panama on boxing day.
We actually spent a night here between Mancora to Puerto Lopez - one very frustrating day was spent desperately trying to organise our flight to Panama. It seems in Ecuador you can't book one-way flights as a non-resident and also can't use an international credit card on their website!!
After a day of trasping the agencies we managed to get bums on seats and could move on with our Ecuadorian beach time.

Guayaquil lighthouse in Las Penas.

Cool sculpture naming all the people who donated money to the waterfront development (2.5km long stretch of boardwalk, restuarants, botanical garden and playgrounds etc).



Christmas day picnic on the Melacon 2000 (waterfront promenade) 
Asado (BBQ) for 2, 5.5kg watermelon, strawberries, crackers/dip,
 champagne and a gorgeous fiance. Perfecto!!

We enjoyed a cruisy Christmas for 2!  Slept in, went for a run and then set about creating a feast for lunch. Spent a lot of the day on skype catching up with friends and family all around the world which was brilliant. Managed to get quite a special jingle bells tune going between NZ and Ecuador (with my niece Mya and Grandma/Grandpa). 
Picnic'd the rest of the day away then enjoyed feeding the leftovers to dozens of iguanas.

Never thought I'd be feeding an iguana watermelon with a spoon on Xmas day! They loved it! Guayaquil has this amazing park in the central city that is home to hundreds of iguanas, that were lucky enough to cash in on our excessive amounts of left-over watermelon.

Developed quite a following of kids each time I fed a different iguana.

Much to our surprise, we loved Guayaquil! Being the commercial hub, everybody told us not to even stop there but we found it to be a lovely city with next to no tourists about.
It was definitely a big surprise arriving as it was particularly Americanised - moreso than any city so-far in our travels. Likely stemming from the US having such a big hand in the petroleum industry here. After 10 days in Ecuador, it does appear to be quite a hot spot for american holidaymakers and an increasingly popular place to buy a beach house.

This brings an end to adventures in Ecuador. Sadly the funds and timing didn't stretch as far as the Galapogos Islands this time around......which just means we'll have to come back!

Hi ho hi ho, its off to Panama we go............ to meet up with Dan for 10 days!!

Puerto Lopez de Ecuador, 16 - 19 Deciembre

Puerto Lopez






Puerto Lopez, the smell hits you first, then you look up and see chaos emerging in the sky - thousands of sea birds wrestling for position to swoop down and steal the latest catch from fisherman unloading their haul, bucket by bucket......all day.
With just 10 days in Ecuador we targeted the popular southern coastline, a 3 hour bus ride from Guayaquil. Half a dozen or so small fishing and surfing towns dot this lush coastline. Bordering a national park we opted for Puerto Lopez first as a base for checking out the area.






By night we frequented some of the many bamboo beach-side bars which lined the length of populated beach. Cheap cocteles, cerbeza's y hamburguesas! One of my favorite things from Ecuador was the $1.00 600ml beers!!  

Isla de la Plata is an island 20km off the coast from Puerto Lopez and part of the national park. We jumped on a day trip out there to check out some of the birds and snorkelling on offer.



Blue-footed Boobie, a stange seagull / duck cross. They spray acidic excrement out from their nest to keep rodents away!




Young Blue-footed Boobie, or just a Boobie at this stage.  



A spot of snorkelling, and Turtugas!



Muy bien!

Being in Puerto Lopez we thought what a prime opportunity to dabble in a little fishing of our own. Being a relatively small town we saw the same faces quite frequently, so we became friendly with our first mototaxi driver that caught us off the bus - subsequently he offered to take us out for a couple of hours on his family boat with 2 of his bro's.

Clare showing how its done.

We were initially very excited when Jonny and Jose threaded up our rods with what looked like lures that could catch whales, however after an hour of trawling not a bite prevailed. Anchoring up on a small island reef in a pretty rough channel we then proceeded to unwind our old-school hand lines....and then it was all on!

We found a school of reef fish which obviously did not catch on why all their mates were disappearing. In the space of about 40mins the 4 of us hauled in about 30 fish! Unfortunately after numero tres for Clare, she had to retire to stay focused on the relentlessly bobbing horizon. Sea sickness being a contagious phenomenon, after 7 fish, my fishing too came to a salivating end! Fortunaltey an awesome beach was close by and Clare and I jumped off to find our legs again.


Back in calmer waters and having conquered our nausea, we enjoyed freshly prepared Ceviche - an Ecuadorain dish prepared with the fish we caught and cooked by marinating in lime juice, with red onion cucumber and tomato - es fantastico!

Sweet beach bungalow Numero Tres

After 3 nights in Puerto Lopez, we jumped on the equally nauseating local bus for Montanita - just down the road.

Mancora, 14 de Deciembre.

Beach time! After our adventurous escape getaway in the bat-mobile from Huaraz, and a 12 hour stopover in Trujillo, we arrived in the popular surf spot of Mancora in northern Peru. You can imagine after following the high altitude Andes all the way from Patagonia, we were pretty excited about some sun, surf and heat! Mancora couldn’t have provided more of a contrast from protest ridden Huaraz, and we quickly slipped into the laid back atmosphere.

Birdcage-like colonial security window detail in Trujillo.



Our sweet beach bungalow Numero Uno.



Sweet beach bungalow Numero Uno – view.

Photo of a photo - this is how the fisherman in northern Peru get around, surfers also pay these guys to paddle them out past the breakers!

Mancora marked the beginning of loads of tuk-tuks (125cc mototaxis which take you anywhere for about $1), and a lot more very extensive tropical fruit stalls based on single-speed tricycles.



For no apparent reason coffee consistency and quality changed all of a sudden. In this case, Clare and I were brought a mug of hot water, with jar of instant coffee and shot of cream alongside! I suppose surf-side you can’t really complain….

 

This is where the hunt for the new bikinis began (Clare's).  

Kon Tiki - we considered jumping on one for NZ for Xmas, but left it a bit late....

Mancora was a great little town with an energetic atmosphere; we had 2 relaxing days here winding down, catching up on sleep and swimming - our pastie white bods soaking up some welcomed Vitamin D! We also sorted out a basic plan for our now shortened 10-days in Ecuador. The last 4 weeks really have flown in Peru, an amazing country we feel we have really only scratched the surface of. But now, bring on the Banana republic - ECUADOR!