Christmas at the Panama Canal

Christmas Day, December 25^th

I'm still here.  So that means the Otter must have taken off and landed just fine, which is a good thing.

We arrived in Panama City in the late afternoon, and promptly made our way to the Radisson Decapolis. Turns out, George picked a very South Beach hotel.  I didn't remember what a Decapolis was, so I checked in quickly with the Wikipedia brain.

"A group of ten cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire in Jordan, Israel, and Syria, and The ten cities were not an official league or political unit, but they were grouped together because of their language, culture, location, and political status. The Decapolis cities were centers of Greek and Roman culture in a region that was otherwise Semitic (Nabatean, Aramean, and Jewish). With the exception of Damascus, the "Region of the Decapolis" was located in modern-day well, one of them located west of the Jordan River in Palestine (modern day Israel). Each city had a certain degree of autonomy and self-rule."

So, it has nothing to do with the original Decapolis, which I'm also sure didn't have its own sushi bar for those late night Unagi cravings, nor its own fourth floor pool overlooking the breakfast nook through several circular portholes situated at the bottom of said pool.

I'm expecting Jennifer Lopez and Mark Antony to walk in with their entourage any moment.

After we checked into our swanky accommodations, we headed out for an early evening's walk to get a sense of the city.  Basically, Panama City has lots of tall buildings.  In fact, I heard a tour guide say today, it's the 3^rd most spectacular skyline in all of North America, behind NY and Chicago.  Not sure what happened to San Francisco in that count, but whatever, it's pretty spectacular.

For dinner, we found ourselves at another seafood restaurant.  This time, I had sea bass with black butter and capers.  It was quite good, and George and Leslie also had some nice seafood dishes.  But my favorite part of the meal was watching the Panamanian diners.  It was good people watching.

This morning, we had a shee-shee breakfast at our shee-shee hotel before we embarked on a taxi ride out to the Miraflores Locks, the last set of locks on the Canal before reaching the Pacific ocean.  I was bummed because no big boats were coming through until 2:30, and we got there around 11, so we had to make do watching a small tug boat and a tourist boat make their way through the first set of locks.

The whole thing was very impressive, especially considering the fact that it's been in continuous operation since 1914 (well, I heard we shut the Canal down for a short while during the American invasion and overthrow of Noriega in 1989, but you get the point).  Also, if you've read "The Path Between the Seas" (HIGHLY recommended) by David McCullough, or any other history of the Panama Canal, you know what a huge engineering feat that was, especially for its time.  And let's not forget the 25,000+ folks (most West Indians) who lost their lives building it, through disease, accidents, etc.

So, the Canal did not let me down.  I took a boatload of pictures (Ha!), and will be putting some select ones up on Facebook, and the full set will end up on Picasa.

After the Canal, our taxi driver who was supposed to have waited for us didn't (amigo, we were happy to pay you for the ride out and wonder what happened to you!), so we caught another and stopped by an outdoor mercado to check out some "molas" first, some very cool embroideries made by hand by Kuna Indians who live up near the San Blass islands on the Caribbean side of Panama.

Then, we went for a tour of the Casto Viejo, the "old town" of Panama.  When we pulled up to the stop, the cab driver pointed behind us and then in front of us, and said in so much Spanish I couldn't really understand, but completely got the gist of: "Go that way (backwards), and you're f----ed.  Go forward, and you're fine."  Yeah, thanks dude, Feliz Navidad!

So, we went the way we were supposed to go and saw all the other folks from the estados unidos whose cab and bus drivers probably told them the same thing, and we walked up and down the boardwalk, hotter than Hades out, just dying for something to drink when George finally found the one outdoor café open on Christmas café.  I ordered a Balboa, which I much prefer still over the other Panamanian beers, and later a shee-shee drink, some kind of limonado pina colada drink.  I had to pull out my mini-umbrella from the pina colada in Contadora, so I would have the appropriate ambiance about me while I drank it.

My favorite story from the PM hotter than hell walk?  We're cruising down the boardwalk when a tour guide points out a bombed out building with no roof.  The tour guide basically goes on to explain the building was bombed by the Americans in 1989, and that it has now become a very shee shee place, where they even threw a fashion show recently for Hugo Boss.

Okay, that is just so wrong on so many levels and in so many ways, and even I had to laugh.  He even observed that one of the shells from the bombing still remains and was featured somehow in the fashion show.  And you thought the Victoria's Secret fashion show on TV was on the margins???

Finally, once back at the Decapolis, I was hanging out at the pool and have decided that someone, somewhere, in Panama is making an absolute killing in breast implant surgeries.  The boobies here are absolutely immense and everywhere.  I feel surrounded by boobies.  George even commented that there were huge boobies on the mannequins at the mall.  Panama is obsessed with boobies, I'm just sayin'.

Okay, that's it.  We're off to find a chiruscarria where we manly men are going to eat much manly steak carved by manly men trying to not cut off their hands as they slice through the large chunks of meat while trying to ignore all the fake, somewhat womanly, boobies.  Hasta la vista, baby.

Leaving My Exile

Wednesday, December 24

I laugh at myself.  I re-read the previous post and thought, man, you had no idea.  This place is so uninhabited that I fear big city dwellers might go into complete and utter shock upon their visit here. 

What day is it again?  Oh yeah, Wednesday, Christmas Eve.  I think we ran out of stuff to do on Monday.  It became readily apparent that the diving was going to continually pretty much suck.  Of course, this crew and I are spoiled.  We've dived in some pretty amazing places.  So this wasn't one of them. Not even close.  Fortunately, it was just interesting enough to give us another on a very short list of things to do, other than reading, sleeping, drinking, and laying on the beach.

 The beaches here are spectacular, so for that reason alone I can recommend Isla Contadora.  I think it makes for a great honeymoon spot.  For me, I'm just SO very glad I downloaded the first full season of "The Wire."  I need more intellectual stimulation than a small island can afford, even if I am on on vacation!

We tried to get out of here on the early flight today, but it was full.  So, instead we headed back down to the beach to kill 90 minutes, taking one last snorkel (upon which George saw two stingrays).  Me, I saw some fish eating on the bottom, but I was "masking" instead of "snorkeling."  Masking's just as fun, but you have to come up for air and you wear no fins. 

We came back to the hotel and cleaned up, and now we're going to be checking out, supposedly.  Check out time was 10 minutes ago.  That's how laid back it is here.  Not sure what we're going to do for lunch, but I do have some plain bread cookies I bought for $1.25 which I've been feeding off of for 3 days now.  Talk about value!

Please pray for us as we take off in the Dehavilland Twin Otter.  So far all the planes have made it off that short runway just fine….

 

 

The Divers in Panama

Sunday, December 21

Contadoras Island, 2:22 PM

Well, we arrived in Contadora yesterday morning around 10:45-ish or so.  The day before had been filled with mucho travel.  For me, Austin to Dallas to Miami to Panama City.  I left Austin around 8:55 AM and arrived in Panama City around 7 PM   George and Leslie left earlier but arrived around 4 PM, giving them much time to go down to the Balboa Yacht Club for dinner.  I, on the other hand, didn't get to have dinner, save for some Funyons that were available at the B&B La Estancia.  That's okay, because they had cold beer for $1 and some bananas. 

The trip was painless save for the part about hanging out at the Panama City airport for an hour waiting for AA to get our bags on the carousel.  Oh, and the part where nobody bothers to tell you you need a $5 tourist card UNTIL you've waited 30 minutes in the customs line.  Then you find out and get to wait all over again.  Hey, it's Panama, WTF did I expect.

Yesterday, the travel escapades began again.  Our flight was supposed to have left at 8:25, then they pushed it back until 9, then 10.  It left sometime around 10:15 I think.  Most people I know who are sane and who flight a lot wouldn't probably have gotten on the airplane we got on.  It was a Dehavilland Twin Otter, circa 1960s, I think.  I didn't see any duct tape but there were definitely some worn patches here and there.

But the best part was that they wouldn't let us take a lighter or matches on the plane.  I snuck a single lighter through anyway, and once we got in the Dehavilland at the other Panama airport (the one near the canal), I laughed really hard when I saw we could rush the cockpit no problem, because there was no door between we and the pilots.  But, please, DON'T bring any matches or lighters. 

When we came in for the landing, I've already put on Twitter that there was a serious pucker factor on the approach.  We made the turn back towards the north into the wind, and I laughed a little to myself : "Oh, we're going to land there?!" (More exclamation than question.)

No sooner had we gotten off the plane than we saw the dive shop.  How convenient.  We hooked up with Guillermo (8 years on the island, originally from Patagonia), and told him we'd brought our own regs and masks, but would need everything else.

Our friends from Perla Real drove us to our hotel/motel, whatever you wish to call it.  It's very nice…quait, I think they call it…and we've opted to walk most everywhere instead of renting a golf cart.  For lunch, we went to the Punta Galeon, I believe it's called.  Great ceviche, and the local brew I fancy is "Balboa" (Go for the "Panama" if you're more of a lager person).  I had an excellent club sandwich as well. 

In the PM, we borrowed some fins and went down to the beach that sits below the runway.  It's a gorgeous beach…straight out of "Lost"…but if a plane does ever land long…well, that's gonna ruin somebody's day on that gorgeous beach.  I checked out the snorkeling, and saw a few parrot fish and a few angels as well.  The coral head was mostly black, and relatively shallow (10-15 feet).  We spent the rest of the day reading on the beach.  And just for shits and giggles I threw on some Jimmy Buffet on the iPod.  I kept waiting for someone to show up with a rum drink with one of those little umbrellas, but they never did.

Last night, we had dinner at the Romantico, a gorgeous restaurant on the south side of the island.  The food was pretty good (I had curried red snapper), and we were one of four seatings they had the whole time we were there.  So, we basically had the place to ourselves.

This morning (Sunday), we woke up and had to eat quickly to get down to the dive shop.  We left around 8:30 to head out to the first dive site (I forget the name of the small island to the north).  Because of my lingering head cold, and despite 2 Sudafed, I had a hard time clearing on the way down on the first dive, and no sooner had I gotten back on the boat that I decided to share all my breakfast (toast and corn flakes) with the fish.  I shared about five times, before having to lay down during the surface interval.   I was very dizzy.  I shared some more of my breakfast about five minutes before the second dive, and feel confident I contributed to helping draw the substantial sea life on that second dive.

The highlight was a White Tip shark.  That SOB was hanging below a rock reef when Guillermo saw him and pointed him out.  Then, the shark zipped out of there, and not knowing what kind it was at the time, kept looking behind me.  But the visibility was only 25-30 feet, so if he had decided we would make a good lunch, we wouldn't have much warning.

We also saw a spotted eel, a spotted manta, a scorpion fish (which a few million years of evolution made butt ugly but with great camouflage – and, apparently, very lethal…one touch and…well, put it this way, you probably wouldn't have to worry about breakfast again), lots of angel fish, some puffers, some frog fish…definitely NOT the best diving I've ever done, but it IS the Pacific side of things, and the rest of the scenery makes up for the lack of good reefs and vis.

I'm glad I made the second dive.  Until I let go that second round of lunch, it was iffy.  I was very dizzy and my sinuses were -----ed.  But, I also know we were only going about 40 feet max on the second dive.

The currents were quite strong, unlike anything I've experienced.  In Cozumel, you typically drift in one general direction.  In Contadora, you kind of get thrown back and forth.  It's cool, but you tend to kick a lot, especially to keep up with Speed Racer (Guillermo, the dive master).  Slow the --- - down, dude, I'm on vacation!!!

Net Turbo Take to Date: This place doesn't suck.  If you need lots of entertainment and stimulation, it ain't for you.  If you like to be out in themiddle of ----ing nowhere on a minimally inhabited island, it's just what the doctor ordered.