Panama...more than just a canal!

I loved Panama. I didn’t expect much because I didn’t have enough time to do any research on it but each day became better than the one before it.

I guess maybe it could only go up since it began a little rocky. It all started with us anchored in the middle of the Bay of Panama and tendering in to shore. This was a nightmare. The swells were erratic and it was, in the words of my five year old self, SCARY. After many delays we final started getting students off the ship. When it was time to for me to disembark the swells acted up again and we were very quickly rushed back inside the ship. Finally, they allowed us to start up again and I safely got myself onto to the tender boat. I should rephrase this and say the crew got me safely on the tender. I was very nervous watching the crew work hard to get everyone on the tender boat safely as the temporary gangway they were standing on and the tender were rising and falling at different intervals. At one point while they were boarding the tender I was sitting on a swell came up and the tender fell under the bumpers of the gangway and the gangway was forced up into the air. There were no passengers on the gangway at that time as they had rushed them back inside the ship, however, two crew members were tossed about but hung on for dear life. They quickly untied the tender boat and the gangway dropped back down to where it was suppose to be. I was a nervous wreck. I could no longer watch this process and buried my head into Mario’s shoulder. Thankfully, after an uneventful ride in the tender boat I got off and found the shopping center where I was meeting Nate. Like clockwork, Nate showed up as I was walking out to the front of the center and the good times in Panama began.

We decided to make our way to Gamboa Rainforest to a resort Nate’s dad had recommended. We found a taxi and were driven out there at night. It was quite a distance and I don’t think either of us expected that long of a drive. We got there and went into the lobby to see about getting a room. This is totally unlikely me as I like to have reservations ahead of time, just in case. The woman looked at us like we were crazy for driving all the way out there without a reservation. After a few minutes of her calling around she told us they had a room. It was more than we had expected to spend but what were we to do, we’d just driven over 40 minutes in the pitch black and paid for a cab to get there. We took the room, had dinner and went to bed early.

The next morning we woke up to birds singing and pulled back the curtains to find the most amazing scenery. I was so glad we had decided to drive up there on a whim. The morning was spent exploring the rainforest on an aerial tram at the rainforest. And boy is it a small world. We rode the tram with two women, a mother and her daughter from Nevada and Colorado. The more we chatted with them the more we realized you can run from Stanford but you can’t hide. The mother, Ellie Oppenheim, was the Associate Dean of Students at Stanford in the late 70’s and knew many of the people we work with. We played the name game for a while and then focused on the animals in the trees. We felt very lucky because the guidebook author said he had been on the tram in Gamboa twice and has never seen animals there. We, however, saw a slough in movement, two toucans and a monkey. I felt like our money was very well spent after that.

We decided to check out of Gamboa and head back to Panama City in the hopes of seeing the Canal and some local sights before meeting up with Lisa, Tania and Mario to head to the Caribbean side of the country. We called our taxi driver from the night before and headed on our way. Our cab driver, Peter, and his daughter, Yeremi, were very helpful. Peter spoke some English but he often worked with his daughter because she was fluent in English. She came with him to pick us up at Gamboa and gave us a tour of the Panama Canal. The Canal was amazing. It’s such an engineering marvel. We watched a ship go through the locks of the Canal and then headed out to see other parts of Panama City. After a quick tour of Casco Viejo (Old Town) and a walking tour in front of the Presidential Palace we were dropped off at a location to meet up with Lisa, Tania and Mario. We were a little skeptical that all five of us would actually end up at the meeting location on time but there we all were within five minutes of each other. It felt like good karma and frankly the good karma didn’t end there….

(I’m so sorry, things have been so busy I have not been able to finish this blog. Instead, I’m going to take this opportunity to introduce you to my first guest blogger, Mario. Mario doesn’t know he’s my guest blogger so I don’t have his text, however, I do have permission to link you to his blog and the account of our remaining two and a half days in Panama. They were magical to say the least)

www.marioandthesea.blogspot.com

P.S. The internet is REALLY slow right now so I will upload some pictures of Panama later when thinsg are moving a little quicker.