Panama - Boquete

Feb 17

Boquete! 

 

Here's what I was excited about for Boquete- it's in the mountains, and in a cloud forest, so it's much cooler than at the beach or the city. There are some unique and cool birds there. It's a big ex-pat community, so there are lots of restaurants and things to do. 

 

  

I had been emailing with a Canadian woman named Simone, who I connected with through a birding travel facebook group. She was spending the entire month in Panama, and the previous year had the spent the month of February in Boquete. I asked her a million questions and got a lot of recommendations from her.  She recommended Finca Lerida, which is a coffee plantation and hotel up in the highlands. It looked really nice online, so we booked 2 nights there. 

 

Before driving up to Finca Lerida, we stopped in the city of Boquete for some lunch and sightseeing. We first visited the Boquete Flower & Coffee Fair, which turns out is a fair that happens at a different time of year than when we were there. But the fairgrounds always exist, and we walked through and saw flowers and did a little shopping. We chatted for a long time with a woman running a stall, she was very friendly and fun to talk to. 

The Peacock Garden at the Flower Fair

 

There were also a couple open-air craft/touristy crap/farmers markets nearby, so we wandered through those. I saw a lady selling quilts, probably one of the only quilters in Panama, it's too hot to need quilts most places. She buys her fabric in Japan! We met an American guy who runs a knife-sharpening business in Boquete, and he gave us his card. Just in case? Loads of ex-pats in these markets. 

 

Time for lunch. There was little cafe right there called Boquete Baking Project, that looked cute and had a live band playing. We got some sandwiches and listened to the band. Then before we left, we went to use the restroom and discovered a whole back terrace to the restaurant that would have been very pleasant to sit on while eating lunch!

 

 

Then, while I was waiting for Adam to come out of the restroom, someone came up to me and said, "are you an Eley??" and I was! So there was Nancy and Bruce Henson, a couple from our church in Denver! She recognized me, I never would have recognized them. They have a house in Boquete and come for a couple months every year. We chatted for a while. 

 

Next, Adam and I headed out for a hike. We were recommended the Pipeline Trail (a common trail name I guess), just outside of town, quite close to the Finca we would be staying at. So we headed up there. The hike was not super strenuous, but it was still pretty hot, and my feet hurt a lot from being sunburned and my ankles were swollen (sunburn?) and I also had all these little bites on my ankles from something, so I was kind of uncomfortable. One reason we did this hike was because at the top, we might get to see Resplendent Quetzals! Look at this beautiful bird!

 

Photo from ebird. Spoiler, I did not see this bird.

 

The problem is, I had absolutely no idea where the end of the trail was. Our phones didn't have cell service so we couldn't really look anything up. Was the top in an hour? Two hours? Ten hours? Who knows. 

 

We did lots of cool birds on the hike up. And we chatted with some British folks who told us to keep going, because there was a super old tree to see. We got to the tree! It was cool. 

 

 

But I was spent. I wanted to take my shoes off so badly. And I thought we'd probably have another opportunity to see the Resplendent Quetzal at the Finca. So we did not continue on to the top, we went back to the car. I'll spare you the suspense, we never did see the Resplendent Quetzal. But perhaps someday we will. 

 

We got to the Finca and got checked in and went to our room and it was delightful. It's such a beautiful property, and we had a hammock hanging on our porch, and we sat outside and saw tons of cool birds from the porch. 

 

  

We went to dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was a bit weird, because nobody else was there. It was empty. But we had a nice dinner, then we went back to the room and tried not to fall asleep super early. (We were exhausted every day).

 

Feb 18

 

The hotel offers a coffee service in the morning, so we had coffee (Adam) and hot chocolate (Laura) delivered to the room!   

 

 

  

We went down to the restaurant for breakfast, and had a nice meal. After breakfast we had signed up for a plantation tour of the Finca. Our guide, Jose, showed us around and taught us a lot about coffee. He said he was 80 years old and drinks 12 cups of coffee a day! The tour was good, very extensive, with a coffee tasting at the end. Jose was really an expert, he knew all about how coffee grows, the economics of the global coffee trade, the history of coffee, etc. We saw the coffee plants and tasted a bunch of different beans. 

 

Our coffee guide, Jose

The stages of a coffee bean

  

Then we toured where they dry the beans, roast them, and package them. At the end of the tour we went up to a tasting room and tried 4 different types of coffee- washed, natural, honey and geisha. It was an extensive tasting procedure, first we had to smell the ground beans (carefully, so it wouldn't go up our noses), then we had to smell them with hot water added, then we had to gently stir them and smell them again. Then we tasted them. Then Jose was like, "okay, I have another tour coming now, so hurry up and drink whatever you want to drink!" which felt quite rushed, why did we spend so long with the plants and less time with the coffee tasting? Adam enjoyed the tasting, I didn't notice any difference between any type of coffee at any stage of the tasting.  

 

This is what expert coffee tasters look like

 

There were only 10 people on the tour, and we chatted a bit with this couple from Germany. After the tour, we were able to go down to the coffee shop and get a free drink and slice of cake from being on the tour. So we did that, and it took ages- there was only one person working there, to take all orders, make all the orders, take the money...so we waiting in line about 20-30 minutes to get our drinks and cake. The German couple was in front of us in line, so we had a long time to chat. When we all got our drinks and went out to the terrace, it was quite full, so the 4 of us sat at a little table together and had our drinks and snacks and chatted. It was lovely.   

 

After our snacks, Adam and I went for a walk around the grounds. They have a few trails for birding on the property. We walked up a trail and ran into a woman birding with a bird guide, and we heard the unmistakable call of the Three-wattled Bellbird, a rare and unusual bird. The bird guide told us where to go look for it. Adam spotted the female quite quickly, but we had a hard time finding the male. Adam kept looking and looking and didn't give up, and eventually he found it! To see a picture of this crazy bird, check out my birding post. 

 

Looking out from the trail on the Finca

  

It was pretty warm and there weren't a lot of birds out this afternoon, so we didn't spend a super long time out on the trails. We came back to the room and rested for a while. 

 

For dinner, we drove into Boquete and had dinner at a pizza place. There are tons of options for dinner in Boquete, we just picked a place. It was fine. Then we walked down the main street for a bit, which was kind of busy and crowded, but it wasn't hot, and there weren't any trash holes full of water, so overall it was pleasant. I found a crepe stand and ordered a gigantic delicious dessert crepe to go. We drove back up to the Finca as it was getting dark, and sat on the porch doing the crossword and eating our amazing crepe. 

 

Look at that crepe!

  

We took a little walk around the grounds after dark, I was hoping to see an owl while in Panama, but there weren't any in that area. We just walked around for a bit, but it felt a bit spooky to be prowling the Finca in the dark without a purpose, so we didn't stay out too long. 

 

Feb 19

We went down to the restaurant for breakfast, chatted for a bit with a guy from Toronto, who said he everywhere he had stayed so far in Panama had been super loud, he had gotten any sleep because of Carnival noise. I think we really lucked out in staying at places that were quiet and not in party places, since we didn't even know Carnival was happening. 

 

After lunch we packed up, stopped by the grocery store, Rey, in Boquete, then drove to El Valle. It was another long day of driving. I drove for about 3 hours, then switched with Adam, and he drove us the rest of the way. 

 

Lessons learned: 

• That cafe in Boquete has a sweet back terrace.
• Find out how long the hike is, and don't give up that close to the end.
• Once you've driven up the mountain to the Finca, you realize it's pretty easy and close to town
• This is why I packed pants!! 

For next time: 

• Hike all the way to the top of the Pipeline Trail and see a Resplendent Quetzal. 
• Probably more meals in town, fewer at the Finca. The restaurant was only okay, but staying at the Finca was really lovely.
• Do more birding. 

Panama - Beach day!

 Feb 15

We drove most of the day, and mostly Adam drove. We ran into quite a lot of traffic, probably people heading out of the city for the long weekend of Carnavale. The police were everywhere on Highway 1, the Pan American Highway; one thing they did was open a third lane for Westbound traffic (us) by taking one lane away from Eastbound and shunting cars over to that side. It was very strange for us to see, and we did not go on that side, but it really made sense from a traffic mitigation standpoint. 

 

 

 

We finally got to Santa Catalina, which is basically one small road running along the sea, with hotels and restaurants and houses along either side.  We looked on google maps, found a nice-looking hotel on the beach, and drove up. The person at the front desk said they were 'super full' but suggested we try a place up the hill called Surfer's Paradise. We drove up there and found a fairly humble, hostel-style place on a cliff overlooking the sea. They had a room for us! We took it, mostly because I did not have the energy to keep driving around town looking for somewhere better. 

 

 

Just the view from our doorway at Surfer's Paradise, no big deal

 

The owner showed us the room and checked that the door worked (barely), the water worked (yes, no problem), and the AC worked (not very well, turns out). We set down our things, freshened up, and walked to the beach. This was the most rustic place we stayed, but it was totally fine for us. 

 

Evening at the beach

 

It was about a 15 minutes walk to the beach via roads, or we could go down the cliff and walk around the next cliff over to get to the beach, at low tide. We took the roads, because I wanted to check out the town. We got to the beach and walked along it for a while. The tide was out, and the beach was looooooooooong and wide. It was a really pleasant beach, very nice ocean. We went to a restaurant with a patio overlooking the beach for dinner and got cold drinks and seafood dishes.  And fries. 

 

 

 

We walked back to Surfer's Paradise and sat out on their big terrace and worked on a crossword puzzle, read our books, and tried not to fall asleep before 9pm. We're so tired!! We also listened to the young nomadic people on the other part of the terrace have young, nomadic conversations. 

 

Feb 16

We had a slow morning, and walked to a nearby fancy hotel to get breakfast. We had our breakfast on a terrace overlooking the sea. Then we walked through town again back to the beach. We spent some time in waves. I spent most of my time sitting in this glorious little creek that ran down from the jungle to the ocean- it was only about 3 inches deep, and the water was bathtub warm, and flowing gently down to the sea. I really liked sitting in that creek, I spent a long time there. Adam explored the rocky tide pools nearby. Then we dried off and walked back to Surfer's Paradise over the rocks, which was quite a short walk! We showered and changed, got in the car, and headed to David. 

 

Gorgeous. We are standing on the beach, about where the waves were breaking. That building way off on the top left is where we had dinner. There was this huge expanse of shallow water and beach.

 

David

Our next stop was really Boquete, a cool mountain town towards Costa Rica, but I was worried about driving up in the mountains in the dark, so I booked us a place in a nearby city called David. This was really only a place to sleep for the night. 

 

The hotel was actually really lovely, if you ever find yourself in David, I would recommend it. Patampa Hotel Boutique, run by a Swiss ex-pat probably named Pascal. Our room was quite nice and we were very hot so we both took showers and rested for a bit. Turns out, I had severely sunburned my legs at the beach, and they hurt a lot. 

 

We looked up a restaurant about a 20 minute walk away (we weren't interested in driving around any more than we had to), and I found a pharmacy nearby that was still open where hopefully I could buy aloe.

 

I successfully purchased the aloe. On leaving the store, I turned around to tell Adam something and stepped backwards into a giant hole in the sidewalk that was full of water and trash. I cussed in English. A woman nearby said "Dios mio!" to which I heartily agreed.  

 

I was pretty unhappy at this moment. I had severely sunburned legs. I had one wet foot (sock and shoe). I was hungry, and I couldn't walk 20 minutes back, change my shoes, and walk 20 minutes back again. We were carrying on to dinner. I think everyone reading this blog would be surprised at what a positive attitude I  maintained, all things considered. We also had trouble reading the map on our phone because we couldn't connect to any wi-fi or cell service so we were getting a teensy bit lost as well. 

 

But we made it to dinner! And the restaurant was good. We had seafood. We watched Hawaii 5-0 with Spanish subtitles on a TV above the table. Then we walked back and I took another shower. 

 

So many good seafood options!!

 

 

In the morning, we both took showers again. Which means in the 18 hours we stayed there, we took a total of 5 showers. Good thing they have plenty of water there. 

 

Pascal made us breakfast and we sat out on the terrace and enjoyed eggs, fresh fruit, and toast. Then we hit the road for Boquete! 

 

Lessons learned: 

• Driving is actually not as scary as we expected on the Pan American Highway.  
• Put sunscreen on your legs, even if you 'never get burnt' on your legs 
• Aloe in Spanish is Aloe.  
• Watch where you're walking so you don't step into a trash hole full of water. 
• Bring more socks in case you step into a trash hole full of water. Or better yet, bring your dang hiking sandals!

For next time: 

• Seriously, put on sunscreen. 
• We didn't need to stay in David. We would have been fine driving straight to Boquete, even as it got dark.  

 

 

Panama - Gamboa/Soberania National Park area

 Friday, Feb 13th

After deciding to leave the locks, we drove into the jungle. 

 

Parque Nacional Soberanía is only about a 20 minute drive from the Miraflores locks, and we had several things we wanted to do there. 

 

Our friend Henry recommended the Panama Rainforest Discovery Center and the Pipeline Road trail.  We also wanted to see the Canopy Tower, which is a special rainforest hotel built into a tower. We found it, but it was gated and locked and you're not allowed in without reservations. 

 

 

 

Onward to the Discovery Center. As we got out of the car, we were greeted by this friendly (too friendly) Coati! But it was adorable. 

 

 

 

The Discovery Center was great. I was sweating so, so much though. The 'front desk' guy gave us a great pamphlet about birds, snakes, mammals, butterflies, etc that we could see and it had a good map of the trails on it. 

 

We walked on trails around the place. First stop, the hummingbird patio. There was a ranger there to tell us about all the hummingbirds coming up to the feeders. She also had a spotting scope and field guides for us to look at, and we could sit in the chairs and have a cup of tea. She also pointed out some cool birds in the trees to us! We saw a Whooping Motmot and a Slaty-backed Trogon! Wow! 

 

 

 

Then we walked to the observation tower and climbed it to above the canopy. Guess what, it was a million degrees up there. We heard howler monkeys! We didn't see any cool birds. 

 

Last stop, the lake. We spent some time on the viewing platform looking around, but I was overheating again, so we went back to the car. That front desk guy was a genius, he had cold gatorades for sale. I would have paid quadruple whatever it cost to get my hands on a cold gatorade. 

 

We drove about 10 minutes to our hotel, the Gamboa Rainforest Resort.  It's weird, because Gamboa is like an almost non-existent town that has one restaurant, one shop, and seems to have a lot of canal industry but no one living there, and the jungle is right next to it. But this resort is this huge, fancy, self-contained place just there. 

 

The lobby windows looking out at the jungle and river. THAT IS NOT A PAINTING!

 

 So I was super hot, exhausted. We got checked in and carried all our luggage for what felt like a mile to our room, opened the door, and THE ROOM WAS ALREADY OCCUPIED!

 

Lordy!! So we trudged back, got a different room, trudged back again, and finally made it to our beautiful room. Balcony with a hammock looking out over the Chagres River and the rainforest. Stunning.  

 

We got settled in, rested, enjoyed the view, took showers, and went to the bar. The bar has seating on a balcony that has a similar view to the rooms, overlooking the whole rainforest and river. We had some cool drinks, enjoyed the cool breeze, and saw some parrots zooming their way to their night roost.

 

 

 

We went to the restaurant for dinner, buffet style, not bad. I enjoy a buffet, because I like to have hummus, nachos, sweet potatoes, and corn soup at a dinner. (My tone may not indicate it, but I really DO like to have all those crazy things at one dinner.) And the dessert bar, my goodness. 

 

 

 

Part of our stay included a 'night safari' so we went on it. At around 8:30 we got on one of their little trams with about 8 other people and a guide. They drove us around the property and the guide told us a bit about the resort and looked for animals to show us. We saw a possum (or squirrel or agouti, who really knows), some Caracaras roosting on an open window of an abandoned house, a few caimans and turtles, and the highlight, some juvenile capybaras!!  They were pretty cool to see. The rest of the 'safari' was mediocre. 

 

 

 

We came back to our room, read for a while, and went to bed.  

 

Feb 14th

I had booked a birding guide in advance, Clarivel, and this morning we went to meet her. We were supposed to meet her promptly at 7, and breakfast didn't start until 7! Oh, sad day for me. I just had a granola bar.

We met Clari and did some great birding for a couple hours. She really only spoke Spanish, so I'm sure we missed some things, I was especially struggling sometimes with getting down the names of the birds we were seeing. But I think I got them all written down! See my bird post for more about what birds we saw.

I also didn't really get any pictures, because I'm not a photographer. Adam got a few, which I will share in the bird post, but here is one cool guy we saw in the jungle. 

 

Greater Ani. Photo by Adam.

We also saw Howler monkeys and Capuchin monkeys and Coatis!   

 

A Capuchin monkey having a good ol' time!

Then a fun thing happened, which was I locked the keys in the car.  I also locked all my snacks in the car, which was arguably worse. I also locked all of Clarivel's belongings in the car, but she was quite sanguine about it. I was able to figure out how to call the rental car company and tell them what happened, and they said they would send someone out to unlock it. Thank goodness we were only in the half-hour-away jungle and not the across-the-country jungle! And we had birding to do while we waited. The rental car guy was like, "I must inform you, there will be a $15 fee for this service." $15!? That can't possibly cover the person's time, mileage, and gas to come out to us. Of course I will pay the $15! (Also, I don't think I ever paid the $15). 

 

Waiting for a guy with an extra key to meet us in the jungle

After the car got unlocked and Clari got her stuff back, and I had a snack, Adam and I did a bit more exploring on this road, the Pipeline Road. It's a popular road for birders and hikers, and I wanted to see it, but I was also really tired and hungry and so so sweaty. So we did just a little hike, then went to lunch in literally the only restaurant in Gamboa. There are small family restaurants all over called Fondas. We went to this fonda in Gamboa and I had fried fish with rice and it was outstanding. It was so good. 

 

Back to the room for a rest, then we went on a little tour to the resort's biodiversity houses- the frog house, the orchid house, the butterfly house, and the sloth house. We saw poison dart frogs, blue morpho butterflies, and several sleepy sloths. This tour was also just okay, I would have preferred to be able to go on our own, but that's not how it works. 

 

Just a sloth living its best life

Poison Dart Frog

After that tour we decided to wander the grounds a bit on our own, and we saw so many cool birds! I will list them in the bird post, but just take a look at this beauty!! This is a Golden-hooded Tanager, and I did not take this picture, this is from the ebird.But i did see it! Wowsers. 

 

 Back to the room, showered, to the bar, where we enjoyed the live music and had dinner there (pizza and salad).

 

Feb 15

Woke up and had the breakfast buffet. It was fine, but the one in Panama City was better. We packed up, checked out, and hit the road. We mostly drove all day. We ran into Carnivale traffic, but the Panamanian police knew how to handle it. The Pan-American highway is two lanes in each direction, but the police had created a third lane for our direction by shunting cars over into the other side and making that into a one-lane highway. Everyone seemed good with it. People drove nicely. Police were everywhere being helpful. We saw lots of Carnivale preparations like floats, stages, music, etc being set up as we drove through towns. We drove for about 7 hours today. 

 

Lessons learned: 

• It really would have been nicer to have a birding guide who spoke English
• Don't lock your keys in the car in the jungle 
• Regular tennis shoes would have been totally fine for what we did. I took hiking shoes because they were waterproof, but in the dry season, sneakers would have been fine.  

For next time: 

• We want to spend longer on the Pipeline Road trail, I think.

 

 

Panama - Panama City Area

Adam and I took a vacation to Panama!

We had talked about doing a vacation during winter to somewhere warm. Adam read an article about Panama and after looking at various options, we decided it would be great. And it was great! Although it wasn't really cold or wintry in Denver while we were there, but nonetheless. I wanted to visit somewhere I could see cool birds and Adam wanted somewhere warm. 

Feb 10/11 

We got a direct flight from Denver to Panama City which was great. Less awesome was that it left Denver at 9:30pm and arrived in Panama at 5:30am. I appreciate the efficiency of red-eyes; we didn't lose a day to traveling. But I do not appreciate being so tired. 

We landed and got an Uber to our hotel.  The front desk was a little confused by us trying to check in at 6am- I told them we'd be fine leaving our bags and checking in later, but he said, "no, no it's okay, your room is ready. But next time, I have to charge you for an extra day!" um, okay, next time.

Our hotel (Radisson Hotel Panama Canal) was quite pleasant. It seemed to have a wide mix of people staying there- Norteamericanos, Latin Americans, tourists, business people, people there for a youth dance competition... it felt like a nice, local hotel. There was a pool and a long pedestrian path along the sea. It was in a really quiet area, not by anything else, really- not by restaurants or shops or houses. It was by the convention center and a police training camp and a soccer field and a big park. For us, it was nice and quiet. We planned for our first day or two to be rest/recovery days. 

X marks the spot of our hotel. Down the Causeway is Amador, and in the middle of that highway loop (where you see Panama Canal Museum) is Casco Viejo.

We got into our room and decided to take just a short nap. Then we got up, refreshed, and ordered an Uber to take us to Casco Viejo (old town) for some breakfast and exploring. 

Here is where I made a mistake.  I forgot how hot and humid it actually is in the tropics. It was still so early when we arrived (still dark!) that when I got ready to go be out wandering around town for several hours, I wore PANTS. And SHOES and socks! And I didn't take my hat!! And I didn't even PACK MY FAN OR MY WALKING SANDALS! What was I thinking? I had regrets the whole trip about how I packed. I did not do a great job of packing. 

The uber took us to Casco Viejo, but the driver missed his exit and it ended making a 12 minute trip take about 35 minutes. He was so mad. We didn't really care that much. 

Casco Viejo was cute. Just how you'd expect, old buildings, narrow streets, cobblestones. We wandered around for a while, got some breakfast at Unido coffee shop, looked in shops. We also bought several things I forgot to pack- a belt for my falling-down pants (PANTS?!), a charging cord (I brought 3 of the wrong kind of cord, awesome), more sunscreen, washcloths that I used all trip as sweat rags.  

We had a nice mini-meal on a rooftop terrace, then took an uber back to the hotel. The rest of the afternoon was for rest. We took naps, then we went to the pool and took more naps there. We took a long walk along the edge of the sea, and found a single restaurant, called Canal House, that was right on the water's edge. We stayed there for a long time, looking out to where the canal meets the sea, drinking cold drinks, and eating a series of seafood dishes, including ceviche. The sun set on the water and on our will to stay awake. We walked back to the hotel and went to bed. 

Feb 12

We slept for nearly 11 hours. Still felt tired. We went to the breakfast buffet at the hotel which was amazing! All kinds of breads, fruits, cereal, veggies, hot dishes like eggs, potatoes, pancakes, meats, etc. I love breakfast. I love breakfast buffets. The morning was off to a good start!  Also, there are lots of cats around here! One works at the hotel, and another came to visit us at our table at the Canal House restaurant. And they're just around. 

Our plan for the day was to rent bikes and ride down the Amador Causeway and see things down there. The causeway was built from the materials dug out when building the canal. The islands used to be islands, now they are part of the city. We rented bikes from a place fairly near our hotel. There is a beautiful bike and pedestrian path on both sides of the causeway. It was a lovely ride. We rode all the way to the end, then went to the Punta Culebra Discovery Center, run by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. 

I highly recommend the Discovery Center! It was great! They have lots of interpretive signs. I saw lots of cool birds. And I saw three sloths! One of the educators there was like, "ugh, we have too many sloths. I see like 10 sloths a day. We really have too many." Can you imagine!!

A snoozy sloth

 

They have a great indoor exhibit about frogs, particularly the Panama Golden Frog, which is highly endangered and they are working to save it. 

They also have a butterfly house, aquariums, a discovery room, and some trails. It is a small place, actually, but the educators are really enthusiastic and there was lots of us to see. 

I saw an amazing bird at the discovery center, the Crimson-backed Tanager. I love this bird.  

After the Discovery Center, I was so hot. So very, very hot. We went to the restaurant next to the Discovery Center (El Ranchito) because it was next to it, and also if we ate there we got a free hour off our bike rental. Easy decision. I had the best frozen coconut lemonade in the world, and Adam and I shared a big ol' seafood platter. 

I could tell I was getting heat exhaustion, so we rode back to the hotel and I went in to stick my head under cold water and get a cold drink. Then we rode back to the bike return and then walked back to the hotel again. We did not get a chance to see the BioMuseo (I'm not really even sure that that is), because it closed early, and we also did not get a change to see this Panama sign, because it is at the end of Flamenco Island and we weren't sure we were allowed to go there. Oh well, next time! 

 

Our walk back was really nice, through that park and along the pedestrian walkway the whole way. We saw a bunch more cool birds and cool buildings. This park we walked through used to be part of the infrastructure to house Americans working on the canal. Most of the buildings are abandoned now, but some are being rehabbed into new uses. 

We skipped dinner and just had snacks in the room and tried to stay away by playing cards. I had a headache from the heat exhaustion. We went to bed pretty early.   

Friday, Feb 13

We saw a toucan from the balcony of our room!! It was awesome. Adam got some good pictures. 

We had breakfast at the lavish buffet. Then we got an uber to Enterprise to pick up our rental car. At Enterprise, I saw a little calendar with a circle around Tuesday, Feb 17th. I said, "Is Tuesday a holiday?" and the rental car guy said, "Yes, Tuesday is Carnivale. It will start tonight and go until Tuesday." Ahhhh. A country-wide major party holiday that lasts at least 4 days. Not something we had planned for at all. 

 

Keel-billed Toucan!

 

Getting the rental car took FOREVER. At least 45 minutes. Why so long!?! I have no idea. But what with that taking forever, and us spending forever looking at that cool Toucan forever, we didn't make it to the Miraflores locks as early as I had planned. The guidebook said to arrive between 9 and 11 to watch the morning ships go through, then like 3-5 for the evening ships. We arrived at 9:45, paid our entrance fee, then learned all the ships were done until 2pm.  

 

Well, here we are at the locks

 

We went to the 45-minute 3D IMAX movie about the Panama Canal, narrated by Morgan Freeman. That was actually a pretty good movie. Thank goodness there was something for us to do after paying admission. They don't have any kind of exhibit area, museum, anything like that. Just a gift shop, a cafe, observation deck for the locks, and the IMAX movie. But they appear to be in the process of building a huge new place, so maybe in the future there will be an exhibit area? 

Lessons learned: 

• Make a packing list. Take walking sandals, and a fan, and sunscreen, and something to wipe the sweat off your face with, and another pair of shorts.  
• Avoid heat exhaustion! Drink more water. Take more breaks! Wear more hats!  
• Know when Carnavale is.
• Really, arrive at the locks early. Or find a way to look online and see the schedule? Or go in the evening?  

For next time: 

• Get charged for an extra day when checking in at 6am? 
• BioMuseo and Panama sign
• See a ship going through the locks.  
• Go to the Canal Museum in Casco Viejo.