Panama

(18-19 Jan)

Originally, Panama was on our list of countries to visit, as it was meant to be the starting point for our sailing trip to Colombia.

However, when our Colombian visas fell through, we considered various alternative options and decided to replace Colombia with Costa Rica and skip Panama.

But as luck would have it, our flights from Cuba to Costa Rica included a short layover in Panama, so we thought it would be a great idea to extend our layover for 24 hours and catch the same flight out the next day.

This would give us enough time to at least see the Panama Canal.

Also, we received a generous wedding gift from Alika’s work colleagues – vouchers to use for selected hotels along our trip. The list of hotels contained a variety of hotels known for their design and/or quirky features.

The American Trade Hotel in Panama city was on this list (and had already been on Alika’s wishlist), so this would be a great opportunity to use one of the vouchers.

The American Trade Hotel website describes itself as: “a boutique luxury hotel and events space combining old world elegance with clean, current design. It’s located in the most desirable area in Panama City: Casco Viejo, a UNESCO World Heritage site offering the best sight-seeing, dining, nightlife, destination weddings, corporate and social events, all combined with an authentic Panamanian cultural experience.”

And after a hectic week in Cuba we felt that a night of TLC was due. So we splashed out on a Junior Suite, specifically for the bath tub!

The arrival at the hotel was not a disappointment, the hotel is as beautiful in reality as it is online. Once we got to our room, we immediately decided that we could easily take up permanent residency in the suite – it was pretty huge and very comfortable. And the bath was a worthwhile investment.

The location of the hotel is excellent and it is surrounded by interesting looking rooftop bars. However, with only one night there we decided to make the most of our lux living.

After a lovely breakfast the following morning, we caught an Uber to see the famous Panama canal.

There’s an inherent fascination with this canal which was an engineering triumph of its time. Cutting away land to join two seas over a distance of 80km must have seemed crazy! Nowadays the Middle East renovates its landscape like Extreme Home Makeovers, but the Panama canal would still be a significant project by today’s standards.

There is a museum/visitor center at the canal, which is actually quite interesting (and it’s not just because I work in construction and a year of that was spent working with dredging projects – Dylan). They do a good job explaining the process of construction as well as the challenges faced, such as yellow fever etc. They also have intricate models of the various machines and equipment that were used during construction and also some that are still currently in use.

We rushed through the rest of the exhibition in order to get to the viewing deck to see one of the last boats go through the lock gates for the “morning session”.

The full trip through the canal, from the first to the last lock takes about 8 hours. This means that boats will only go through the locks at the visitor center for a few hours in the morning (going from the Pacific to Caribbean side) and then for a few hours in the afternoon (going the other way).

After the canal we headed back to the hotel for a quick shower and then headed to the airport.

It seems we timed our visit to Panama city well, because the pope was visiting the day after we left. Town was starting to get really busy, roads were being closed off and we could see people erecting massive screens with huge speakers all around town. It would be chaos and getting anywhere would be a nightmare – not a good situation when you have to get to the airport.

Unfortunately we didn’t have much chance to see what Panama has to offer, but we knew that was the nature of this visit. What we did see though looked pretty cool and we’re sure there is plenty more to experience. Perhaps we’ll be back one day.

Next stop, Costa Rica!