Eurohotel Panama Panama City

We flew out of Paris (after having great difficulty getting a taxi as there was a public transport strike. We flew via Miami (brief stopover) before flying onto Panama City. Our HC friend met us at the airport and drove us around to a few hotels and hostels before we decided on a hostel that was reasonable and quiet and wasn't a 24 hour 'love' hotel.

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... I doubt if I'll ever venture back to find out!

So from one adventure to the next...Saturday morning Carter, Rebecca, Heath and I set out for Panama City. Heath was flying out the next morning and Rebecca had a friend meeting her, so we decided to make it a group outting. It started at 7am after a little too much partying the night before...and ended at 530pm when we arrived at our hostel in Panama City. The travel wasn't bad, just a long bus ...

... to learn so much about yourself and in the end you are only alone if you choose to be on the road. It is so easy to meet people in hostels, on couchsurfing, on buses, etc, etc. Some of the people I have met have really blown my mind and I am definately going to try to keep intouch with alot of the people I have been hanging out with along the way.

I must also thank Mr Brendan Ford. I dont think I would have made it through the first two months without him coming along ...

... not going to start doing that myself, but I did find it interesting.
This taxi driver knew no English, so we had a nice conversation in Spanish.  He told me about his time working for a beer company as a industrial engineer, how they sent him to Spain to study and he visited Germany and Austria.  We talked about the girlfriends he picked up there, his wife, son, and a nephew that was going to be a blackjack dealer.  We, of course talked about Michael ...

... spent our days lounging in hammocks, frolicking merrily in the sea and doing the occasional excursion to go snorkelling. It was lazy and easy but not something I could do for very long. It was on our island paradise, Isla Robinson, that I became a bit ill the day before we left. About 5 days and a couple of near faintings later I think I'm recovering. I've been staying in Casco Viejo in Panama City which is a crumbling area of colonial buildings which is slowly being ...

Wow... amazing internet service here in Panama, Panama. I can really appreciate it. My second week in Boquete ended. HablaYa was a wonderful school. I would recommend it to anyone. Every day to go to class I walked past the Police Station, Romero's Supermercado, the Fire Dept.( los bomberos), the gringo bar Amigos, the Pool Hall, and the internet place. The pool hall is not a place for women; Brina would be out of luck...only Panamanean men. There are ...

... a consultation is only $3-5. Gas costs about the same as Oregon, $2 a gallon. He even recommended a hostel (Pension Las Tablas) that had vacancies, and it turned out to be pretty good for the price ($15 for a double bed w/ private bath). In Panamá things are more expensive since they use the US dollar. Most hostels charge around $10 per person. Today (the 14th) we got up around 7:30 and went to see the old part of town. So far Panamanians ...

... Lunch today was a meat buffet...Mark was very happy. He then tried to make it to the finals for a slot tournament but no luck. We had the sun on our balcony today, so Mark worked up a sweat while sitting in it. Shiloh watched Music & Lyrics while catching up on some book reading. Shiloh went to the show of Adrian Zmed while Mark checked on the Packer game score and then Shiloh tried out and got voted to perform at the Princess Pop Star finals on the last night of the cruise.

... etc, so we bought a lot of it. It was great to finally find a tour where you learnt something about coffee and how it is produced and how to determine a good coffee bean and so on. So well worth putting up with the rain!! Boca Brava was next on the list. This is an island on the southern (Pacific) coast of Panama. When we arrived it rained all day and all the boating tours were way to expensive for us to afford on our own, so we were about to call it quits and head off the next ...