Hola Dear Reader! Today is the first day of a 5 day trip for your Blogger, Tiger Mom and The Blogger, Junior (TBJ) to Panama – home of the Panama Canal, numerous sloths, and as we have discovered this morning, 100% humidity. I must also apologize for the lack of pictures. Your Blogger cleverly ran out of the house without the charger for his camera battery, and of course it ran out with the first photo he snapped. Oh well. On to the trip! Your Blogger is happy to report that there is nothing of note from the trip down – only minor boarding delays, smooth flight, simple customs process, etc. The most notable thing is that a four hour flight that only takes you one time zone is a hell of a lot easier to manage with TBJ than a 10 hour flight that takes you across 6. He, of course, is a rock star and perfect in all situations, but he was more perfect on this flight than he would have been on a longer one.
Telly
One thing that I think will become a theme on this trip is that things in Panama seem to be exactly as we were hoping and expecting them to be. Take the airport, for instance. As we were heading through immigration Tiger Mom pointed out exactly what I was thinking – the airport looked exactly as one would imagine a banana republic airport would look. It was pretty nice and clearly built as a point of national pride, but pleasingly dated in decor and layout in that way that makes one expect to see Telly Savalas sitting around smoking cigars with Dean Martin. Having checked no bags (that’s right – a 5 day international trip with an 8 month old and we checked no bags – we’re awesome), we met up with the guy from the hotel picking us up and headed out to the car. As soon as we got outside, the tropics reached out and waterboarded us, as we exited the airport into what felt like 100% humidity with glass screens immediately fogging and peoples’ hair suddenly going curly. Again, as expected.
When we got to our hotel we immediately realized that (a) it is in an amazing location for an in-town hotel, and (b) we would be going elsewhere rather quickly. The amazing thing is that the hotel overlooks both a “yacht club” and the entrance to the Panama Canal, so when hanging out in the room it’s quite likely that one will see some absolutely enormous cargo ships heading out of the Pacific into the canal for their transit to the Atlantic. This is surprisingly fascinating, as all you’re watching is a big boat traverse your field of vision for maybe 7 minutes until it passes out of sight, but there’s something about the fact that the ship is entering the Canal that makes one wonder about where it has been in the Pacific, where it’s headed in the Atlantic, and what kind of adventures it and its crew have seen. In one of our later days we will be heading to a Canal museum and the Miraflores locks where we will get an even closer view of the big boats and I’m sure I will have more to say on this subject then.
The other good thing about our hotel is that it is in the Amador district of Panama City, within striking distance of the Amador Causeway – a causeway made from dirt excavated from the Canal that connects the mainland to three small islands a little way off shore, thus creating a nice sea break for the harbor and a very pleasant walk. When we woke up Saturday morning it was very clear that it was going to be a rainy day, but Your Blogger, Tiger Mom and TBJ are intrepid adventurers who are both prepared for, and enjoy, a little rain. So we set off for what turned out to be a about a 5 mile walk to and down the Causeway, alternating TBJ between a Baby Bjorn (when the drizzle was light) and the stroller with a rain cover (when it wasn’t). We got some odd looks, but enjoyed ourselves immensely. By the time we reached the first island (after about 1.5 hours of walking) we had worked up an appetite (and, in my case, a powerful thirst) and stopped at a wonderful little restaurant with the most pleasant view of the city and ocean and apparently a typical Panamanian menu. The ceviche was fantastic, the beer was cold, and the fish was fresh and excellent, so we were happy campers and after heading out to the end of the Causeway we caught a cab back to the hotel for a quick nap for TBJ (and, truth be told, Tiger Mom).
By the time that TBJ and Tiger Mom were functional again it had started raining like it meant it. This is not surprising given that we are in Panama in the rainy season when almost no other tourists are around, but it did put a bit of a cramp on our plan for the afternoon, which was to visit the “old city”, or Cascao Viejo. Instead we chilled out for a bit, went to a Panamanian shopping center to try to track down a battery charger, had an excellent and apparently typically Panamanian dinner, then made it back to the hotel to call it a day.
