11: Stuck in Panama City — The Journey Home

Aug 25

Aug 25 11: Stuck in Panama City

I struggled to figure out what, if anything, I would write about Panama City because to be honest, it’s pretty boring here. Let me take that back, the first 36 hours were magical. I was super impressed with the modernity of the city. The "old town" looks and feels like what I would expect New Orleans to have been 100 years ago. And it’s been on my bucket list to go to the Panama Canal forever (for whatever strange reason). Turns out, you can get that done and then some in a little over a day and be completely satisfied with your experience in Panama and ready, nay eager to move on. Except, that’s not what happened for me. I’ve been here a week and I’m starting to lose my mind and I’ve definitely lost my money.

Instead of tales of cats or Spanish lessons, this is the most mundane of all week-long experience in Panama City, Panama. Might as well bore you with the details because perhaps there’s still something worthwhile in there.

Let’s start at the beginning. Panama City has been the hottest location so far. Like heat hot, not like “fierce”. Although, side note, I will say that the men here are BEAUTIFUL. The global diversity of people and other Central and South American expats make this a very "easy on the eyes" city. ;) But let's get back to the weather.

The days have been averaging 80-90 degrees with around 70+% humidity. I walked out of the airport and was surprised how ill prepared I was for the swelter. Then again, I also didn’t plan to stay here a week. Oh Panama City, what other surprises do you have in store for me?

Another surprise! Panama has used the US Dollar since 1904. WHAT?! I had no idea. This made life a little easier and felt like a dash of home.

After my rather solitary experience at the 10 day yoga retreat in Guatemala for whatever crazy reason, I intentionally booked a party hostel in Panama City. At the time, my thought process was that it would be nice to interact with more people and to be a little more lively (and also to eat meat). The reviews were fairly positive and also were pretty transparent that this indeed was a place you could find $.50 beers in the bar downstairs (no bones about it, this is a party hostel). Clearly this was a total fluke because Guatemala Megan thought it was a great idea, Panama City Megan totally regrets it. Here’s my Hostelworld.com review:

PROS: Location. A/C at night in dorms. Front desk staff = amazing! Free towels.

CONS: A/C never worked in my (private) room and there were bugs in the room/bed. (They did refund me) The dorm beds are rickety and insanely loud plastic mattresses. Wasn't a super social hostel even with all the people. Lockers were on the 1st floor and not in the rooms made it inconvenient. There were only 2 bathrooms on the 2nd floor for 50+ ppl. Loud bar at night. Facilities need updating. Sadly, I wouldn't stay here again.

*I hit my character limit otherwise I would have had many, many more things to say.

Let’s spend a minutes on the bugs. We all knew this was bound to happen. A sort of inevitable reality if you’re traveling around the world AND doing it on a budget AND staying in hostels. Thank god they weren’t bed bugs. Let me repeat, they were not bed bugs. I think (which mind you does NOT make this much better) they were baby cockroaches.

Google Translation: NATIONAL DUEL. The Yankee army invaded this country and killed innocent people. Until today it is not known how many there were and the wound is still open.

Once at the party hostel I had stayed my first 2 nights in a 12 person dorm room and I had enough. I thought there may have been bugs in that room too but I wasn’t entirely sure. I hit my limit. The hostel wasn’t particularly nice, the amenities were lacking in every sense of the word but that’s what happens in this game of hostel-ing. Sometimes you hit the jackpot and sometimes you get a total dud. I knew after the first night it was time for me to move on but I stayed my full reservation which was two nights. Call be naive or frugal but I suffered through it.

Once the time came to find another hostel this crazy thing happened. I was struck with the inability to do anything. Frozen. Incapable of committing to my next destination. Making any decision was a herculean fete let alone to change locations to another, possibly worse hostel was hopeless. I had no idea what I was doing the next day let alone the next hour. For someone who makes decisions for teams, clients, myself (and others), it was a very weird not Megan-like way of acting. I was totally paralyzed.

I’m sure this happens to many folks who travel, you get caught in the flow of making last minute plans, not having to commit to any major itinerary more than a few days out. So what did I do? Ya, I stayed ANOTHER night at the bug hostel. This time, I upgraded my room to a private room thinking this would at least be a little nicer. Nope, not nicer. The private room wasn’t dirty but it was filthy if you know what I mean. Picture a really seedy low budget motel feel. A sparsely decorated, drab room with no personality and desperately needing a fresh coat of paint on the walls.

On day 3 of the bug hostel (and in the private room) around 2pm I went to take a nap and that’s when I saw the first 2 bugs. I sort of shrugged it off. I knew they weren’t bed bugs (they weren’t black or what I know bed bugs look like) but I didn’t really put it all together at first. Fast forward to later that night and I saw another bug AND the AC in the room didn’t work. AND, I'M DONE. I was refunded and moved to another dorm room which felt a little "nicer" but also I was very over it by that point. I had to get the fuck out of that place.

The fish market. Smell it first, see it second.

First round of ceviche on my trip. Heaven.

This was day 4 in Panama and also the time that I had figured out and booked a one way sailing excursion from the east coat of Panama to Colombia through the Caribbean. Colombia is the next country on my list and tons of people do this sailing trip. It’s rather expensive for my budget (about $100/day) but I decided to go for it considering it was a once in a lifetime trip to sail through some Caribbean islands. In theory this idea was fool-proof but it’s the low season right now so that means boats don’t book out and can be cancelled at a moment’s notice. My boat was booked for Wednesday and by Monday morning it got cancelled. Back to the drawing board. I had two options to choose from other boats - a different boat on Thursday which sleeps 8 and is pretty funky. (Read: a very old and very small boat.) Or I could wait until Saturday for the fancy 10 passenger boat (Read: Newer! Nicer! 4 bathrooms on board!)

My sole reason for choosing the new boat is that there was a covered, open air seating area in the back of the boat for eating, lounging and most importantly, sun coverage. From the pictures I saw, the old boat didn't have that and all I have to do is think about the sun and I get sunburnt. This will be a 5+ day sailing journey with 30+ hours on the open sea so being confident that there was a boat with some reliable amenities was the only option for me.

Saturday it was! By this point it’s Monday and I have to spend (waste) almost a week in Panama. What do I do in the meantime?

Obviously, I go to the mall. Literally, I spent 8 hours in the biggest mall I’ve ever been to in my entire life. And it was GLORIOUS. Why you ask? Well, that day was HOT. Like really, really hot and there was no tourist destination interesting enough that would draw me into that heat. Also, I wanted to see a movie in English. Also, I love the mall. For my 12th birthday my parents took me and 4 girlfriends to the mall and gave each of us $20 to spend. That definitely sounds like something 12 year old me would have wanted. (And also maybe 36 year old me.)

FACT CHECK: The Albrook Mall in Panama City is the 16th largest mall in the world at 4,100,000 sq ft. HOLY SHIT. Suck it Mall of America, which I've subsequently never been to but apparently don't need to now that I've been to the 16th largest.

THE MALL!!!! (said in an Oprah voice) Also featured in this picture is one of the three food courts. Did I eat some KFC that day? Yup. Sure did. #America

Brand Shop was the Goodwill of H&M because all they sold was H&M stuff with the tags cut off. Girl be shoppin'.

That same day I finally checked into a new hostel and…it was AWFUL. Not as bad as the bug hostel but not good either. So there was no reason or need to stay there and even more reason the mall was the place to be. On intuition I booked only 1 night at this new hostel. It was smack dab in the middle of the city in a very weird industrial neighborhood. There were really no redeeming qualities of the neighborhood expect that it was an 5 minute walk to the metro station. My intuition was right, I literally checked in and within 4 minutes got on the wifi and booked a different hostel back across town for the next day. Things didn’t seem to be going well in Panama City.

On Tuesday I finally arrived at the promise land. The best hostel I’ve stayed at in Panama City. Great bathrooms. Clean. Comfy beds. 24/7 AC! You guys, 24/7 AC is a LUXURY. It’s as rare as finding a random $20 bill in your jeans pocket. Sure, it happens but man oh man it is a good day when it does. I was only in this location for 1 more night because I decided to head north to the mountains to a little touristy town to waste some time before my boat left on Saturday.

On Wednesday I caught a sketchy bus up to the mountain town La Valle de Anton. They say it’s only 2 hours away but the reality is it’s more like 3. It’s another somewhat harrowing bus ride through the mountains praying to all the gods that the brakes and tires are in good condition. Once you arrive, there isn’t much to do in this town. And by moutain town, please don't picture Mt. Hood or Lake Tahoe. Think, Fresno, California strip mall that happens to be in the mountains. (Also please don't Google image search this town because the pictures are freaking fantastic and beautiful and I saw NONE of that.)

The main attractions here were hiking and a natural hot spring. I didn’t bring my tennis shoes and I forgot my bathing suit. Awesome. Panama - 3, Megan 0. But really, the main objective for this 30 hour trip was just to leave the city and mix it up. After almost 5 days in Panama City I felt like I had seen all the sites (and the mall) and there wasn’t a lot left for me to do. Plus, Panama City is EXPENSIVE. One day I spent $80 on food. EIGHTY US DOLLARS. I have no idea how that happened. Everything here is US priced. But like Portland, OR priced, not San Francisco priced, thank god. Meals are minimum $10 but more realistically $15. That is a stark difference from Mexico where you could eat like a king on $5. At this point, there’s nothing you can really do. You can’t fight it, you just go with it and hope it all shakes out in the wash.

New Tinder profile pic.

Look closely. This butterfly has a SNAKE FACE ON IT!?! WTF Nature, why do you do this to me?

That big ass butterfly comes from a big ass caterpillar.

On Thursday night I came back to the city and stay at the nice hostel again. Hallelujah. Dealing with a somewhat hostile night manager was the biggest crisis of that place. And in comparison to my other trials this wasn’t really the end of the world. Friday I walk around some more and waste more time. I think my big event of that day was that I went to a grocery store to buy beer and snacks for the boat trip the next day.

So now it’s Saturday morning. I’m leaving for this boat trip and fingers crossed it’s smooth sailing. (#DadJoke) The Panama Canal was awesome. But the real silver lining of this story is that literally everyone says that Colombia is heaven. So in the end, Panama was just a wild detour on my way to the real promise land, Colombia.

- M