PANAMAzing Part 1 - We get reminded that necking is not an appropriate activity at public pools.

I know we keep saying this, but our experience in Panama has got to be the highlight of the trip.  (Well Panama, along with Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Belize anyway.)  We saw some truly incredible feats of modern human ingenuity and engineering, explored a town known for giving Sir Francis Drake dysentery, and stole away to our own private Caribbean house on Bocas Del Toro.

Look who we found in Panama! Brenton and Shannon from Ruined Adventures.  We've been following their blog and fb page since long before our trip was a reality.

The Panama City skyline.  It really is an impressive city.  Definitely the most impressive in Central America.

Our main goal in Panama was to find a place for Thanksgiving Dinner.  We headed for Panama City thinking it would be pretty easy seeing as it’s only been 13 years since the US had control over the Panama Canal and the surrounding areas.  We arrived on Tuesday and planned to ask around as we went about our activities.  Surely we would find something.  We started by visiting the LDS Temple where we knew we would find Americans.  They all had to work on Thanksgiving so we spent the day and just enjoyed their company anyway. 

The Panama City Temple.  Similar to the others we've seen in Central America.  We got a similar reaction from the American Temple workers as well.

Obviously the main attraction in Panama City is the Canal, and for good reason.  Construction on the Canal started in 1881 and was finished in 1914.  It takes 55 million gallons of water for a boat to cross from one end to another and 100% of that water is moved by gravity.  The main tourist area on the Canal is the Miraflor Locks.  Right in front of the lock on the edge of the canal is a large visitor center with decks that overlook the impressive set of gates.  While we sat there and watched, huge ocean liners came through and were lowered 70 feet.  It was quite impressive to say the least, especially when you consider that in the entire system, there isn’t a single pump of any kind.  The other impressive part of the visitor center was the amount of 3D awesomeness they packed into the short informational video.  They milked the 3D technology for all it was worth on that one.  Pixar has nothing on the Panama Canal Visitor Center.

Waiting for the awesome 3D informative video to start.

The ship in the right lane would be about as tall as the green/white line on the ship in the left lane.

Opening the gates to move on down another level.

Those trains on the sides are there to keep the ship from banging into the canal.  They are specially made for this duty by a little company in Japan called "Mitsubishi."  Yeah that's right.  

The ship dudes were pretty excited about this whole canal thing too.  They took turns posing for photo ops in front of the Miraflor building.

Just exploring the tunnels...

I asked a ship captain to let us drive.  He didn't have a problem with it.

Thursday morning we decided to get up and drive up the shore of the Canal to get a closer look.  We came across a small town called Gamboa.  There really wasn’t much at all there anymore but you could tell it was a bustling American town sometime in the 50’s or 60’s.  There was a deserted swimming pool with “No Necking” painted on one of the walls and an overgrown baseball diamond with a big set of bleachers.  You could tell neither had been used in many many years.  While Kaytie took off with the camera, I sat on the bleachers and had a Field of Dreams moment watching a game that was no more.

After the town, there wasn’t much else besides rail road tracks and a couple muddy ruts that ran up the shores of the canal.  So naturally, we put the Montero in 4WD and went exploring.  We drove for so long that I was almost convinced we were going to make it all the way but before that was possible we came to a downed tree in the road.  I got out and halfway considered using the axe to clear a path so we could continue on.  I’m pretty sure Kaytie could see the gears turning in my head and I’m positive she felt a sense of relief when I started backing up to find a place to turn back to the deserted American town.

While more recent evidence of America’s influence is easy to find (real milk in the grocery stores!), Thanksgiving dinner evaded us.  So we found an Italian place instead.  Who doesn’t love a good alfredo on the 4^th Thursday in November?!  That night we treated ourselves to a hotel.  Not a hostel, or motel but a real hotel, complete with bell boys, private bathrooms and a parking garage.  We spent the evening skyping with our families and eating delicious pumpkin pie packaged cookies.

We picked a good day to lounge around in a hotel room.  

Our Thanksgiving feast!

The next day we slept in and had hot showers before heading off to drive all the way from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea.  Due to some crazy rain and crazier traffic, the drive that should have taken us a little more than an hour ended up being more like 3.  It was dark as we pulled into the town of Portobelo and we had no planned camping spot.  So we did what we always do when we have nowhere to stay.  We stopped and asked the first person we saw if we could park next to their restaurant/store/hotel.  This time it was a restaurant and the owner had no problem with us pulling down next to his old boat right on the shore.  Whenever someone offers us a free place to camp we always try to support the restaurant or store in some way.  Usually that means eating a cheap, delicious dinner in place of cooking on our own.  Occasionally it means eating some really bad food.  Unfortunately this place was pretty bad and rather expensive.  Oh well, you can’t win em all.

Lots and lots of rain made for a slow drive.

Not a bad place to spend the night.

In the morning we explored the town of Portobelo.  It has some pretty interesting history.  Legend has it, Christopher Columbus gave the town its original name, Puerto Bello (Beautiful Port) and it’s a fairly well known fact that Sir Frances Drake died of dysentery right there in town and was buried at sea in the port itself.  The Port was popular with the Spanish silver ships because it was easy to defend.  However, due to it’s popularity it was also a favorite place for Pirates to attack.  A little bit of a catch-22 there…

We climbed around on the old fortress walls, Kaytie gave us her best model pose on what turned out to be a very rusty old cannon, and we explored the original Aduana (Customs) office.  Interestingly this 400-year-old aduana was much nicer than any we had come across on our trip so far.  We also hiked a muddy trail to get to the munitions store house on top of the hill.  Again and again on this trip we were surprised by the lack of “safety” regulations.  We were standing in a crumbling moss covered building on a steep muddy slope and there wasn’t a person in sight to tell us not to climb the watchtower to get a better view of the port.  So Kaytie climbed right up.  (I wasn’t about to go up there… Do you know how dangerous that is?!?)

Panama was quickly shaping up to be one of our favorite countries.  And that was before we met the French man and his Texan son who offered us their house on a small Caribbean island for a few days. 

Up next: the story of a French man and his Texan son who offered us their house on a small Caribbean island for a few days.