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Other entries in Panama City

Lazy as a sloth

“Why are sloths so lazy?” asked the guide. I was in the Smithsonian Institute on the Causeway near Panama City. One bright young kid answered “He sleeps all day and doesn’t go to school”. We were looking at a two fingered sloth asleep up in the trees. He was right. Two fingered sloths sleep 18 to 20 hours a day, and do not go to school.

The Causeway itself is a long road linking 3 three islands and a place for the rich to shop, eat and park their yachts. One also get a good view of the panama city skyscrapers. And there are a lot of them, and they are not cheap. The latest biggest fanciest one has penthouse apartments at the bargain price of 12 million USD.

Sunday morning I did manage to struggle out of bed at 4.50 a.m. The Panama Canal Half Ironman was on, so I decided to go watch. Triathlons tend to be on rather early in the morning. There were top prizes of 1500 USD for both men and women. So I was expecting a fairly serious field. However there was only about 60 or 70 athletes for the half Ironman and a shorter quarter Ironman.

I’ve been to one or two triathlons in Ireland in my day, and there was some serious organization behind some parts, such as plenty of police, but they could have done with a few more stewards who had participated in triathlons. Colombians won both the male and female categories. I imagine if they some of the better Irish Triathletes were in the region; they could walk off with some nice prize money.

On my way home from the Triathlon I ran into a school marching band competition. And a serious competition it was. There was many a trophy on offer for the best bands. Each band had a fixed 12 minutes in front of the bandstand to do their formation marching and performance.

It was all taken very seriously. Well before they got to the band stand, senior bad members would walk up and down between the male formation marchers, shouting at them, telling them to keep their eye forward, or maybe take a tissue from the marchers pocket and wipe the sweat off their brow, because the marchers weren’t allowed do it themselves. The female marchers seemed to be more interested in smiling, or at least that was their orders.

I’ve been in Panama City about 11 days now, and I’ve grown rather fond of my bed. I tend to be the last one out of bed in the dormitory most mornings. And it would also be true to say that I don’t go to school. Despite my above tales, I haven’t really done a whole lot in the last while. I suspect I do more than a sloth, but not a whole lot.

Today the highlight of my day was getting the wrong change at the supermarket. I noticed it immediately. They closed the checkout. Brought me and all the money off to a safe room and did a tally of the cash in the register. It took about 15 minutes. The tallies didn't add up so I go my extra 10 dollars back.

So I decided it was time for this sloth to leave Panama City. So I’m off to San Blas tomorrow. They are some autonomous tropical paradise style islands on the Caribbean.

Should be fun. I'll be back in PC on Friday.

Take Care,

Steve.

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