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Other entries in Panama City

Cholo Buses and Cheese Fries

I wish we had more time in panama city. It is a huge city that we had only about 24 hours to explore and from the stories weve heard and the few sights we saw, there is apparently a lot we missed. But, we did see some stuff.

We got very lucky in Bocas with regards to how we got to panama city. Despite the fact that both flights leaving Sunday were booked full, we stood standby and at the last moment were able to get seats on the small prop plane and saved ourselves the agony of 12 hours on bus in previously described conditions. It also allowed us time to explore the capitol at least for a little bit.

As always, when we stepped out of the airport doors, we were bombarded with offers for taxis to take us anywhere we needed to go. Going price was about 22 american. We have gotten used to looking past this tourist trap and instead opt for public buses that are always cheaper and we prefer to ride with the locals. The busride into downtown was a quarter and when we stepped out onto the street, we realized we didn't have the address of the hostel to meet our friends from Mondo Taitu and also were without a clue of where to go. Carrying our large backpacks with our daypacks watched closely, we started out through the Sunday morning bazaars in search of an internet hostel to gather information. It was surpising to see so many people out on a Sunday morning in a latin country but apparently either this was an exception or this was the status quo for panama city. Making our way through the various stalls selling various goods was entertaining; it was a pedestrian area, no cars anywhere, and the street was lined on both side with shops and in the middle was another long line of tents. Some sold food, others clothes, still more sold trinkets, doo dads, and hullabaloo. We eventually emerged on the far side of the Sunday street commerce festival and fortunately were standing directly in front of an internet café. While we were searching for the information we needed, a man using the computer next to us overheard our need to get across town and offered his services as a driver. As he described his price, we realized that our appearance quickly renders us to inflated prices in almost any situation. The man said, "I could take you to where youre going for 10....15....20 dollars only. That's all". We politely declined and said we would take our chances on our own.

After finishing up on the computer, we stepped outside and a brightly colored school bus with our final street location listed on its front window drove by and stopped up the street. I ran up to the door and asked if the driver was heading to our street, he nodded and we got onboard. This is where the excitement began. First of all, all the public buses in this city are privately owned. Sometimes the owner is the driver, sometimes he hires one, sometimes people rent the buses to drive on a monthly basis. Each driver lists his route on the front window and makes his bus distinguishable by putting shiny, colorful, and animated stickers all over the exterior. Some of the designs I saw included Marvin the Marsion, the Tazmanian Devil, Gambit from X-men, deadly 8-balls (you can use your imagination on that one), plenty of skulls and crossbones of course, and then there were the non-commercialized icons like flowers, colorful designs, and Christmas decorations which made me wonder if they put those up recently or if they have those up year round and are just extremely holiday oriented people. Then some buses went to the extreme by mounting gigantic dual exhaust pipes on the back of the bus, each running from underneath the bus to well above the top of the vehicle. Ridiculous. But regardless of the exterior design, all the drivers are maniacs. They are extremely aggressive with both their maneuvering and their acceptance of fares. You see, if they slow down to allow people to enter the bus, the people better run because that extra quarter from the old woman with the cane really isn't worth it if she takes her sweet time to cough it up. Many times I saw our driver be hailed down be some people only to stop momentarily and speed off when the prospective passengers didn't meet with his strict time schedule. And then when the buses meet on the road, its like the chariot race scene from Ben Hur. They fight and jostle for position like two adolescent brothers racing for the last seat at thanksgiving dinner. Once when our bus pulled up to a stoplight next to another bus, our driver and sidecar announcer simultaneously tilted their heads over to the other bus with a look of disgust. Then they exchanged a comment that I couldn't hear followed by a grunt of laughter. None of the streets had signs so I was lost sitting up front trying to find our stop. I asked sidecar boy about our street and he told me it was coming up in about half a mile. If I hadn't said anything, we would have been riding that carnival ride all day. I jumped up at our stop without telling guido to be ready so he had to hustle or else he would be swept back into the fierce current of the Panamanian bus river. We got out, found a landmark near our bostel, and began walking. After making an accidental brief tour of our future neighborhood, we found our spot and were set up for the night.

Next mission: find a bar/restaurant with satellite so we can catch the Cowboys game. Yes, I admit its sad that while we're away in a foreign land, we both still maintain a desire to watch American football but what can I say, we're diehard fans (not like all you bandwagon Sooner fans (annie)) and in a big city, we figured we could find a place that would have the game. And besides, it wasn't just any Cowboys game, it was at Washington, a fierce division rival, blah blah blah, you don't have to understand, we just thought it was the right thing to do. And we were wrong. We found a bar with relative ease; the Marriott nearby had a sports bar called Champions which took us back to the States with the first step we took into the bar. First of all when Fatty saw that they were playing NFL games on the television, he literally jumped into the air, fist clenched and let cesidoout a yelp of joy. It was basically like we walked into a Bennigan's, TGIFridays, or Chili's. On each table was a plastic football helmet with a different NFL logo on the side and a tray of peanuts in the facemask. Each waitress was young, attractive, spoke perfect or near-perfect English, and all wore matching uniforms of red polo, black shorts, and identical shoes. We joined about 10 other Americans in the restaurant already watching the games and both of us noted immediately how distinctly un-Panamanian this was. But we didn't care cause we were going to watch the game. The prices of the food and drinks were American prices so we decided to order Pepsis and split some cheese fries. We were exhausted from the day of travel and the celebratory party the night before so we were both nearly dozing during the early games. By the time the Cowboys came on, we were near sleep but revitalized by the prospect of watching our, wait scratch that, America's team. And fate has a way of pointing our errors in judgment. The Cowboys ended up losing 35-7 but we were lucky enough to witness only the Redskins multiple scoring drives and countless Dallas mistakes. The insult to injury part was that the cheese fries we ordered were giving us the first upset stomachs of the trip. We left early in the third quarter when it was apparent that while we're in another part of the world, we need to enjoy the sights and sounds of that place, and not worry about football games back home. But the Rose Bowl is obviously an exception.

So depressed, dejected, and defeated, we tucked our tails between our legs and walked home. We had an early flight the next day to Colombia so our desires for the night included eating, sleeping, and not much else. Our friends from Bocas were staying at the same hostel so we were able to hang out some more before we parted ways. Besides that we caught up a little on world news. I was very disappointed that the rioting in Australia was not even covered much by the American media but was pretty happy to hear about the Patriot Act looking like it was going to go down like the Hindenburg because of Dubya's lying and general creepiness. On a side note as well, the bunk beds we slept in that night were identical to the ones that Fatty had as a child. Both of us had spent many nights tucked away in those rickety metal sleeping compartments and after all these years, with the beds staying the same size and me growing slightly since 4th grade, I was squeezed pretty snugly into my bed.

In the morning, we enjoyed breakfast of fried corn patties, a piece of queso procesado, and a hot dog. To drink, some jugo de naranja. The owner of the hostel, Xavier, a massive Belgian man, was going to give us a ride to the airport for a small fee. Along the way we got a detailed description and ample listening time to music called Reggaeton. It's a fast paced mixture of latino music with the beats and tempo of reggae. It also is almost always laced with not subtle sexual inuendos and analogies to sexual body parts. Xavier explained some of the lyrics to us: "He's saying that the lady is asking for the gasolina. You know what the gasolina is?" all the time making references to his pants. We told him we understood but either he didn't understand that we understood or he enjoyed pointing to his penis and laughing. Either way, it was a comical car ride. 

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