Activity Summary
Monday 19th June - Day 291
Travel to Panamá City
Dinner at Tsugoi Asian Cuisine - El Cangrejo
Tuesday 20th June - Day 292
Metro to old town / San Felipe
Chill afternoon
Wednesday 21st June - Day 293
Historic old town / Panamá Viejo
Amador Causeway
Thursday 22nd June - Day 294
Day of killing time
Flight - Panamá City to Madrid
Friday 23rd June - Day 295
Flight - Madrid to London
Back home in London
Summary
Panama City
Nicola enjoyed being back in a city for a while after so long in smaller towns and beach areas. There is a feel of stability when in a big city that is almost reassuring in a way, when the city is not known for being rough as shit.
Panama City had decent food, good transport and some interesting things to see and do. Could have achieved more if the weather wasn’t quite so turbulent but there wasn’t much we could do about this.
The city didn’t feel unsafe at all and was a nice relaxed end to our first 10 month (ish) stint travelling.
Transport
Panama City
From Santa Catalina this wasn’t too bad. Public buses ran fairly frequently to Sona in about 2 hours and from the same bus terminal the bus goes from Sona to Panamá City.
The cost was pretty cheap, $5 to Sona and $10 to Panamá City.
Panama City metro
The hardest part of the metro system was getting a travel card. This cost $2 and it was a specific machine that dispensed these - not the top up one.
The card allows 6 to travel on it and costs range from $0.35-$0.50. Makes the tube look extortionate.
Panama / Tocumen airport
The metro had apparently only recently been updated in March to have an offshoot of one of the metro lines to go to the airport. Super easy, just requires a change tk a different platform and train.
Accommodation
Panama City - Ibrais Hostel
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £13
For the cost, location and comfort we were pretty happy with this place. Nicola even managed a few lie ins.
Loads of space, kitchen and the room was really comfortable. We even managed to do some hand washing (note to self going forward - use the dry bag) and had the facilities to let it dry properly.
The location was great with some decent food places nearby and the metro a short walk away.
The one negative was that the shower just couldn’t decide whether it had hot water. It just wouldn’t stay consistent and would run cold pretty quickly.
Diary
The cost of $60pp for a private shuttle to Panamá City was too dear for us so we pulled on our big person socks and from 7am started the day travelling like the poor kids do, unlike us wealthier 30 year olds (soz Nicola you are getting rounded up in age).
It would be two buses to Panama City; a 2 hour one to Soná and then a much longer 6 hour bus to our final destination. The transition would be at the Sona bus station so arguably should be pretty easy if timed well.
We had no problems getting the 7am bus right outside of our hostel, got seats for the whole journey and arrived in Sona 5 minutes before 9am. We were aiming for a 9am bus to the city but sadly we found out on arrival this didn’t exist. So we ended up spending 1.5 hours waiting on the 10.30am bus to take off which got increasingly more claustrophobic as the day's heat started to creep in. Eventually the driver turned on the vehicle and the AC made this infinitely more comfortable, especially as a mass arrival of tourists from shuttles closer to 10 joined us.
One of these people was Mark who on sitting near to us, Nicola immediately headphoned up and left Luke high and dry. He wasn’t in the mood at all for a chat so managed to pull the same ‘leave me alone’ manoeuvre for the whole of the journey.
It took over 6 hours to get to Panamá City with super slow traffic and not an overly comfortable ride. We both intermittently fell asleep and Luke somehow managed to watch the England v North Macedonia game on his phone with his mobile data holding throughout. We couldn’t even manage a game on WIFI in New Zealand…
By the end we were pretty uncomfortable. This irritability made navigating the taxi rank at Albrook station more stressful for us both than it needed to be. It should have been easy enough to get a cab; the first guy tried charging $10 so we said hell na, our Uber driver failed to stop to pick us up so just cancelled once fucked down the one way system and then eventually we got a yellow cab for $5. Of course each time we tried explaining where we were going it was utterly painful.
At the hostel we checked in and quickly went for dinner at Tsugoi Asian Cuisine - El Cangrejo. It was super close and served us some decent ramen so we were happy.
It was a wonderful lie in. Our first stop when finally out of the hostel was to the nearest mcds for breakfast and it was the slowest fast food we have experienced. It seemed like everyone ‘working’ there was doing nothing and it took forever for ordering and the food to come out. Luke did get a double egg so we guess we could call it compensation.
The metro was super close to our hostel so were able to make use of this a fair amount which was helpful as the traffic in Panamá sucks. The metro was quite new, worked incredibly well and was super cheap at $0.35 for a ride. We were also big fans of the ability to use one metro card for up to 6 people.
We rode the metro as close as we could to the old town / San Felipe and walked the rest of the way. The latter part was not so pleasant, smelt a lot like urine and was super run down but eventually opened up into a really nice pocket of the city.
We spent the next few hours walking around slowly and aimlessly:
Viewpoint of the city
Viewpoint of the canal / Amador Causeway - here we cheekily stood and listened to a walking tour guide give some information of the Panamá Canal operations. Costs a fair amount to get a vessel through but based on the wealth divide in the country it’s a bit puzzling where all the money goes.
Arco Chato
Casco Viejo
Some other things
We were making our way to to Ancon Hill but the heavens opened up in a fierce way so ducked into another mcds. Some shame nugs made up our lunch as we waited for the bad weather to subside. We got chatting to an American who, overhearing us speaking English thought we were American and asked what state we were from. He himself had moved back and forth between Panama and New York City and was curious what we had been up to in Panamá.
As we couldn’t see the hill and the rain wouldn’t stop we called it and had a chill afternoon in the hostel. Nicola was lucky enough to get an hour long massage from Luke that rivals Thailand.
We made use of the kitchen and cooked through the rest of our food items. Finally we were rid of the additional countdown food bags.
We continued the lazy start and once the morning rain petered out we got out for the day.
There was a strange parade we had to navigate through to get to the bus that would take us to the historic old town / Panamá Viejo which was initially entertaining but having to walk past unnecessarily loud speakers was less than ideal.
After what was a successful metro expedition the day before we hoped the bus network would run the same way. Turns out this was wishful thinking and the bus we needed to get didn’t turn up. After nearly an hour of waiting Nicola, now raging from the delays and car pollution on the busy road, got us an Uber. Not overly expensive but a lot more than the $0.25pp bus fare.
It was probably a good thing we got a cab because we would have overshot the entrance to the ruin site big time whereas the driver knowing this corrected our journey for us.
With the $10pp tickets purchased we had a casual stroll through some of the ruined buildings established in 1500 by the Spanish and then knocked down less than 100 years later.
The most intact was the Convent, albeit propped up by modern installations.
At the end of the walking route was the most impressive part being the Panamá Viejo tower, apparently featuring on some of the Panamanian money. It had nice views out to the Amador Causeway and the city.
On continuing our walk around the other small ruin parts Nicola got 2 absolute shiners to the face from mozzies, the first face attack we have had on the trip, and at that point it was no longer fun. We ducked into the nearby museum which gave us our first and only piece of Panamanian history on our trip so it was quite interesting.
We Ubered back to the hostel for a cheap leftover rice lunch and were back to trusting public transport to get the Metro and bus to the Amador Causeway. This time there were no issues with the latter.
Once at the Causeway end point we had a walk down to take in the views of the city and some of the ships navigating towards the canal (Flamenco Island through Perico Island and Naos Island).
The causeway was pretty tacky, almost like a bad holiday resort strip with some alright views but nothing special.
We retraced our public transport steps to get back to the hostel via the shop to pad out our third helping of leftover rice with frozen chips which ended up being not an overly fun exercise, cooking in a gas oven with flames licking the bottom of the Hostel tea towel turned oven glove. They also took an age to cook.
Each night in Panama City Nicola threatened an evening activity of frequenting a rooftop bar and a beer. Naturally we ended up being too weak and spent our final evening with the important task of finishing Race Across the World and packing. Such cool beans we are.
Our flight wasn’t until 8.25pm so theoretically we could have spent the day in the city but the lack of desire to get all hot and sweaty before travelling for a day without a shower didn’t appeal. So we killed as much time in as much comfort as we could.
Luke presented Nicola with the gift of a romantic mcds breakfast in bed before we checked out at 11am and stayed in the hostel lounge area chilling on the sofas. We left the hostel at 2.30pm before getting lunch again at the nearby Tsugoi Asian Cuisine - El Cangrejo, killing a few hours here before going to the airport.
The Tocumen airport transit was pretty easy and a lot cheaper than an Uber. The metro runs directly to the airport and apparently had only recently opened up a little nubin line connecting to the L1. We had to ask a guard to confirm this was the case but it worked out fine and cost $0.50 each. The only downside was trying to get on a packed metro with our big bags and absolutely no space or generosity of passengers to allow us to put our bags down. The tube just seemed better set up for this.
The AirEuropa check in desk was the only one open in the nearby vicinity and it was heaving. Seems people also like to get to the airport 3.5 hours early for a flight as well.
Security was oddly super chill and didn’t require us to take anything out of our bags - ipads, liquids, nada.
As we usually do we had a stroll around to see what was available, noting the airport had a really strange layout and the only food that tickled Luke was a really expensive subway. Turns out it was a good shout to get as the food served in flight wasn’t large and there was only 1 meal. The queue was super long for such a tiny boarding gate area and usually we actively avoid standing in this energy drain but we were scared about being forced to put our bags under our seats for the 10 hour flight based on a tag they had so kindly given us at check in. So naturally we removed the tags and managed to board pretty quickly. Turned out to be tons of space so the stress was unnecessary.
Another piece of good fortune came with us having a spare seat for Nicola to sprawl all over. Our flight to Madrid set off at 8.25pm, landed in Madrid at 1pm (equivalent to 6am Panamá time) and both of us managed a few hours of sleep. The movie selection was terrible.
In Madrid it was pretty easy to walk through the terminal and it was a quick connection check-in process. Once we had found our gate we spent the hour and a half connection time getting some food and sitting around.
True to European flights, we boarded later than our departure time which was 3pm Spanish time. No luxury on this service but it was only a 2.5hr flight. Luke spent it sparko while Nicola played games.
Our run through Gatwick airport was probably the most efficient we have ever had. From disembarking the plane we literally didn’t stop on our walk through. The passport E-gates worked first time and on arrival at the luggage carousel our bags were already doing the rounds on the conveyor belt. We got to the station and onto a train into Victoria in 2 minutes. About as good as it gets.
That being said Nicola was being her standard ‘on one’ self, bombing it through the station weaving in and out and dropping the shoulder as if part of a rugby game. Luke, as always in airports, just tries to keep pace as best he can. The Swain ‘walk with purpose’ is a family thing.
Everything was too good to be true however (Nicola probably cursed us by saying it was all too easy) when the overground to Enfield was stuck without any hope of moving and the pic line was throwing out severe delays during rush hour. Getting on a rammed tube with all our bags in tow was bleak as hell. Welcome home to us.
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