Last Days in Panama

Yesterday when we we woke up there was a grave problem. I wasn't feeling too well again. Mummy, Daddy, and Lucy went out to breakfast and I stayed in bed. We got in the car and drove to a nearby orchid garden. I stayed out in the café while everyone else went to look. Everyone else told me that it was the wrong season for orchids.

We drove slowly down the mountain and along the coast to Panama City and back to Hotel Tryp. We checked-in and went for a nice lunch except for me: I had vegetable soup and plain bread. For part of the afternoon Lucy and Mummy went out shopping longer than we expected. We lazed about for the afternoon and watched 'Men in Black'.

For dinner I had a bread roll with bananas and apple juice, but this morning I feel much better, so I'm going down for a buffet breakfast.

Today we will fly from Panama City to Houston, and then Houston back to Vancouver.

Tomorrow the last post will show all the best parts of the trip.

Rainy Day

Two days back we went to go and look at a museum. We had trouble finding it and when we did find it we found out it was closed for renovation. We caught a taxi and while we were driving back we got caught in a huge rainstorm. It was the biggest one I've ever seen in my life. It answered the question why there were such big gutters in Panama City.

Later Daddy and I went to pick up a rental car, which was  Hyundai Accent. It had a spare tyre and a huge boot able to take all the cases. We drove it back to the hotel and parked it in the upstairs parking lot.

The Panama Canal

Taking everything down

We got up early because today we went on a trip halfway up the Panama Canal. We went by taxi to the dock. From there we got on a big boat. It had three decks. We got seats on the top one. After a while a while we reached the area where the ships wait until the operator gives them permission to head into the locks. Someone in a little boat has to come on board ship just to make sure you go into the locks right.

Along the way the guide said a few interesting things such as that they were going to make a bigger set of locks because some ships were too big to go throw the ones that currently exist. We also saw a giant green chopping device with a blade which was dredging the bottom of the canal so that bigger ships could go through.

Eventually we reached the first lock. Most of the big container ships have to have two trains on each side with steel cables connected to them to stop the boat from crashing into the sides of the chamber, but since our ship wasn't so big we didn't need trains. The same time we were going through there was another little fishing boat going through as well. It took approximately eight minutes for them to fill the chamber. We got through and continued on.

Giant green chopping device

We saw a lot of other big container ships heading the opposite way. The ships have something called a Plimsoll Line on the hull. It shows if you've put the maximum amount of containers in. Above the line the hull is one colour and below it is another. When you can only see the top colour it means the ship has been filled with the maximum amount of containers it can have. Panamax ships, the largest ships that can pass through the canal, can carry 5000 containers. The tower over the boat blocking out some of the sun and make you feel very small. But there are now bigger ships called post-Panamax ships that can carry 14,000 containers maximum, so that's why they have to make the canal deeper so the post-Panamax ships can go through.


I had a good time and it was very enjoyable. I recommend doing it. Altogether we went through three locks. The banks were very jungly. On the side of the lake you could see the train tracks for the train we took yesterday.

A Train Ride

Eek! We're going to be run over!

Today we went by bus to Colón. Panama City is on the Pacific, but Colón is on the Caribbean. The bus ride was an hour and something and for some odd reason the air-conditioning was dripping condensation on my window in particular. Probably mere coincidence.

After the long bus ride we had to take a short walk to the railway station to catch the Panama Railway Company train. The line was built a long time before the canal, in 1855. It was a big train which was yellow, red, and black. Looking at it reminded me a bit of the Belgian or German flag. We had to wait a bit before they let us board the train. The carriage we got in had a curved glass roof so you could see up. There was also a high part of the carriage and a low part. We sat in the high part but on the side away from the Panama Canal. There was lots of jungle and thick plants. The air smelled hot and moist. After a little while I went out on the observation deck at the back of the carriage. Two interesting things happened. We saw a spare piece of rail besides the track, and we unexpectedly came into a tunnel. We crossed part of a lake on a bridge and we saw two big ships heading up the canal and a few old broken houses.

When we reached the end of the journey they gave us snack packs which was weird because they're supposed to give out the snack packs on the train not after the journey's finished.

We looked round in the gift shop for a while and then caught a taxi back to the hotel. I'm not having dinner in the hotel restaurant for the first time. Tomorrow we're going on a ship up the canal.

TV Afternoon

Today we tried to find a shopping mall but we spent a long time wandering around on streets and there were a lot of polluted car fumes. Eventually we managed to get a taxi to take us to the shopping mall. We wandered around and I was very uninterested. We tried to use one of those cheap little rides and it robbed us of 50¢. (In Panama they use US dollars. They don't have their own currency.) We went and bought a few sandwiches and got a taxi back to the hotel. Mummy and Lucy went and had naps. Daddy and I stayed awake and had the sandwiches for lunch. We spent most of the afternoon watching Doctor Who and Pirates of the Caribbean. For dinner we went out to a restaurant which served traditional and non-traditional Panamanian food. I had a hamburger with French fries.

First Day in Panama

Today was the first day in Panama. We had a nice simple buffet breakfast and called a cab to take us to the old part of Panama City. There there was a lot of building going on and it was noisy from the sound of drills and people working. We went to see a few churches and a museum about the history of the Panama Canal. There were a lot of screens and surprisingly there was nothing in English. It was all in Spanish. The museum had old tools and showed how the canal was made.

Just practising

We went to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I had a few dumplings, two helpings of noodles, and some broccoli. It was tasty.

Arriving in Panama

Yesterday we started off a little late since we had a plane flight at 1.25pm. We were flying with COPA airlines again. The good thing is that they leave on time, not like DAE, the worst airline ever. It was raining as we flew to Panama, but luckily no thunderstorms. When we got out of the airport we called a taxi and told it to take us to Hotel Tryp which had newly opened, but only softly. We went to see two rooms, one with two double beds, and one with a double bed and a sofa bed in a separate sitting room, each room with its own bathroom. The beds here are very comfy and soft, and also super-big (if you're my size, that is). The hotel people gave us each a free drink on arrival, with a maraschino cherry. We took the suite with the sofa bed.