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.

Hiking and an Irish Pub

A-hiking we will go

A great view

Yesterday we got up and left Eco Venao, and drove halfway back to Panama City. We drove up into the mountains to a place called El Valle, and found a hotel called Los Capitanes for one night. It was a small room and it had a bath shower with no plug. We went to go and see a waterfall. They had free hiking sticks and we walked across a suspension bridge. You could wade right up to the waterfall but we didn't want to get our feet wet. The area was very jungly and there were hummingbirds and other wildlife. The waterfall wasn't going completely straight. It was jagged with several strands of water going in different directions. It looked not very amazing, but interesting.

We went to an Irish pub called O'Pedro for a drink and dinner. I had fish and chips. It took a long while to come but it was tasty so it was worth the wait.

The Last Beach

Today we didn't do much and I didn't have much to eat because I ended up vomiting again in the morning. I stayed in bed because I was ill and I had to have a lot to drink including ginger ale which I didn't particularly like because my taste buds don't like any fizzy drinks.

I played cards and read my books and as time went on I started to feel better. Later, when I felt 99% well I went to the games room and had a two-on-two series of games of table football with Lucy and two Spanish-speaking children who were in the games room. It was boys versus girls and the girls won most of the games. We only won one of the games.



Later we drove for a little bit in the car and went to a white sand beach. There was a lot of dry wood lying around in various shapes and sizes and there were sand crabs, hermit crabs, and reddish crabs. I went in the water for a bit and it was nice and warm and pleasant. There were no fish to see when we went snorkelling. It was probably the last beach we are going to go to on this vacation.

He tickles Daddy's foot

Beats any famous painting (drawn by me)

When we got back we had showers and started writing this blog, and Mummy discovered a giant green grasshopper on the bed. Daddy managed to get it off by catching it in two origami paper boxes which I made.

A Day of Not Doing Much

Yesterday we went to a small nearby town called Pedasí to go get some things for meals for the next two days at Eco Venao because we're not going out to eat. We don't want to go up and down that hill in the car too often and we have a full kitchen. After shopping we went for a bun and a drink at a small café nearby. I had a chocolate croissant and some milk.

We spent part of the afternoon inside. Later I went to the games room at the lodge on foot through the green and jungly area. There are lots of howler monkeys and we heard them again over breakfast. There are also crickets, various weird bugs, house lizards, stripy lizards, parrots, and hummingbirds.

For dinner we had pasta with sardines soaked in tomato sauce.

As I went up to my bedroom I noticed that there was a giant frog hopping up the stairs beside me. When it got to the top it hid behind a potted plant and started assassinating the flies.

When I went to my room I noticed a few things. There was a house lizard sitting super still on my table, a giant moth on the ceiling, and I have my own private balcony. I got into my big red two-person bed and vomited. I didn't feel too well after that, but I finally managed to get some sleep. The house lizards were going click-click-click, and it was driving me totally bananas.

A Day of Driving

Yesterday we drove out of Panama City and onto the Panamerican Highway. Out of the window I could see lots of jungle. After a bit of driving we stopped in front of some random building for a snack and a stretch of legs. We drove on a bit more and reached a town with a shopping mall and stopped for a sandwich. I had a sandwich with brown bread, ham, and lettuce. It didn't taste very nice and the lettuce was a little dry.

We got on a country road by the sea on the Azuero Peninsula and looked at three hotels. The first was full of birds, including a parrot, emus, and a lot of little birds I can't name, but we didn't like the atmosphere. The second was more grand but too expensive. The third one we stayed in. It was called Eco Venao. We got a three-bedroomed house with a separate kitchen/dining room up on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

We went to go and look at a beach before dinner. It was the type which is really good for surfing. It had grey sand, a few crabs, and there was so much surf it looked as though someone had spilled a giant cappuccino. We went out for dinner at the Eco Venao restaurant. I had red snapper with rice. The restaurant had a terrace called the monkey deck from which we could see lots of howler monkeys making a low groaning sound. As we were driving back there were a lot of crabs trying to cross the road. I didn't see them very well but Daddy said they were bright orange.

We encountered a grave problem when we were coming home. When we were driving our car up the hill our tyres got stuck so we had to take some of the cases out and walk up the hill in the dark. It was a long walk. Then Daddy and I had to walk all the way back down to the car again in the dark and get the rest of the cases. Some of the path was smooth but some parts were very bumpy like being on a ploughed field. The only lights we had to help guide us were fireflies and the stars. There was a pretty magnificent star display. We would have seen even more only there's a nearby small village.

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.