Panama City

We had driven through the Conejo district. This is where Roberto Durand grew up.
But not the place you want to live. I'll leave it to your imagination.

Here's the good news.We had a very large and beautiful suite at the Hotel Milan. You can check it out on line. It is centrally located,super cheap and within walking distance of every thing.

The first day we saw the Panama canal,the museum and theatre showing of the canal. Awesome.

Also on the first day we visited Casco Viejo)the old city. A great experience  too. The street below is called "get out if you can".

And I even went to church. This is a golden alter(real gold) that was transported here and saved by Sir Henry Morgan the pirate who was talked into giving it to the church instead of spending the gold.
Weird eh?

We had a beer at the Golden Frog"La Rana Dorado" very cool. We had the sampler(free) you see in the back ground and decided on the Blanco for Aprille and the Premium for me.

Jorge actually took this picture and you can ask me about him later. I don't have the energy or time.
Thank goodness it wasn't a 7 hr flight.

That night we had a beautiful Italian dinner at El Conejo resaurante. Then we walked to the Veneto casino a few doors away and across the street. We dropped a few dollars at the casino but the drinks are free and the atmosphere is electric. They have all the table games from Vegas. Very nice.

The second day we sailed(motored out) to Contadora Island. It was a boat ride of approx 1 hr and 40 minutes. Within 30 minutes there was no land visible. Just ocean.

The beach below is Galeon and the landing beach.

The beach here is Playa Larga and one of the prettiest beaches. Maybe at high tide but not now.
The white hotel is unfinished and was...owned by a Colombian drug lord..his plane blew up in mid air.

The brown hotel is also unoccupied and was owned by a Colombian drug lord who is spending a life sentence for smuggling drugs into American. Maybe crime does not pay.

The other side of the island is beautiful too and this is a view towards Playa Ejuctiv.

So you can travel around the island too. But..really..$70 for a golf cart for the day. I only pay $53 to golf with a cart. So...we walked. Breakfast was lovely. We ate at Gerald's. It's a free shuttle(say this with a Ron White inflection voice). Breakfast consisted of,scrambled eggs,a fruit plate(two not indigenous fruits)a coffee and tea.... $24.30. If you say it quickly it doesn't hurt as much.

We were going to go to Mercado de Pescado(you pick your own fish they clean it and cook it and bring it to your table) but our driver and a friendly American,at the beach at Contadora,said it was very hot and very smelly. You really have to like fish. So we decided not to go.
We opted out for a Peruvian restaurant and a fabulous dinner at Machu Pichu Restaurante. Good choice. Only 100 yards from our hotel too.

Getting out of the city was no problem. We just missed the left hand exit and driving like a Panamanian, I didn't have to stop for the stop sign getting back to the round a bout LOL
Oh, Aprille was not very happy, here we go over the over pass,we cross over the Bridge of the Americas and away we go.

Just down the road we saw the sign for Panama City. This is the way we should have come in. I saw the exit for Panama city and I instinctively knew that was our exit, but it was too late and the signs ahead said Panama Cenrto,so how bad could it be? But it was an adventure.

We had a much more scenic and relaxed trip home via Santiago to the border crossing.

Here's a good idea. What do you think?
Let's pass on an up hill curve with a double line at  80 km per hr. Whoa! Good thing I was paying attention and so was the guy being passed.

We just got lucky entering at the crossing, We were only the 2nd car entering the highway from the by pass to Santiago. Looking east toward Panama as far as we could see,there were cars stopped,waiting for inspection. A nice driver actually let us in,or maybe it was my car entering his space,maybe a bit of both.

We got to the inspection station passports ready and plainly visible and we we waved through the crossing. It took less than 5 minutes. YEA!!!

I finally found a way to get rid of all the junk from the phone camera so here are the pictures from LosRuices. You can see them on the previous blog now.

It felt good to be back home again.