Panama Canal 2022 Trip Report P21
And we got to Panama City!
And with a plenty of hilarious bad stuff.
So..
We were supposed to disembark by 9am at the most.
We ended getting delayed by A LOT.
Thankfully that fit us good, so we could have breakfast and somewhat get ready to leave.
IT was a bit chaotic mind you...
We were supposedly going to leave depending the codes in your bags.
But it was a mess.
We left pretty quickly, but the nightmare started on the port.
First..the port was under remodeling and rebuilding most of the pier.....
The baggage claim was an absolute chaos.
Most bags werent there in the first hold, and you could go by yourself to the second hold because it was "outside" security zone.
It took us almost an hour and half to get help and turns out half our bags were in the other hold.
To resume, Panama's ports are GODDARMN HORRIBLE with tons of awful management and planning.
Anyway we had to wait 3 hours for a bus because there werent ubers or taxis allowed inside the terminal while it was under construction. Then we were dropped of at the convention center, which was another insanity.
We were immediately bombarded by abusive and over expensive tours operators and taxi drivers wanting to deliver us to hour hotel for 100 USD.
Ironically, the farther we moved from the taxis and these guys.. the cheaper the rates were.
From 100 it dropped to 50 in just 10 meters.
I tried calling a uber but had no internet and had to use my mother's phone.
Then a taxi driver saw us calling an uber and offered us to drive us for 45 USD.
We followed him and turns out he called ANOTHER taxi to drive us off.
There was also an argument between them. Why? because they all had some stupidly oversized subwoofers in the back cargo hold of their cards, and they did not have the capacity for our bags. The second taxi driver ended disconnecting his (we're talking of PARTY size speakers or small event venue speakers of around 1 meter and 20 cms of height) and putting it on the front seating.
After 1 long hour we finally arrived to our hotel, where we arrived a bit earlier but we were happy to wait sitting in the AC while our room was done.
The hotel was quite modern and nice. Probably the second best hotel lobby wise.
It was conveniently located very close to the airport. With a free shuttle as well.
Also high speed internet for free.
We had a tour this day but after they called us that we had to pay 50 USD to be picked up (extra) because our hotel was too far. We cancelled. We were way too tired anyway (too much standing at 40C temps with barely any wind waiting for the bus took a toll of us)
So we just watched the sports while our room was ready. And once ready we went there.
The room was nothing fancy, it was a Crowne Plaza series hotel.
We ordered KFC for lunch using the local app and then took a loooong nap.
The next day was a tour of the old town of Panama and the ruins.
Which went well.
Even the driver had no issue coming for us.
One thing for sure is the guy was hilarious in terms of knowledge. In some aspects he knew a lot. In others he said he had no idea and would need to research on books.
Some photos of the CASCO VIEJO
Some famous areas include the an university that was once a convent. And the oldest hotel that has many awards for building and quality.
We also did quite a bit of shopping.
There were some interesting ruins of older churches and buildings that were said to have been destroyed by fires. And only some parts survived.
