Panama
2. The weather
Super nice temperature, virtually no rain. The weather is sunny every day with about 31 deg / 50-60 %RH and a little cooler in the evening. Every day, without exception for the whole month of february. I think there were a total of 4 rain showers lasting less than half an hour. Even though there’s clouds quite often, it doesn’t mean at all it will rain. However, all this changes towards the end of april when the rainy season starts. Days are more often clouded all day long and torrential rains occur regularly. You may understand that I’m not gonna stick around to confirm until when this will last.
3. The traffic
Panama city is a rather chaotic place with roads joined together in impossible ways and people driving like madmen. One the one hand there are these heaps of taxis (except of course when you need one on Avenida Balboa at 3 am) that all drive in a very improvised manner, and on the other hand there’s all these 4×4s with darkened windows, sometimes populated with some young kid who’s thinking he’s king, sometimes inhabited by a babe who’s not sure she ever learned driving because her driving instructor forgot about that while getting a blow job from her. In between are the buses, a class apart because they don’t give a shiiiiit about anyone or any car. So better watch out for them. Most cab drivers honk their horn incessantly for women they see, for obtaining new customers, for warning buses that they’re there (useless, but anyways) and if there’s no reason to honk, they still do some honking. It’s like a morse code of some sort, all these cab horns honking to each other and the rest of the participants in the traffic. There are bad bad jams around 1 pm and 5 pm in the area roughly between avenida brasil, avenida simon bolivar and avenida balboa. The main problem with the traffic is bad design of the roads, exemplified by a lack of stoplights exactly at the crossings where they are needed most. Also, they often don’t properly separate slow traffic from traffic that can go fast to extremely fast so everyone ends up going at pedestrian speed, with everybody honking their horns, but nothing can be done because we’re all waiting for granny to finally cross the street. Obviously granny has no choice but to cross the street anywhere else because there just no other way to cross the street. Many drivers, especially those pesky 4×4 drivers, don’t give a shit about pedestrians. I don’t how many times I was simply cutoff by them, just walking in a parking lot. I guess they consider anyone without a car such a loser, not worthy of their attention. Also, try to cross a street. You literally have to throw yourself in front of the cars to get them to stop, even at an offical zebra pedestrian crossing. And it’s not just the drivers that may make your life as a pedestrian rather abysmal. The sidewalks are more like a stairway with limited vision that goes up and down all the time, and filled with unpredictable obstacles, like trees and palms that haven’t been trimmed, potholes, temporary pipes that were never removed or simply protected with an annoying cement layer on top of the sidewalk, steel cables to support telephone poles, slippery/slanted areas due to some neighbour disposing of their washwater, you name it. I had the bad luck of twisting my ankle one day when going for a run. I guess I’m not a regular pedestrian since I usually drive in Montreal, but still.
There are no significant numbers of bicycles or scooters, the latter of which I’m glad not to see because they would make it even more chaotic and noisy. I imagine some of China’s cities are crowded with them.
De stad is lekker chaotisch, net zoals in Rio en veel andere Latino steden, met het ontbreken van straatnamen op veel plaatsen zodat je helemaal de kluts kwijtraakt. De wegen zijn volledig onlogisch aan mekaar geprutst zodat je veel rare (disorienterende) bochten moet maken om je eindpunt te bereiken. En dan is er natuurlijk het rijgedrag dat gewoon bizar is. Als je geen lef hebt dan ben je goed de lul hier. Ik zie dan ook om de haverklap autos stilstaand op de weg wachtend op de politie voor het
opmaken van een rapport van het ongeluk (suf deukje meestal, want echt hard wordt er niet gereden). Gelukkig ben ik aan zo’n crash ontsnapt want dat is natuurlijk weer een hoop gezeik.