Panama
6. The country
Portobello, on the caribbean side: nice old spanish fortified bay with lots of ruins and pirate stories. There’s still gold buried and hidden supposedly !
A little further up the coast there’s Isla Grande, with some small beaches and a strip of cafes and bars and restaurants. It’s a destination for the weekend for many Panamanians. A small boat takes you there for $1. The sand on the beach isn’t that great because it’s rather coarse but perhaps there are better beaches on some other part of the island.
As for the pacific side, there’s a few beaches not far away from Panama city (about an hour orso), such as Playa Coronado (it’s a gated, closed community so you need to know someone in the community or have your reservation in a hotel to get in), Playa Santa Clara (very nice with fine sand, a nice wide beach), …
El Valle is nice too. It has some waterfalls, one of which I saw that was just so polluted it didn’t make any sense to go and visit it (Mosa falls). If you climb (or drive up) one of the hills, the view is spectacular.
Bocas del Toro is a quiet place, with lots of hippies and surfers. There’s isn’t any significant nightlife, although I’m sure you can get drunk and fall in love for one night because there are a few bars that will crank up the music. I had great food at El Limbo. The beaches are great and I can recommend Playa Ranu (really fine sand and beautiful clear water) on Isla Bastimentos (it’ll take $15 by boat to get there). Boca del Drago was rather boring but then I went there on a clouded day. What a mistake ! Anyways, supposedly you can do some nice snorkeling there .. wanna see some fish with stripes flap their tails at you ?
Wherever you go, I really recommend renting a 4×4 because the driving will be so much more enjoyable. I really liked my X-Trail, and perhaps you can understand why from the pict below. Now to rent a 4×4 is another thing because most rental places don’t have any available when you call on friday. Start calling on monday. Prices and quality can vary so do call around. Budget car has shitty service, Thrifty is better (but their X-Trail was way more expensive and in shittier state).
The country is also filled with small townships consisting of shacks and the like that are supposed to be called housing for poor people. On the way to Portobello in fact you’ll see a weird looking area with only small yellow little houses. Some kinda freak put that together. Even though it’s supposed to be improved living I’m very curious if it’s not some other rich guys’ scheme to make more of his heaps of money through rent. I’ve visited a township called Nuevo Vigio, near to lago Alaguela and altho most of the people live without running water and they shit onto an elevated shit heap with a shithouse on top, they often prefer to be there than in the city with all its noise and expenses. Sure as hell, they live quietly but in terms of poverty, life moves by the dollar here if it’s a good day, otherwise it’s more like a 50 cents. Eating meat is a luxury, altho canned meat is quite common. Cooking happens on some pieces of wood and water is dumped right onto the soil to be running downhill. I’m sure all the insects love it (altho I didn’t see any cockroaches !), and indeed one evening a giant spider moved like a shadow over the fridge to who knows where. Upon asking if there were any tarantulas in the area, the answer was that they could perhaps be found in the nearby forest. Supposedly other wildlife like jaguars were also to be found there. Anyways, sofar I haven’t gotten much further than seeing a dead crab or two, some birds here and there and your average fish.
