Halloween in Panama City!

Panama Canal

We finally docked in Panama and made our way to Panama City. If a few days on choppy waters wasn’t enough, the Panamanian taxi drivers will make sure you are not robbed of your chance to feel nauseous. Our driver sped around sharp turns and blind curves for about two hours, until we reached our Luna’s Castle Hostel in Casco Viejo. Thankful to be on land with no plans of returning to boat or taxi for a while, we checked in and prepared for the Halloween festivities. Luna’s Castle is a massive hostel that doubles as a night club. As you can imagine, you don’t check into Luna’s for a relaxing city getaway or with any intentions of getting a good nights sleep. We quickly got in touch with my friend Mara and her boyfriend Justin, our tour guides for the next few days. Mara and Justin moved to Panama City about a year and a half ago and started up a company called Panama Lens. Their business focuses on real estate around the Panama City area, and gives detailed and professional video tours of new developments and old properties for sale. Anyways, we met up with them and they took us on a walking tour of Casco. We saw the waterfront, many Kuna ladies selling various artisan goods, and tons of vacant buildings that were all for sale. We also stopped at a cute little smoothie place right below their awesome apartment. After our tour, they informed us that they were going to rest up and prepare for Halloween. We made plans with them to meet up after dinner for a party at their apartment followed by some bar hopping in the city. Trev and I returned to the hostel, made way too much pasta, and frantically drank coffee to try and energize after four nights of very limited sleep on Fritz’s boat. After our caffeine fix we walked over to Mara’s house. Upon arrival we noticed that we were VERY unprepared for the night’s events. Mara and Justin quickly pulled out some of their old Halloween costumes and clothes and we threw together our costumes. Mara’s roommate Diane loaned me her awesome Robbin Hood costume while Trevor threw something together that came out looking like a white trash bearded transvestite. But, everything worked out and once we were in costume the booze started pouring. Before we knew it we were partying with gringos from all over the US. This gringo-fest went on until we ran out of drinks. Once this occurred we headed out to the streets of Casco Viejo for a good ol’ fashioned Panamanian Halloween. We went to a few small bars and a few garages that we turned into dance parties. Mara and Justin seemed to know every club owner or bar tender in town so the drinks were cheap and plentiful. After a few hours of this we all ended up back at Relic, the dance club connected to our hostel. There we ordered more drinks and set up at a table near the bar. We were even lucky enough to share some drinks with Jaime Aleman, who was kind enough to grace us with his presence. We all caught up and reminisced about our travels from three years earlier. Both Mara and Jaime are friends I met in 2007 on a summer voyage of Semester At Sea. After a sufficient amount of alcohol had been consumed, and a lot of ludicrous dance parties, we eventually all made our ways back to our perspective beds and slept.

The next morning we woke up in pain and enjoyed some free coffee, bananas, and pancakes provided by the hostel. Due to the very nature of the hostel, everyone had partied late into the night and everyone was paying for it today. We sat at a very long table and slowly ate our meal surrounded by our many hostel mates who had suffered the same fate. However, after breakfast we made our way back to Mara and Justin’s house to see what they had on the agenda for today. They were in similar shape, and moving very slowly. But Mara had some great news. Instead of dragging us to some cultural museums or taking us on a historical tour of the newly announced UNESCO World Heritage Site, she told us that we were going to sneak into a fancy hotel in the city and sit by a pool. Trev and I could not have been happier by this news.  We got in a cab and made our way to Hotel Riu. We parked on some lawn chairs and ordered some pretty good poolside food from the bar. After consuming another meal, our friends insisted that we start the day early and begin ordering some beers to postpone the hangover. We happily abided. After a little while, it became obvious to security that we were not exactly “guests” of the snazzy hotel. They were not happy that we had snuck in, and told us that they were going to charge us 27 bucks to use the pool. We said no. In response, they told us that we could in fact stay there, but that we would no longer be able to use the pool. We were however, allowed to continue ordering drinks. We stayed there for a few more hours and racked up the bar tab. Eventually, as it always does during the rainy season in Central America, it began to rain. We quickly moved under cover for a while, but then decided to head back to Casco for Halloween night. Instead of staying at our loud hostel, Mara and Justin offered us a spare bedroom in their house. We happily agreed. We went over there with all the best intentions of going out for Halloween Round 2, but we unanimously came to the decision that none of us had the energy for that. We ended up ordering pizza and making drinks at Mara’s house.

Sloth!

The next morning Mara and Justin were off to the beach to house-sit, so we said our goodbyes and thank you’s. We then went to the bus station and booked an overnight bus to Bocas Del Toro. After this we discovered that we had about 10 hours to kill before yet another terrible overnight bus. Being the sophisticated and cultured beings that we are, we decided to check out the Panama Canal. We got there. Looked at the canal. Saw a boat go through it. Took some photos and left. We then went out to lunch with Mara’s roommates Alex and Diane at a nice hotel in town. Still paying for our two nights of drinking, we went back to their place and caught up on the newest episodes of Dexter and Weeds. After half a day of sitting on the couch, Alex and Diane drove us to a Mexican restaurant downtown for dinner. After dinner we said goodbye to our second set of tour guides, and went to the bus station. At 9:30 we boarded the most uncomfortable long distance bus of the trip. After tossing and turning until 8am, we arrived in Bocas del Toro and checked into Mondu Taitu, a hostel owned by the same guys as Luna’s Castle. We got our room, that we’re pretty sure used to be a small shed, and got settled. We then got on a bus to the other side of Isla Colon to go to a beach called Bocas del Drago. We walked along the beach for a while until we came to a little cove called Playa Estrella (Star Beach). It gets its name by the huge starfish that live there. We snorkled, played with starfish the size of our heads, and then relaxed on the beach for a few hours. Trev read his book and I passed out. We then spent the rest of the day exploring Bocas. Oh, I forgot to mention that a little restaurant near the hostel served BAGLES! This was a very exciting discovery. That night we went out to dinner at a place called Café Om for some awesome Indian food. We then chilled at the hostel bar and went to sleep in our shed room. The few days we took a water taxi to Red Frog Beach and explored more of what this Caribbean island had to offer. We rented bikes one morning and attempted to go to some bat caves 8km down the road. However, we got there and realized that we had no flashlights. We walked back to the road and asked a local woman if she had one we could borrow. She did! She nicely gave us her flashlight and we headed back to the caverns. We were there for a while, but we were really turned off by the huge spiders that were crawling all over the walls. We made it to the first cavern and then turned around. Cave spiders are really scary. That evening we took a boat taxi over to a neighboring island and met up with our friends Ryan and Claudio from the catamaran. We hung out over there, had some beers, and watched the tons of rich local Panamanians celebrate their Independence Day. Panamanians know how to party. The next day we got on a water taxi that took us to a bus that took us to the boarder where we walked across a railroad bridge to Costa Rica, got our passports stamped, got in another bus and made it to Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica.