Panama City

After travelling through Central America with the most basic of conditions in the majority of places, the first sight of Panama with its many huge hotels, skyscrapers and shopping malls (the largest in Central America) was rather daunting. I wasn’t sure if we were ready for this, but thankfully, after leaving the shiny bus station, around the next street corner was the usual Centro America squalor of  filthy streets, drunks and burning rubbish! Equally, around the next street corner, was the UNESCO world heritage old town, Casco Viejo, where we were staying. We stayed in an area called Santa Ana, that sits directly between the local community and the much more upmarket tourist area filled with boutique shops, art galleries, museums, restaurants, cafes, and rooftop bars, a stark contrast between the local area where the locals were scraping just enough money together for a bowl of rice and beans, and perhaps  a little cervesa!  

Our few days here were spent wandering the streets of the old town, visiting one of the cities national parks, a trip to the shopping mall (we all hate shopping 😳) and generally relaxing and restoring our energy before our final stint in Peru. For me, there  is no better time of the day to capture the ❤️ of a place  than first thing in the morning, so grabbing a cuppa and sitting in a little Fonda, watching the world go by was a perfect start, and very sacred time of the day before the hectics woke up!! This area certainly held the typical  Central American vibe, with the central square filled with life and activity by 7am, always with plenty to look at, and usually involving a few police cars and the odd truncheon! 

When visiting Panama, a trip would not be complete without a visit to the Panama Canal visitor centre! Of course the boys were initially a little reluctant…’Oh no, not  another boring museum where Dad will read every plaque for hours on end’ but, this museum was a little different as there were no boring plaques, just an IMAX film about the jaw dropping history of Panamá the Canal and the human sacrifice it took to achieve this engineering marvel.

The boys certainly had a great real-life geography and history lesson today, with a look at several huge ships moving through the canal.