Day 33: Panama City

At 1:00 pm yesterday, Susanna and I hopped on board a bus with our new friend Taka, from Japan. We had originally intended to get an international bus direct to Panama City, but they were all full until the weekend, so we decided to jump on a bus to the border and take our chances. Don't get me wrong, San Jose has some attractive features, and I'm sure there are plenty of lovely things about Costa Rica, but it's to touristy to really serve our needs. I thought we would spend at least one day there and was looking forward to getting some laundry done, maybe getting a haircut, possibly seeing some sort of touristy type thing, but things didn't work out that way, and instead we were on a more-comfortable-than-average, but packed to the brim, chicken bus to the border. I had a seat, luckily, but it was at the very very front of the bus and I had very little leg room for the 8 hour ride. When I got out my legs were killing me. I felt bad for Taka who is quite a bit taller than me.

As we approached the border, we asked the driver's assistant (they all have assistants in Central America--and it's totally necessary too, because things tend to get hectic and confusing) what the chance of finding a bus would be at 9:30 pm, when we arrived. It didn't seem like our chances were all too hot.

Somehow, they managed to flag down the bus in front of us to stop, and the guy got out and talked to them, then came running back. He said that the other driver agreed to take us on their bus at the other side of the border. At the border, the level of bureaucracy was absurd, going to this desk, and then the other desk, and filling out this form, and then going back to the other desk, then getting your bagged search and going back to another desk. Very strange. and then, after taking our luggage, the new bus driver told us to wait outside on the other side of the border. We went along with it, but we were ready to jump in front of the bus if it seemed like they would try any funny business.

Luckily it all worked out. The 10 hour ride from the border to Panama City went by incredibly fast. I fell asleep to some crappy U.S. indie gangsta movie called....can't remember right now, something like "Absolute Takedown"...anyways, it was a really corny name and it was dubbed really badly so the voices didn't match the lip movement. How did they get that movie in the first place? Anyways, I was watching that movie, and the next thing I know I woke up in Panama City. Amazing!

The bus terminal in Panama City is like being in a nice European airport. It's so clean and modern and nice. We raced through Costa Rica just to escape this kind of thing, but I have to admit, I like it. Panama City is by far the most westernized city I've seen on this trip. It reminds me of being in the U.S.

After getting a couple rooms at Hotel Centroamerica and buying our tickets to Venezuela (we leave on the 6th), Susanna and I went to check out the canal. I knew it would be a disappointment, but seriously, how could we go to Panama and not see the Panama Canal? I'll put up some pictures when I get a chance.

I don't know how they manage to generate such a tourist frenzy over such a mundane and rather boring thing. It's like an elephantine version of the lock and dams along the Mississippi river, and the whole process is painstakingly slow. You can go see for yourself if you are reading this in Minnesota. The people working on the boats must look back at all the tourists and think that they are absolutely nuts for just standing around watching and taking pictures of a boat going really slow. And of course, the whole tourist experience is about all the great positive things about the canal, and how great the U.S. is, and about how all the deaths in the making of the canal were disease related. Please. As if that is some kind of excuse/even true. It also implies that the politics of the canal were always simple, easy, and clean, without any description of the political turmoil this thing has caused, not to mention that Nicaragua is in fact a much more logical place to put such a canal. Omar Torrijos? Not mentioned. Manuel Noriega? Not a word.

The U.S. influence on Panama is blatantly obvious, and clearly a lot of things are for the better for it, but I have no doubt, like in San Salvador, that we will soon find the dirty side of things. All of this glamor and glitz does not come without a cost.