It felt good to get back into a city. I missed the abundance of different stimuli on the trip so far and so it felt great to walk through the crowded streets of Panama City at night on our way to the hostel. So many colours, lights, sounds and smells. Having grown up in Cairo it all felt very familiar and I felt at home again as I shared the streets with cars, bikes, stray dogs and other pedestrians, who only moved out of the way when a car honked.

Luna’s Castle seemed to be the hostel everyone stayed at and so did we. It was actually very nice, had a ping pong table, a huge kitchen and pancake breakfast, which most hostels in Panama seemed to have. It’s located in the Casco Viejo neighborhood (Casco), which means the old walled city as it was downtown in the past, where the upper class people lived and the important churches were located.

We spent most days just walking through Casco’s streets and the main markets also in this area, which is on the border of a more dangerous area. Several security guards warned us whenever we started to wander where we were better off not being. On the walking tour of the area we learned about the tide around Casco, the fires that influenced it’s demographics throughout history and their carneval parade tradition of spraying people with huge firetruck water hoses!

Foodwise, we tried some of the best street food so far. Very tender meat skewers, cold sugar cane juice and coconut water were the hit!

The local party scene was also quite special. We met a Panamanian guy, who took us to a party at a local club where the DJ kept changing songs every 20-30 seconds and adding some weird announcements or advertisements in between. That didnt seem to bother the locals much, who also had a very special style of dancing, with the guys just standing there behind the girls and the girls dancing for them. To be fair some of them were holding hands :-p

When they weren’t partying, a lot of locals were hanging out in the parks on the waterfront overlooking the modern side of Panama overlooking the impressive skyline, which even includes a Trump tower.

Another highlight was the reunion we had with some of the people from the volcano hike in Bouquete and from Santa Catalina, who all ended up at the same hostel for a few hours. Long enough to whip a quick meal together with some delicious fresh ceviche (kind of a seafood salad) from the fish market.

Finally, I couldn’t be in Panama City and not go see the Canal, especially being from Egypt, home of the Suez Canal (which I have never seen either and wonder why it’s not pimped out for tourism as a day trip from Cairo!!).

It was actually much more impressive and interesting than I expected. We were very lucky since there was a huge cruise liner coming in to the canal as we arrived. So we didnt have to wait long to see the action. The canal is basically made up of two sets of 3 liftlocks. Three in the atlantic ocean side and three at the pacific side. So the ship basically goes into a tank, which is either filled with water or drained to match the water level of the next section on the canal. It takes around 8-10 hours to go through and obviously the ships pay fees to go through but not just ships.There was a guy who decided to swim all the way through the canal and he had to pay a 36 cent fee!

All in all, I enjoyed my time in Panama, mainly because I had great company along the way. There are not many large historical ruins or civilization sites to be seen here as in other latin countries but they have great nature and several indigenous people to discover. For example the people living in a town called Colon, close to Panama City, speak english as well apparently. They were also the ones who completed digging the Panama Canal. After the French and Americans tried and failed, even after bringing in workers all the way from China, due to Malaria killing a lot of the workers. Thats also why we found obvious chinese presence, especially in the supermarket and trade fields. Most of the bigger supermarkets on Bocas del Torro were run by chinese families for example.

Originally I had planned to take a sailboat from Panama for a 5 day trip over the San Blas islands to get to Colombia, but it was just too expensive for this trip. So I decided just to fly, this time to Pablo Escobar’s hometown: Medellin.

Casco’s famous church

Some impressions of Casco’s buildings, run down but still beautiful in their own way.

Panama’s growing skyline.

A Panama hat street seller waits for business.

Our tour guide of Casco. She was very relaxed but self conscious about her language skills.

All of a sudden, the water was gone!

There are several cool graffiti walls and murals here in Casco.

Asking the government to respect the UNESCO conventions.

Life still goes on as usual in these beautiful, old run down buildings.

Although traffic does tend to get bad during the week but the streets are well organized.

The boats taking a Siesta outside the fish market.

More beautiful architecture.

The famous Coca Cola cafe, were you can still get a good feel of local food and vibes at a reasonable quality and price.

This was some of the most tender and tastiest meat I have ever eaten in my life! We went back there a few times 😉

What better way to cool down from the heat than a freshly pressed cup of sugarcane juice. This was the press they used on a cart, which they moved around to different spots during the day.

I present to you; the Panama Canal.

This was the huge Cruise Ship just coming in. You can see the small trains guiding it into the water tank via cables.

The ships fits perfectly in the tank thanks to the very expensive trains. Notice the difference in water level between the two tanks.

Once the ship is in, the tank is closed behind the ship and the tank is filled with water. Once the water level is equal in both tanks, the tank is opened (as you see here) so the ship can continue through.

I was just trying to get artistic but I guess it looks more catastrophic than artistic.

This was one of the many different tools they used to help them dig. the black buckets would rotate to dig below the ship and bring the dirt up and dump it on the ship.

Here you can see the different stage of the journey from one ocean to the other.

This was a really cool simulation room in the museum to give you a feeling of what a ship captain sees as he goes through the canal. Really well done!