Panama City

Visiting Panama City was only for a day, as the next morning we were already heading to Jamaica. Nevertheless, we were able to get a good insight.

Panama City is the capital of Panama and with about 800,000 inhabitants, it is the largest city in the country. It is located in the south on the Pacific coast and directly east of the Panama Canal. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to visit it. The modern city is the economic, political, tourist and cultural center of the country. In economic terms, it is a global city.

Long story short. For us, the city was pure chaos. Since we didn't want to take a $30 taxi from the airport to the city to our homestay, we tried to get there by bus and train. As we had to realize afterwards, this route would have been very easy to cover. However, when you get a different and also wrong information from every person, such a tour becomes an odyssey. The false statements haunted us all day long. Somehow, nobody really had a clue. However, the highlight was a visit to the post office, where we wanted to send a package to Germany. Unfriendly and unmotivated employees, after waiting for minutes on end and in response to the question of how long they would be open, replied that it was already too late to send a package. After further questioning about the opening hours, they cleverly countered with the question, 'Where is your hotel?' There was no connection between our place of residence and the opening hours of this branch, but the common postal employee seems to master various forms of work avoidance and customer confusion. Of course, the ladies were busy enough with the other two customers and constantly filing their nails. So, it was not to be expected that we would receive an answer after spending a few minutes enjoying ourselves on a park bench, which served as a seating area for customers. We never received an answer to our question about the opening hours. Well, at least the decision of whether to send a package to Germany or not was taken off our hands.

In the evening, we set off into the city and enjoyed the view of the modern skyline of Panama from the viewpoint. It was surreal that on the opposite side, there was a whole quarter of colonial-style houses, where you felt transported back centuries while walking through it. The old city area, 'Panamá la Vieja', is preserved as a ruin site and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. In addition to the central plaza with the cathedral, town hall, and bishop's palace, several monasteries, as well as the hospital and a few residential buildings of the upper class, are preserved.

At the end of the day, we enjoyed a cocktail on the roof of a bar in the old town, with good music and a phenomenal view of the old town, the skyline, and the Pacific.

Pura Vida!