It was good to see a bit of the country and we did drive over the Panama Canal twice.
That was cool.
We flew from Caracas to Panama City. When I planned it it thought, "Great, its only a 2 hour flight, we will be in and out of there in no time. Well, as they say, the best laid plans......
We were scheduled to leave on Friday at 4:15 pm from the Maquitiua Airport, which, in no traffic, takes about 45 minutes to get there. I decided to pull the kids out of school at noon to have plenty of time to fight the usual traffic at that time of day, and get to the airport within the recommended 2 hour early travel window for international flights.
Surprise. There was a Chavista march scheduled to leave from the Cubo Negro where Chris works and march down to the presidential palace. Our original plan was for me and the kids to leave school and then meet Chris at the office and all of us go together. The crowds from the demonstration were huge and it was considered to be a little dangerous for us to travel down there. We decided for Chris to come to school to meet us. Getting out of the Cubo was a struggle due to the marching protesters, then it turns out that the exit for the kids school was blocked and they were having to detour all over the place. What should have taken 10 minutes was looking like it might take a couple of hours, so we decided to bail on meeting up and take separate cars to the airport.
The march happened to be on the other side of the river from where we were in Caracas, and I valiantly tried to tear my kids away from their IPods so witness this historic event, but they just were not interested. Once out past the march, the traffic lessened, and we got to the airport at about 1:45.
We easily checked in and then went into the line for passport control. It was jam packed with people and I think the lines were worse than at Christmas (which is hard to do). It took over an hour to get through the passport line and finally we were at the gate. We boarded at the right time, but sat on the runway for an hour before takeoff.
Finally at 5:15 the plane took off. We landed at around 7:30 and looked around for a man holding the Decameron sign. We found him easily and he took us to a desk where we had to pay $48 a person for the bus to take us to the airport. It seems that the resort is about 115 km away from Panama City...... Oh, and what usually takes 90 minutes, might take longer because it IS Carnival, and the traffic is very bad.
We loaded up the kids on the bus (small, nice, and air conditioned) and took off for our resort. It was night time and we did not get to see much of the city. We rolled over the canal and got a glimpse of the famous bridge that spans it. After 2.5 hours, we finally arrived. It was about 10:00.
The lobby was nice, and the place was HUGE... It was sprawling, and billed itself as an eco-resort. Our building was the very last one on the end, but there were so many pools and restaurants that we never felt like we were too far away from anyone. The restaurant/buffets closed at 10:30 so we threw our stuff in the room and ran down to the buffet. The buffets were OK. I mean, I have had buffets at the Galvez, and at the Plaza so those are my gold standards. These were somewhere between those and Golden Corral. They also cater to a lot of different cultures. Our hotel was thick with Europeans and wealthy South Americans, and there were a ton of French Canadians.
The resort had 49 buildings to house people in and sprawled out over about a mile of beach. It was beautifully landscaped and was built into a hillside so there were tons of steps everywhere. There were 8 pools lining the beach and each one had some type of entertainment. The one closest to us had a man who played karaoke flute (like the Zamfir flute) and kept trying to sell us CD's. He played for 3 - 4 hours every afternoon. He was dressed like an American Indian and hung up a blanket of Sitting Bull in front of his table/stage. I am no historian, but I am pretty sure that Sitting Bull never made it that far south?
The next pool had the "activities team" running conga lines and shooting the tourists with water guns, all while playing nonstop pulsating latin american beats.
On the last day we found the pool that played, "Shake It Like a Pom-Pom" over and over again, so we hung out there on the last day.
To sum things up, it was like being on a big Carnival Cruise ship, just stuck on land.... The food was about the same, the people were definitely the same, we had fun, but don't want to go back. Our plane left Panama at 11:45, so they made us take the 5:30 am bus out of the resort to get to the airport by 8:00. Unfortunately, it was again dark for most of our drive through Panama and we did not get to see much of the country.
I think we are just an EcoLodge, adventure tour kind of family. Below is a video compilation of our recent trips to the beach. Next stop, the Galapagos Islands.
Here is the link to You Tube:
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