Barting it
This is our first big trip of the year with no disrespect meant for Scottsdale and the Savana Banana baseball tour! We, like others were ready for trouble at the TSA crossing but honestly it took literally 5 minutes. It helps that Katie did not have her Swiss Army knife with her this time but still 5 minutes! Paying people may be overrated.
We were denied access to the Polaris Club despite the COPA Airlines website saying we were entitled. I mean we are not entitled but we were supposed to be able to get in. We found a United Club that did let us in and we ended up with a very relaxed wait. The business class seats were great lie-flat things but service was pretty suspect. We were offered water after the first 2 hours and the dinner at around 10:30 that night, several hours into the flight. I watched a couple shows on my iPad and promptly fell asleep. I woke up close to arrival. They had left some water and some vegetable chips for breakfast! No coffee.
A driver picked us up from the airport and drove us into old town, quizzing us about Trump on the way and telling us about Panamanian feelings. Yikes, I hope that doesn’t keep up the whole way. We left our bags at the apartment and walked over to a much needed coffee shop. Set out walking up and down the streets of old town, looking in art shops and reading the menus of the restaurants we passed. We decided to hike up to the top of Mt Ancon for views of the city. Google says 30 min. Reality says hour and a half. You can’t walk the way google says. A policeman at one point asked to help and suggested we not go thru a certain area so we detoured a little. Saw a deer after entering the park (you don’t see that everyday, no wait a minute you do). A sloth sighting farther up the trail made a wonderful welcome.
The views at the top were good but my shirt was completely soaked with sweat. Not that it was a hard walk, just 89 degrees and probably the same in humidity. We hiked back down hungry and thirsty and found ‘Bruma’ in old town where we split fish and chips and had a couple IPA’s (no sharing).
We checked in to our place where we promptly fell asleep for 2 hours. We read a little then out for a spicy margarita at a rooftop bar, SAMA Sky Lounge. Great views of old and new Panama City. We walked around a bit more then found a tapas restaurant for of course potatoes bravas. We also had croquets, Portuguese sausage on a croquet covered with chickpeas aka hummus. We did get an eggplant thing which, as usual for me, did not fail to disappoint.
We were picked up today for a boat ride out on Lake Gatun to several monkey islands. The first had capuchin monkeys (white faced). They came on the boat and promptly grabbed this guys money and ID out his backpack and ran for shore. Luckily with a little fright he dropped it before exiting the boat.
The next island had Titi monkeys, small beautiful monkeys both Katie and I had never seen before. There were also very large iguanas in the bushes.
Another island was home to some Howler monkeys. We pulled up to a tree with very small bats all lined up on the trunk and there were several hawks about.
Finally we saw up close a large container ship that was traversing the canal as Lake Gatun makes up a large portion of the canal. Back home for a small plate of empanadas and now relaxing in America Hotel sipping a Seco/Tonic and a Rum/Coke. Tradition.
