Sunday, August 13th
This morning we woke up in the small town of San Isidro El General after a monster drive through the Mountain of Death last night. The town was actually very cool and we stayed in a pretty happening place. At least there were lots of little discos and bars near our hotel. We had come to this town last night and risking the dangerous drive because going straight from San Jose to Panama City would have been impossible in a single day. So we decided to use San Isidro as a staging place.
We started the drive rather early and ontime. We were on the road around 5:15AM and the sun was already coming out. Alexey was the driver for this monster leg and Greg was his copilot. I had the day off so I quickly resumed sleeping using the back seat and the two ultra comfortable pillows that I brought from Boston. After lots of driving through awesome scenery of green mountains and valleys we arrived to the border with Panama after 9:15AM. Alexey ran over some animals and killed two birds in the process of getting here. He must be feeling awesul now!
We had to cancel our temporary driving permit with Costa Rica but being Sunday noone was there. A guy collected the paper and said it was ok for us to go. I hope this does not come back to bite us in the future, perhaps in the form of a $200 fine. In any case, we finished all the Costa Rican papers quickly. Next, Panama imigration and customs. I must say that it was pretty easy to cross and we only had to bat off a kid and a big guy who wanted to charge us some money for helping us with the process. We know how these things work now and we just ignore them. It was fairly easy after that. Rosinante got a fresh fumigation bath before entering Panamanian territory so as to not spread Costa Rican diseases and we were on our way.
The road was terrific! Two lane hiway for most of the way and Alexey was finally doing what he does best, scarying the heck out of the passengers. But we arrived into David safely. David is the second largest city of Panama and we decided to stop here to eat breakfast-lunch and to check email to call Julissa´s father, Don Gregorio to announce our arrival. We did just that and agreed on a rendevouz at the capital. Scored some cheap Panamanian food at an eating outlet nearby, got a fresh load of greens off the ATM, and got back on the road.
After a small stretch of single lane road (Alexey reports since I was sleeping in the back) the road becomes the same wonderful 2-lane autobahn as before. We are looking for a road side fruit stand but just now that we desperately want it, it is no where to be seen. We settled for some sweets still in the province of Chiriqui which fail to please the delicate and refined American palads of Greg and Alexey. I happily munch on the sweets and we move on.
Arriving into Panama we decide to stop at the Panama Canal (which here is only the Canal) since it is still daylight, it is open until 5PM and Greg must leave tomorrow and probably won´t get a chance to see it. It was awesome to see these HUGE buildings moving through the canal and the locks at a slowwwwwwww pace. Really a great piece of engineering. You could see Greg and Alexey had a few tears gathering around their eyes.
At this point I took over the driving duties since Alexey was a bit tired from the long distance driving. It was about 5:30PM and we needed to head over to the Gas station across from Panama University to meet Don Gregorio. We passed through the city and suddenly right in front of our eyes was the beautiful skyline of Panama City. Really nothing similar to what we had seen in earlier places. It was reminiscent of Miami more than anywhere in Central America. The sea was right next to all the buildings.
Once we got to the gas station, we called Don Gregorio and he met us there in 10 minutes. By now, we had bought a few snacks at the On The Run store at the station and Greg had disposed of his stinky tennis shoes. I am glad Alexey realized that Greg´s shoes were stinking up the whole car!! See, after rafting all of our sneakers were wet and we had left them to dry at the rear of the car when driving. However, sometimes the smell was unbearable! In any case, some guy at the gas station asked for Greg´s shoes and took them away.
Don Gregorio and his family (thanks Julissa for helping us once again) are awesome! We got there and met Julissa´s entire family. Her nieces Andrea and Chloe are the cutest kids ever. We had an immense dinner (after taking showers of course) which consisted of prawns, plantains, sausage, etc.. etc.. reeeaaaallyyyy good stuff!. Next we settled down and we went with the whole family in two cars to drive the whole city. The thing is that Greg is leaving tomorrow and may not get the chance to see much so at least this will be remembered of Panama City. We visited the old town, Panama viejo, etc.. Really new stuff Miami style and really old stuff as well.
We were all by now incredibly tired and could not hold our eyes open. I think Don Gregorio noticed this and took us back home. There we all said our prayers and crashed in our own room!! Really, Julissa´s family has treated us like kings. Tomorrow will be Greg´s good bye and the beginning of the end for the VW diaries. Good night!
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