We stayed in an interesting hostel in Casco Viejo, called Luna's Castle. It's an old mansion that has been converted. Odd little room and passageways every where you looked. Load of backpackers from all over the world! They also have a bar/nightclub in the basement, where Rita and I drank a little too much on our last night there. Getting up the next morning was slow and painful!
We had been told about a beach on the Caribbean side that we "had" to go to. White sand beach, etc, etc. So off we went.
Sounds easy! Those of you who have ever driven in Central America know all about street signs or lack there of! We soon found ourselves in downtown Panama, on a five lane road that quickly went down to three lanes then two. Meanwhile, pedestrians, bicyclists, dogs and burros are crossing the street, and not at the crosswalks. So the cars are trying to get around the buses, the people are walking between the cars and buses, the bikes are everywhere! Sheer chaos! It really is amazing we made it out without being hit or hitting someone! But we did and finally found the road to Colon and beyond.
White sand beaches, here we come, ha! As we got close to Colon, we asked directions to Portabella and after a few gruff replies we found the right road. About an hour later, we arrived. BUT, where are the white sand beaches, the cute little town, just give us something, anything! Not to be. We didn't see anything that made us want to stop. Rita and I looked at one another and said let's get out of here. So, off we went back towards Panama City.
As it was only mid morning we figured we could make it all the way back up to Boquete before dark. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men!
First of all, we had to make it back though Panama City and back over the bridge. Looked fairly easy on the map and we had already been there, so how hard could it be. Pretty damn hard, remember the thing about road signs. Non existent! There we were again on a big road that exited in all directions and not a sign telling us where to go. Arrgh! Finally Rita rolled down the window and asked the man next to us how to get to the Bridge of the Americas. Let me tell you, there are some wonderful people on this earth and we have met a whole lot of them on this trip! The gentleman in the car next to us was going to the bridge and told us to follow him. Not as easy said as done, there were a lot of cars on the road, going every which way. What a nice guy, every time we seemed to lose him, he pulled to the side of the road and waited for us. In no time, we were up and over the bridge! Boquete, here we come!
All seemed to be going well as we drove up the CA1 highway, which really is the only road. We passed through Santiago, stopped for lunch and figured we had enough gas to get us where we wanted to go. About 75 miles passed Santiago, we came to a line of semi trucks lined up along the side of the road. As we started to pass them we realized we couldn't go any further. It seemed that the indigenous tribes from the area were staging a protest, something about timber right. They had completely blockaded the road in four different places and there was no getting around until the road was reopened. We were told that could be anywhere from 4 to 12 hours. We sat there for awhile then decided to turn back. Oh no, we didn't have enough gas to make it back to Santiago and there wasn't much between it and us on the main road. Crap!
We turned off the road to find a small town we had passed on the way down, maybe they had a gas station. Not. Luckily,you can usually find gas in small towns, you just have to locate the right house where they sell it in 5 gallon jugs. After asking around, we found the house and 2 young boys sold use 5 gallons for $20. Not a bad deal! Now we had enough to get us back to Santiago. We stayed at Hotel Hung that night and counted our blessings that we had made it to any hotel in one piece!
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