The next stop, Bocas del Toro province, will be totally different from Panama City. It is located next to Costa Rican border on the side of the Caribbean Sea. The area comprises many islands off coast and mainland with beautiful rainforests.
We’ll get there tomorrow morning by Air Panama departing from Albrook, Panama City. The plane lands on the island of Colón which is the main island of the province. Our resort will be on the island next to Colón named Bastimento.
Panama Canal with its history was impressive. At Miraflores Locks we saw one oil tanker advancing towards the Pacific Ocean.
After the Canal we took a bus and a metro to 5 de mayo and then hiked to Casco Viejo for tacos. Tacos la Neta’s tacos, super buenos!
City centre’s towers from Casco Viejo.
We visited Taboga island with this Redcat catamaran. The trip was a great fun and relaxed, away from Panama City’s hectic life. 👌🏽💯
A few shots from the island: Continue reading
31-hour-lasting-day today with the lag, Helsinki +7hrs. Lufthansa served well and was in time.
Local busses are a bit random here and there are no info on them, nada. So had to ask help from a local guy who just told: “es que, solamente se tiene que saber”. Meaning that you just have to know which bus to hop on. There are no timetables at stops nor destination signs on busses. The guy pointed the right bus stop and chicken bus ($1.25/person from Tocumen airport to City) for us and we got into the town.
Edit: after spending a few days in the city and getting used to everything including the public transportation services. Which is kind of divided in two, the old chicken buses and famous El Diablo Rojo etc. and the new MetroBus system. With the old I refer to my earlier story above. The new one is quite modern like we Europeans are used to. The metro with its connecting bus routes was inaugurated in 2014. Actually the metro line is just as straight as in Helsinki before 1998 – one line. But with the connecting busses the system is quite good and clear. There’s basically only one big minus there, the MetroBus card which you cannot buy from all the stations. We got an info from a local guy that the only place to get it is from the Southern end station Albrook. But noticed later at station La Gran Estación it is possible to buy one. The card costs $2 + the balance you want to buy on it (in downtown area one trip is $0.25). Also at least two (maybe more) people may use the same card so there’s no need for multiple cards if you have company.
Traveling from Tocumen to Panama City there are basically two reasonable ways to do it excluding the $45 taxi ride. As you cannot buy the MetroBus card from the airport (atm as I know) the first choice is to take a taxi to La Gran Estación (wouldn’t pay more that $10) and from there buy the card and take a metro to downtown. The second choice is to walk around half a mile to the bus stop and take a chicken bus straight to downtown (nothing is organized in Panama so ask locals). We did chicken bus but later on took a taxi to Albrook for the MetroBus card.
Quick pitstop at Frankfurt…
Polar night show no mercy for people in the North so Spain before the escape for golf and receiving some sun light wasn’t a bad idea. 16°C with sun is not bad compared to…
Polar Night Escape 