 Welcome to Blue Ocean Studios  Around the World
We caught a $8 cab to the airport, checked in and had lunch just in time to get on our Copa Airlines flight to Panama City. The airport in Panama City was really crowded and there was about 3 plane fulls of people surrouning the one baggage carousel as we waited for Mario's bag to come out. Luckily we're 3/3 for checking bags so far. Copa makes you check anything over 10kg or about 25lbs - my bag is about 9.5kg but Mario's is 14kg (these are both with our day bags already taken out).
Just when things seemed to be at their low point of the night, our cabbie took a few turns and all of a sudden we are in the middle of one of the worst looking barrios I think I have ever seen. The apartments looked decrepit and barely livable, there were people all over the streets not doing much of anything, bonfires on the side of the road, and not much light. For some reason, the cab driver said we couldn't use his trunk for our bags (despite the fact he opened and closed his trunk?), so we have full bags sitting on top of us in the back seat, begging for anyone on the street to stop the car and peruse what we have. About then I am just wondering if this cab driver is going to take us somewhere and kill us and my eyes are just about popping out of my head when we finally make a few more turns and the streets begin to look a little better. We arrived at the Costa Inn and so far have not got a great impression of Panama City, but we are just glad to be there. After looking at a very small and dark $33 room, we decided to opt for the much larger $44 double room (suite?) instead. At least we have free internet, A/C and hopefully (keep your fingers crossed!!) hot water :) Wouldn't it be nice to get the double sized room/suite for $11 more in the US :).
We spent a bit of time on the internet roughly planning our days in Panama - but we're going play it by ear for the most part :). View Panama City Photo Gallery Day 13 - Managua and Wrapping up Nicaragua < | Index | Photo Galleries | > Comments © 2007 Blue Ocean Studios, LTD. All rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Services | About | Contact Prints | Return Policy | View Cart World Travel Galleries | World Travel Blog | Links |
Last night was another restless night, which consisted of Mario repeatedly getting up to try to get the air conditioner to work better. It seemes there were no labels on any of the buttons and so he tried a bunch of different combinations before he finally found the one that would keep the air relatively cool. We had our inclusive breakfast down in the lobby and then went back up to the room to use our free internet - Mario added the Comments section to our website and he spent some time testing that out and getting it to work. During breakfast, Mario had taken a few pictures around the hotel inside and out front, so we decided to try to sell them in exchange for our room rate. Mario spent a little time fixing them up in Photoshop and went downstairs to "sell". He was gone about 30 minutes and after proving to them that he really was a photographer and had other great shots from around Guatemala and Nicaragua, the owner decided to go for it! He burned them onto a CD and we got our room for free (about a $60 value after taxes - not bad!). So, now our idea is we should try to sell to at least one place in each country we go to and that way we'll be able to say Blue Ocean Studios has sold pictures in 28 countries! :) 
We grabbed a taxi outside and settled on $15 with the driver, which we thought was a good deal. Come to find out, he didn't understand the name of the place we were going to (or didn't want to - because it was clear he was trying to sell us on another hotel he probably gets commission on). We cleared up the miscommunication and he told us it would be $25 instead, because our hotel is about 20 minutes more. At this point, being already in the car and on our way, there was not much we could do, and we had heard $25 for prices, so we said OK. We arrived at the Country Inn which is located on the causeway right next to the entrance to the Panama Canal, only to discover they were completely full and didn't even have any rooms until Friday :( Our cab was gone. We called our 2nd choice hotel, Hotel Costa Inn, and they had a room for $33, so we called another cab (only $3 this time) and were on our way. 
We got a small map from the lobby that had a bunch of restaurants on it, called a cab and went to "The Wine Bar" restaurant. Can't tell you how hard it is to confer that the name of the restaurant you're going to is actually in English and if you try to translate it, you're just making it worse! Well - we got there via a $2 cab. We had a nice meal, and afterwards decided to stop by a casino (lots of casinos in this city). Mario won $20 in blackjack and we left feeling as though we are doing pretty good on our entertainment budget to actually be making money! We hunted down some water, which was really tough and finally had to settle for sparkling water and some gatorade. It seems no one here has any regular bottled water.