Feb.3 Back to Panama City
Today is the last day of the 1st leg s we all had to be off the boat by noon; I had tried to book a room on Contadoro Island but there were none available, so I took the ferry back to the mainland with the other guests who would not be returning. I was happy it worked out this way as I didn’t have much time to see the city the few days we were here before.
The ferry doesn’t leave till 3:00 pm so we filled in the time on the beach at the Pointe Hotel having drinks and lunch.

The beach at the Pointe Hotel

The ride over was quick and smooth, Roosevelt was waiting for us at the ferry dock as previously arranged and soon we were at the Grand International Hotel on Via Argentina. It is a newer place and there are plenty of restaurants and bars nearby, many of the staff doesn’t speak English well, but if they don’t understand what you are asking they find a staff member who does. The rooms are nice and clean the beds comfortable and the shower is powerful with plenty of hot water. They run about $75 a night including tax; I used my hotel.com points and got two nights for that price.
Robin was also staying here, so we met for dinner about 8:00 and headed out to find a place to eat. Our first stop was a tapas bar, but when we saw that two beers were nearly $10 we decided to look for a more reasonably priced establishment. We ended up at a Chinese restaurant, and luckily a young man was able to interpret the menu for us. The portions were enormous, much larger than we would expect at home, and we found ourselves buried in bowls and dishes; no wonder the waitress looked amazed when we were ordering. We finished off all the meats but left enough rice to feed a small village.
Feb 4
We had made arrangements with Roosevelt to do the airport transfer, and then I was going to hire the car by the hour to do a tour of parts of the city with longtime Skyelarker, Sarah, who had arrived last night. While waiting for the taxi I got a much needed haircut at a salon across the street; I was a little worried about getting my hair cut on vacation even though my stylist back home can work magic on my mop (she is also quite a little hottie and a good sailor too); I was pleasantly surprised when it came out like the picture on my TWIC that I had showed him before he started.
After leaving the airport we headed over to Amadore where Sarah’s hotel was located and then made our way to Old Town. The streets here are narrow as you would expect in an older city and many of the buildings have seen better days. There are renovations being done on many of them and they are doing their best to replicate the original architecture; it is good to see efforts being made to preserve the past rather than just tearing down these beautiful historic structures to replace them with more modern styles.

Fully rehabilitated buildings mix with those undergoing work and others in disrepair in Old Town

There is an assortment of small bars, cafes and shops along the many streets, one could easily spend a day just window shopping, people watching and noshing their way through the area. We stopped at Diablico, a nicely decorated bar/restaurant for an appetizer assortment and some beers, you can’t miss it just look for the large devil statue out front.
After we had made our way back to the taxi, Roosevelt took us to the fish market, which isn’t far from Old Town. Though it was late in the afternoon there was still a large variety of fish available at very reasonable prices, red snapper $2 a pound, tuna $2.50, lobster tails $8.50; it kills me to visit a place like this not having any cooking facilities available, the next time I visit Panama I plan to stay in a hostel in Old Town and eat fresh fish at least once a day. We were craving ceviche so Roosevelt took us to his favorite stand; they had a huge assortment of types with fish at $1.5 a serving being the cheapest and langoustino at $4.00 the most expensive. We tried a few varieties until we couldn’t eat anymore then went to the row of restaurants located on premises for some cold drinks, meals here are also very reasonable.