Day 134 - Tuesday 31st January 2006

Having a week to spend in Panama City I decided to take it easy and see different things slowly so as not to exhaust all my options in a few days.

I decided to head to the old part of the city on Tuesday. I took a bus to the Plaza 5 de Mayo and walked through the pedestrianised shopping district to the end of the penninsula where the district of Casco Viejo stands. From the waters edge I looked back across the bay to where the high rise buildings of the new town stand today.

With the day being overcast it was oppressively warm and I began to sweat bucketloads just walking around. I stepped it down a notch from a walk to a stroll. This didn’t seem to make much difference so I put the brakes on and went into a gentle saunter.

At that pace it was possible to move without dripping sweat so I carried on seeing the churches, plazas and cobbled old streets. However even this gentle saunter became too much. I needed air conditioning, and what better place to get it than somewhere I could learn about the Panama Canal at the same time. Therefore I ducked into the Panana Canal Museum, read the copious amount of information pertaining to said canal, and cooled off at the same time in the air contitioned rooms.

When I had finished in the musuem I braved the heat of the day again, but to my relief the humidity had fallen a little. I wandered around the old town for a little longer, taking some more photos and wandering around the Panamanian equivalent of Downing Street, before catching a bus back to Bella Vista and my hostel.

When I got back I started talking to the owner of the hostel who informed me it was ladies night in town. Fresh from he disappointment of the David ladies night fiasco I decided that it couldnt be as bad so me and a few other guys headed out.

We got to a club named rock Cafe where it was $10 entry and all drinks free but there was a queue a mile long, and it looked a total sausage factory so I sacked it off, went back to a bar I had been in on the Saturday previous and played pool for the night.