pieces of panama picture post
I know i've been gone for a while. It turns out that going to school 5 days a week, even for "just" 4 hours a day, completely exhausts me. It feels exactly like work. On top of that, because i was staying in a homestay for two weeks, i felt really self-conscious and awkward whenever i was "home", because i didn't know if/when the family would come home, i didn't want to bother them, i didn't want to be a disturbance, and so on, so i haven't really been able to relax after work either. Yesterday i moved back into a hotel, and although the work still saps 95% of my energy, at least when i get "home" i feel like i can properly relax and use the rest of my 5%. So here i am, about to post some pictures of Panama. I've decided to bundle all my Panama City pictures together, and those will come in a future post. So this one is just from the journey Bocas del Toro back to Panama, the week of December 6.
The opening picture is one of those tourist brochure type photos of Bocas del Toro. It features the bike that i rented for the day and a shot of the east coast of the Isla Colón - the coast that faces into the Caribbean Sea. It was fairly early in the morning at this point, and the weather was looking like it'd rain pretty hard, so the beach was deserted. (By lunchtime hungover tourists started showing up.)
A little further along, i strung up the hammock that i bought in Panama City. Sadly, this is the only time i have been able to hang my hammock so far, because despite the fact this country is full of jungle, most of the towns don't have much in the way of parks or beaches where there are enough trees around to be able to swing in peace.
Hammock selfie! I felt like i was inside a big purple banana.
The west side of Isla Colón faces inland, and the waves are much less aggressive. It's the side of the island where people go to sit on the beach, as opposed to the side where people go to surf.
One more brochure shot of Bocas del Toro - this is from a beach that is lined with bars inside little huts. The only ways to get to the beach are water taxi, sailing your own boat there, or hiking through some waterfront jungle where you need to wade through a few sections. Despite the "remoteness", this beach was packed with tourists in various stages of drunkenness.
The next photo shows the other side of life in Bocas del Toro, and that's the tourist developments. This is a photo of a new, under-construction community of bland holiday homes that currently looks a bit like a prison camp. A massive section of jungle was steamrolled flat to build the community, and i suspect most of the property owners will be expats and rich folks from the city.
Back in Bocas Town, here is a photo from one of the most famous bars - it's one of many that has a floating deck where you can dance and watch the water taxis and cruisers sail around. Out of frame, there was a yacht moored on the deck behind the DJ booth.
Okay, that's enough of that. I pretty much hated Bocas, so i'm surprised i managed to get so many decent photos of the place. Here is the view from the roro ferry heading back to the mainland.
When i got to the mainland i jumped in a little minibus to take me over the mountains to David. This is a sneaky shot taken from inside the minibus looking at a banana truck that was puttering up the mountain even slower than we were, much to the annoyance of our driver.
Taking a bit of inspiration from the wonderful street photography of olamina, i tried to capture a few photos of street life in David. I always feel terribly embarrassed taking photos of people, which is why the vast majority of the photos i share here don't have anyone in them. But in David i took a bunch of "shoot from the hip" shots, most of which didn't come out due to lack of focus or useless angles. This one shows a bit of what the Panama street life feels like.
Something else worth noting about the street life in Panama is that pay phones still exist, and people still use them. I'm pretty certain that most people have smartphones, but i wonder if perhaps they only use them for internet? My prepaid SIM, for example, only has data, and i have no interest in adding credit to make phone calls. But that might just be my privilege showing, perhaps there really are a lot of people in the city who don't have a mobile phone.
Selfie in the David town square. It's worth noting that masks are still mandatory everywhere in Panama - inside and outside - unless you are eating. On the metro in Panama City you also have to wear a plastic face shield on top of the mask. Schools are still closed, and have been closed for almost 2 years, which is driving parents absolutely crazy. Still, the vaccination rate - like most of Latin America - is high, and the infection rate is relatively low. They're also offering free vaccinations to all tourists and travelers who are entering the country, which unfortunately i didn't take advantage of when i crossed the border, because now i am unboosted and there's no easy way for me to get the third shot. On the other hand, i'd rather that third shot go to countries with much lower vaccination rates, since they're the ones who need it most. We're only going to get more variants if developed countries continue to hoard the vaccines.
I liked this photo because it shows you just how common bananas (and plantains) are in Panama. Massive bunch of bananas, yeah it's just abandoned on a truck by the side of the road. Annoyingly, you will still find that in most of the supermarkets they sell imported bananas and plantain chips. It's absurd.
This is a picture taken from the future Metropolitan Park of David. On the right you can see a blue tarp that i believe is home to a squatter. The park is still closed to the public, and i had to jump a fence to get in there... but for some reason there doesn't seem to be any construction happening in it either. It's frustrating, because the city of David has pretty much zero greenspace in town, which is ridiculous, because as you can see from this picture, it's practically surrounded by wilderness. Panama does a very poor job of making greenspace accessible to its urban dwellers.
A bit further along the Pan-American highway, i stopped at a town called Aguadulce. It's a little farm town that doesn't have much going on. A lot of business storefronts are closed up, but i'm not sure if it's because of COVID or if it's just part of people migrating to bigger cities. This is a bar, which might have been closed or abandoned, but i liked that it had a sign for Panama brand beer. I've tried several different domestic beers here, and Panama is my favorite. Unfortunately it's unusual to find it at bars, because the popular beers are all lighter (around 3%). Similar to the situation in China, actually.
Here is a quick "shot from the hip" urban photo in Aguadulce, where i captured someone using a pay phone, a colorful mural featuring local wildlife, and all the trash that collects on the sides of the roads because the garbage collection services aren't great. I've spoken to some Panamanians about why this is, and from what i understand the situation is that - like most countries - each city organizes its own municipal trash collection, but there is a lot of corruption and sweetheart deals to have private companies do the work, and then they just pocket the money and don't do the work.
I liked this silo, or chimney, or water tower. Not sure what it is.
Here's another selfie of me sitting on a pier in San Carlos. San Carlos is a small beach town that still feels a little bit like it belongs to the people. It is completely hemmed in on all sides by gated communities and resort towns that feature marinas and golf courses that appear to have been built to house expats or serve as weekend retreats for the wealthy residents of Panama City.
Some of the colorful fishing vessels on the beach at San Carlos.
The last photo is another sneaky one taken from inside a minibus as we headed toward Panama City. This is a good example of what the Pan-American Highway looks like inside Panama. Two lanes each way, decent shoulder, pedestrian bridges at some (not all) small towns next to the bus stop, mountains off in the distance. Everyone says it's a ridiculously dangerous road and nobody should even consider cycling on it, but to me it seems far less dangerous than the mountain roads and innercity roads, where there are no pedestrian crossings, no shoulders, few sidewalks and very aggressive drivers.
I know this isn't a great selection of photos of what the country is like outside of Panama City, but i suppose it's because i was kinda racing through it to get back to the city to go to school. I haven't decided yet if after school i will revisit some other parts of the country, or head to South America first and then pass through again on my way back. Either way i hope that learning a bit more of the language will help me to find some places that are scenic that aren't also filled with a million expats and backpackers/tourists. So far i haven't had much luck getting that illusion of solitude here, which is something i really look for when i'm traveling.
The opening picture is one of those tourist brochure type photos of Bocas del Toro. It features the bike that i rented for the day and a shot of the east coast of the Isla Colón - the coast that faces into the Caribbean Sea. It was fairly early in the morning at this point, and the weather was looking like it'd rain pretty hard, so the beach was deserted. (By lunchtime hungover tourists started showing up.)
A little further along, i strung up the hammock that i bought in Panama City. Sadly, this is the only time i have been able to hang my hammock so far, because despite the fact this country is full of jungle, most of the towns don't have much in the way of parks or beaches where there are enough trees around to be able to swing in peace.
Hammock selfie! I felt like i was inside a big purple banana.
The west side of Isla Colón faces inland, and the waves are much less aggressive. It's the side of the island where people go to sit on the beach, as opposed to the side where people go to surf.
One more brochure shot of Bocas del Toro - this is from a beach that is lined with bars inside little huts. The only ways to get to the beach are water taxi, sailing your own boat there, or hiking through some waterfront jungle where you need to wade through a few sections. Despite the "remoteness", this beach was packed with tourists in various stages of drunkenness.
The next photo shows the other side of life in Bocas del Toro, and that's the tourist developments. This is a photo of a new, under-construction community of bland holiday homes that currently looks a bit like a prison camp. A massive section of jungle was steamrolled flat to build the community, and i suspect most of the property owners will be expats and rich folks from the city.
Back in Bocas Town, here is a photo from one of the most famous bars - it's one of many that has a floating deck where you can dance and watch the water taxis and cruisers sail around. Out of frame, there was a yacht moored on the deck behind the DJ booth.
Okay, that's enough of that. I pretty much hated Bocas, so i'm surprised i managed to get so many decent photos of the place. Here is the view from the roro ferry heading back to the mainland.
When i got to the mainland i jumped in a little minibus to take me over the mountains to David. This is a sneaky shot taken from inside the minibus looking at a banana truck that was puttering up the mountain even slower than we were, much to the annoyance of our driver.
Taking a bit of inspiration from the wonderful street photography of olamina, i tried to capture a few photos of street life in David. I always feel terribly embarrassed taking photos of people, which is why the vast majority of the photos i share here don't have anyone in them. But in David i took a bunch of "shoot from the hip" shots, most of which didn't come out due to lack of focus or useless angles. This one shows a bit of what the Panama street life feels like.
Something else worth noting about the street life in Panama is that pay phones still exist, and people still use them. I'm pretty certain that most people have smartphones, but i wonder if perhaps they only use them for internet? My prepaid SIM, for example, only has data, and i have no interest in adding credit to make phone calls. But that might just be my privilege showing, perhaps there really are a lot of people in the city who don't have a mobile phone.
Selfie in the David town square. It's worth noting that masks are still mandatory everywhere in Panama - inside and outside - unless you are eating. On the metro in Panama City you also have to wear a plastic face shield on top of the mask. Schools are still closed, and have been closed for almost 2 years, which is driving parents absolutely crazy. Still, the vaccination rate - like most of Latin America - is high, and the infection rate is relatively low. They're also offering free vaccinations to all tourists and travelers who are entering the country, which unfortunately i didn't take advantage of when i crossed the border, because now i am unboosted and there's no easy way for me to get the third shot. On the other hand, i'd rather that third shot go to countries with much lower vaccination rates, since they're the ones who need it most. We're only going to get more variants if developed countries continue to hoard the vaccines.
I liked this photo because it shows you just how common bananas (and plantains) are in Panama. Massive bunch of bananas, yeah it's just abandoned on a truck by the side of the road. Annoyingly, you will still find that in most of the supermarkets they sell imported bananas and plantain chips. It's absurd.
This is a picture taken from the future Metropolitan Park of David. On the right you can see a blue tarp that i believe is home to a squatter. The park is still closed to the public, and i had to jump a fence to get in there... but for some reason there doesn't seem to be any construction happening in it either. It's frustrating, because the city of David has pretty much zero greenspace in town, which is ridiculous, because as you can see from this picture, it's practically surrounded by wilderness. Panama does a very poor job of making greenspace accessible to its urban dwellers.
A bit further along the Pan-American highway, i stopped at a town called Aguadulce. It's a little farm town that doesn't have much going on. A lot of business storefronts are closed up, but i'm not sure if it's because of COVID or if it's just part of people migrating to bigger cities. This is a bar, which might have been closed or abandoned, but i liked that it had a sign for Panama brand beer. I've tried several different domestic beers here, and Panama is my favorite. Unfortunately it's unusual to find it at bars, because the popular beers are all lighter (around 3%). Similar to the situation in China, actually.
Here is a quick "shot from the hip" urban photo in Aguadulce, where i captured someone using a pay phone, a colorful mural featuring local wildlife, and all the trash that collects on the sides of the roads because the garbage collection services aren't great. I've spoken to some Panamanians about why this is, and from what i understand the situation is that - like most countries - each city organizes its own municipal trash collection, but there is a lot of corruption and sweetheart deals to have private companies do the work, and then they just pocket the money and don't do the work.
I liked this silo, or chimney, or water tower. Not sure what it is.
Here's another selfie of me sitting on a pier in San Carlos. San Carlos is a small beach town that still feels a little bit like it belongs to the people. It is completely hemmed in on all sides by gated communities and resort towns that feature marinas and golf courses that appear to have been built to house expats or serve as weekend retreats for the wealthy residents of Panama City.
Some of the colorful fishing vessels on the beach at San Carlos.
The last photo is another sneaky one taken from inside a minibus as we headed toward Panama City. This is a good example of what the Pan-American Highway looks like inside Panama. Two lanes each way, decent shoulder, pedestrian bridges at some (not all) small towns next to the bus stop, mountains off in the distance. Everyone says it's a ridiculously dangerous road and nobody should even consider cycling on it, but to me it seems far less dangerous than the mountain roads and innercity roads, where there are no pedestrian crossings, no shoulders, few sidewalks and very aggressive drivers.
I know this isn't a great selection of photos of what the country is like outside of Panama City, but i suppose it's because i was kinda racing through it to get back to the city to go to school. I haven't decided yet if after school i will revisit some other parts of the country, or head to South America first and then pass through again on my way back. Either way i hope that learning a bit more of the language will help me to find some places that are scenic that aren't also filled with a million expats and backpackers/tourists. So far i haven't had much luck getting that illusion of solitude here, which is something i really look for when i'm traveling.