Day 1 in Panama - By Alexis Lanza

By Alexis Lanza

Even though Jono would like this written in poem form, I'm opting for the regular narrative. Yes, so on our first day in Panama, we awoke at 12 am from our "nap" after such a long bus ride. With only four days here, we're trying our best to make the most of every day so we quickly made preparations to get out into the city and see as much as we could.

As we all three stepped outside the hotel (a wonderful $9 dollars a night deal i must mention), I decided to Follow my heart, so we all set off in a rightward direction down the street. Next was Karina's turn and so we made another right on the avenue until we eventually saw water and all ended up on a central street in Panama near the water (i'm still not sure if it's the canal itself or the sea, I'll have to ask about that).

This is where the real fun begins. After crossing the street a few times and almost getting ran over (maybe that was just me), we decided to catch a taxi. Now, rules for traveling kids, always ask the price BEFORE you agree to go anywhere or buy anything. Now the guy begins to drive us to what he says will be a nice tourist-like place with a beach and places to eat. So we drive, go over "the Bridge of the Americas", stop a bit to take some cool photos, then carried on. Finally, we arrive at the "beach" and it's pretty...basic. We get Karina to ask the driver the cost and he says it's $20!
Fine...

Or not?

He agrees to wait for us as we walk along the beach (plotting to secretly catch a bus and not pay all $20 and leave just $5). After a few mins and some more photos, we sit at a restaurant eat and ask about real taxi prices. Apparently we should only pay bout $7. Yes, we were being ripped off. Now Kari is all in her "i wanna fight for my rights, this is social injustice" moods, so we all walk over to the taxi guy and after a bit of "discussion" we settle on $8.

After eating, we walk along the beach for a bit more, catch a bus back to the city then wonder around a mall. Jono bought a cool sign for his aunt and Karina got one for her sister. We also found a dollar store and bout a few cool random stuff, like Jono's "extend-o-claw/hand reacher grabber" (we haven't decided what to call it yet), and a love potion thingy, but that's Jono's story.

Yup, so on our way out we all sit and get $0.25 chair massages, use our wise taxi skills and got a $2 taxi back to our hotel where we are now watching Men in Black.


What a day