Arrival in Panama City and Taxi to the Hostel

Writing from the Road: Panama

• Arrival in Panama City and Taxi to the Hostel
• $6 to $80: Eating in Panama City is what you make of it
• Photoblog: Writing in the rain is as tough as you might imagine

We arrived by plane from LAX after a 6 hour flight. We’d left in the early morning and feared that we would arrive during the middle of one of Panama’s infamous thunderstorms. As any aviatophobe worth their salt will tell you,  plane crashes tend to happen in the middle of thunderstorms, and more frequently during take off and landing. Luckily we’d brought a raft of electronics to keep our minds off our imminent demise: MP3 players, Kindles loaded with e-books, two laptops with movies rented, downloaded and ready to go. As a last resort there was a friendly orange bottle of Xanax nestled in my husband’s carry-on. Much like the boy scouts, we were prepared.

I hate to keep you in suspense, so I’ll just blurt it out. We survived. The flight and landing were both pleasant and uneventful. We never even broke out the Xanax. We watched the King’s Speech (thank goodness for noise cancelling headphones) and an episode of Misfits. We read books, joked about the fake dogs in SkyMall magazine and I chatted with my neighbor in broken Spanglish. Boring, I know, but that’s how I like to keep my plane flights. Uneventful.

After we landed we gathered up our luggage and discussed whether our hostel would really have a driver waiting for us. We would be staying at Hostal Urraca. Their website says they can send a driver to pick us up for about $25, which seemed a bit steep to me, but sounded simple. It would be worth it after a long plane ride. If he showed up. Since our arrival time and date had been communicated via telephone, we had our doubts.

We stood with our luggage in one mysterious line to have our passports absentmindedly fondled as the immigration officer yelled over her shoulder at a co-worker and waived us through. We then stood in another mysterious line to have our list of declared items collected and our passports summarily stamped. I loaded my luggage into an enormous machine . No one was attending it, nor was anyone paying any attention, but it seemed like the thing to do, The machine swallowed and spit it out and I was in Panama.

Tocumen airport is far from town

As we rolled out of Tocumen’s secured area my husband scanned the crowd of expectant faces and spotted our driver. He was holding a hand lettered sign with Jonah’s name on it. It made me feel like a celebrity and I decided that I liked this place. I didn’t know it then, but that warm magnanimous feeling would come and go over the next few weeks alternating with intense bouts of irritation. For me Panama is not an easy country to love. For now, though we had our driver. Ricardo was an older Panamanian with an easy disposition and a ready smile. Not too chatty. When we saw our first dog of the trip wandering around in the parking lot (why, WHY is Latin American completely overrun with stray dogs?) Ricardo joked that it was airport security.

Stepping out of the airport into the Panamanian air was like being wrapped in one of those towels they give you for your face at a fancy salon, except all over your body. You know it’s supposed to be relaxing, but it’s really just hot, wet, and a little hard to breathe.

Tocumen is about 20 miles or so from our hostel, so it took longer than I expected to get to the city and I understood the price point for the taxi ride a bit better. We passed through a green tunnel of tropical vegetation. The thunderstorms we’d feared would throw our plane to the ground finally popped up and it was as though someone had turned on a faucet. We were driving 40 miles an hour through a car wash.

Traffic and skyscrapers galore

The rain cleared and the city rose up out of the vegetation. We thought it looked a bit like Vancouver with its rounded condominium towers bum rushing the ocean. It looked like the center of commerce that it is. The gateway between the oceans. That canal sees a lot of traffic and makes a lot of money. With the cranes dotting the city you could tell that there is more money and  more architectural ingenuity and fervor than there are regulations. We were from California, my husband’s parents own real estate in San Diego; he could smell the scent of a housing bubble wafting off those empty skyscrapers.

As we passed, Ricardo pointed out the Hard Rock café, the Multiplex mall and the new corkscrew tower rising above the lights, the ultramodern cubed buildings and the mud. The traffic moved in surges and eddies. There was a toll booth (luckily the taxi driver paid) along the bridge that passes over the bay of Old Town. We found out much later from a handsome Venezuelan couple, both of whom were architects leaving the rural life in the highlands of Panama for work in the city, that the city had only recently installed traffic lights. This article seems to imply that traffic lights were merely upgraded and several new ones added. Either way, be careful when crossing the street while you’re in the city.

Also, don’t worry if you notice cars honking for no apparent reason. Everybody honks. Seriously, They honk to say hi, they honk if  you’re in the way, they honk if things are taking too long. Jonah figured out that taxis honk at you if they are available. And always remember to ask a taxi driver how much it will cost before you get in the cab. This avoids unpleasant surprises later. There is no standard fare.

Where we stayed

Sandwiched between a pair of those shiny new highrises I mentioned above, I highly recommend Hostal Urraca. However, note that this is a low-end, bare bones choice.  If the term hostel scares you, all I can say is that I feel you. I’m not 25 anymore. But our experience here was low-key and enjoyable. There were even older couples here shuffling to the shower and using the free internet to phone their friends back in France.

We paid for a private room and it thankfully included air conditioning. The staff is attentive and helpful, but most of them only speak Spanish. The grounds are secured by a gate and the staff at reception can buzz you in. The bathrooms are shared and there should be one just a couple doors down from your room. But they are clean and spare, much like the bedrooms. The hostel is located a half block from Parque Urraca in the  Bella Vista neighborhood  near El Cangrejo and within walking distance of clubs, bars, restaurants, casinos, banks and cafes.

We stayed there four nights while we explored the city. In future posts in this series I will review restaurants and sites. Stay tuned!