Panama: Day 6

Panama: Day 6

Last day on the island & our hostel in Panama City

We told the boys "No spearing today!" and told them that they had to spend the entire day with us.  We can be so rude sometimes...

We decided to show them our favorite "Executive" beach.  The boys laid out with us (a miracle!) and just relaxed.  They also found a rope swing and had some fun on that.

The nice bathrooms on the beach were pretty close to a private school that was held outdoors.  When I went to go to the bathroom, there were two little school girls in their uniform waiting to use the bathroom.  One girl looks at me and goes "Hello, how are you?" in english.  I responded back to her and told her she had very good english.  She giggled and ran away.  I don't think she understood any more english than what she had said, but she had that one saying down.

Just walking the streets of the island.

Our favorite little market.

Huge spider we found.

Time to pack up :(  The boys gear reeked like fish for months after this.  

 When I told people about our trip after we went.  Everyone always asked if we stayed in a nice resort that was there.  NO.  We stayed in the cheapest but nicest place we could find.  We are all about traveling to awesome places, but doing it as cheap as possible.  

This was our B&B we stayed at.  There were only 12 rooms.  It was $104 a night.  They fed us a delicious breakfast every morning that was included in the price.  It was nothing special, but it did its job.  

There were no nice resorts on this island.  A neighboring small island did have a 5 star resort on it, a Ritz Carlton I believe.  But our island was still basically just a little town with two markets, two or so restaurants, a small medical building, a clothing shop, an ice cream shop (and we didn't even go I am now realizing!) and a catholic school.  There are basically only 3 small hotels (we stayed at one, ate dinner at one, and I don't even know where the other one was).  The rest of the houses are rental vacation homes and homes of those that live on the island.  There are a few really nice vacation houses on the island though, they belonged to the wealthy Panamanians.

Theres our room!

This was where breakfast was every morning.

Dan and Shalane's room.

They had a random caged area with a fawn (that you can see in the back corner of the hut).

Took my 19 week baby belly picture on the roof.

We had are last meal at our favorite place before we had to get to the ferry.

We then hopped on the ferry and sat on the back to enjoy the boat ride back to the City.  Me and Shalane let Éric sit in-between us.  Shalane was super excited.  Ok and maybe I was too...

We gave him some of our dried mangoes to try which he had never tried in his life.  He loved them.  He asked where they were from and we told him Costco.  He had no idea what that was so we told him we would mail him some.  The boys then gave him a bag of beef jerky to try, and again, he had never tried jerky either.  He loved it as well.  So we included that into our package we told him we would send him.

The bridge that leads to the Canal.

It was hard saying bye to Éric, but we told him we would do this again next year with our baby in tow.  We told him he better bring his "wife" (girlfriend) as well.  He told us we have to go visit him in France, which me and Shalane will have no problem with whatsoever.  

It was then off to our hostel.  The owner of the hostel came and picked us up at the ferry which was very kind of her.  We didn't have to go through the whole "Taxi will you find this place..." debacle.  As we were driving through the main of Panama City in the crazy traffic she was telling Kevin (in spanish) all about the city.  He told her how amazed we were at how many skyscrapers and buildings were in Panama City.  She said that had only happened in the last 10 or so years.  Business just skyrocketed due to low business taxes, and many American bank business moved to Panama City.

We finally arrived to our hostel and Kevin's face says it all in this picture:

It was a 3 bedroom hostel, and the other hostels were occupied by Columbians.  We could tell that she normally didn't get traveling Americans at her hostel; mostly Latinos coming to the city for business.  

Luckily we had air conditioning, but she also gave us mosquito spray and a mosquito candle because the mosquitos are so bad.  That is not what you want to hear in a latin country.  Especially when you are pregnant.  We then spent as little time as possible in that room.  

We walked to the nearest, nicest looking restaurant and ate the worst meal since we had been there.  This made it really easy for us to go home the next morning.  And then even easier when we stopped by the little market to get candy (to make our room not feel so gross) and that was closed.  So we went back to our room, put on the AC and watched National Geographic in spanish.  

 Oh yeah.  And do you want to see how swollen my feet got that trip?  You probably don't but I need to remember how bad they got for memory sake.

They did not fit into my flip flops.  And they barely fit into my tennis shoes.  Kevin had to undo all the laces for my feet to fit.  It was painful.

But that is what you get when you travel to a hot, humid place while you are pregnant.  And I really think the first day in the city (Panama Canal, Casco Viejo, and the rainforest hike) really set me up for this.

It was hard to sleep in the hostel because the beds were tiny and they gave you one small sheet as a blanket.  I woke up bright and early and couldn't fall back asleep so I got up, took a humid, sticky shower (the worst) and got ready outside where the mirror was.

The view.

Just getting ready.

I guess the owner thought Americans just eat sandwiches all the time.  And ketchup sandwiches.
This was our breakfast.  The juice and pineapple were great, but I could not down that sandwich.  Poor Kevin ate his whole thing because he didn't want the kind owner to feel bad.
Again, this made it easy to go home.

Bye hostel, it was real.

 We made it to the airport on time and started to check in our bags.  Kevin had brought his skim board in case there was a good beach for skimming, but ended up not using it.  We weren't charged coming to Panama, but of course the airline there (Copa Airlines) completely ripped us off.  I do not do well under those circumstances.  I hate the feeling of being completely ripped off.  It didn't sit well with Kevin either.  We argued and argued, asked to talk to a manager.  Nothing worked.  They told us because it was a surf board (We kept telling them it is NOT a surf board, its a body board) that they had to charge us $140.  Oh it burned so bad.  It was the size of a normal piece of luggage.

So that did not start our journey home on the right note.

Then, while we were waiting for our flight, I waited in a 15 minute line so I could get a bottle of water. We then went to go get on the plane and we had to go through security again.  They told me I had to throw the water away, no liquids.  I told them no and told Kevin to tell them that I had bought that in their airport.  They wouldn't budge.  Oh I was so angry. 

Then, me and Kevin were not sitting together on the 6 hour plane ride home.  I do not do well flying anyways (a big fear of mine), so not sitting by Kevin would have made it pretty bad.  We had hoped that there would be kind person sitting next to us that would be willing to switch seats.  Kevin kindly asked the guy sitting next to me if he could switch him places and the guy flatly just said no.  This did not sit well with me, nerves started to get to me and I started to get a little emotional (hey, Im also pregnant).  I said a prayer that something would work out;  I needed to sit by Kevin on that flight home.  Right then the guy tried to put his headphones in the jack to the TV in front of him and it wouldn't go in.  He then asked the stewardess for another pair of earphones and they didn't work as well.  He then asked to be moved to a TV that worked.  Once they found him a seat, he got Kevin's attention and said "They found me another seat, you can sit here now," as if he had done it to be nice. Oh please.

But, I was so grateful that Kevin got to sit by me for that long flight.

They fed us two meals on that flight, and I finally obliged to eating one since I was starving from not eating breakfast.  This was then followed with In N Out in Los Angeles.  Eating crap after eating such fresh, delicious food for a week did not sit well with me.  On our small flight from LA to SLC, we luckily were sitting in the back near the bathroom.  So when I felt it coming up, I ran to that bathroom.  I wasn't able to eat In N Out for 3 months after that.

And that was our trip! 

It was awesome and we are already planning the trip next year with baby.