They must be tour guides, right?
Friday, January 11th, 200810 December 2008
I’m on port manning today and can’t get off the ship. It’s meant that I could sleep in and, since I don’t have to start work until 9.30 tonight, I can relax and psyche myself up for this 8 sea days in a row across the Pacific. I’ve watched a movie on TV, checked my emails and a couple of web sites I look at regularly and am now sitting perched on the edge of my bunk, laptop balanced on a chair, and writing about what I did last night. Not that what I did is that exciting but since I’m going to have so little to write about for the next week or more I figure that I may as well bore you now.
We made it suceedsfully and safely through the canal yesterday and anchored off Amador, Panama. We are now on the west coast and it’s the Pacific that’s lapping against the hull now and not the Caribbean. I finished early at work and sat in my cabin, put up yesterdays post and waited for the ship to anchor and for us to be allowed off. I knew that I would only have this opportunity to see the town and wondered just what was going to be open by the time I hit the shore. My roommate Francis finished a short time later and we wandered down to where the gangway would normally be and was now the tender platform. Usually we have to wait for the passengers to get off before they allow the crew off but at 6pm there were few people waiting. Maybe the majority of passengers are doing tours today and didn’t fancy getting off the ship last night to explore a port that may very well have been all shut up at that time on a Wednesday night. I was unsure whether there was going to be anything open myself but I’d been told that there were restaurants right where the tender docks that would be open and, as I keep saying, any opportunity to get off the ship and touch real ground must be taken.
While Francis and I were waiting we started talking to the other crew that were lined up, trying to find someone who had been here before and could offer some idea of what there may be to do. One of the people was a musician and had been to Panama City just a few months ago. He said that there was a huge mall that should still be open and that he was heading that way. We asked him what he meant by huge and he said about 500 shops. It sounded like a good place to go. By the time we got off the tender the three of us and another couple of Filipino guys had decided to share a taxi to the mall and maybe on from there. In a stroke of freakish good fortune we were approached by a taxi driver who turned out to be the same one the musician had used the last time he was here and they remembered each other. Promised a good price we all piled into a very small car and headed off.
The port area is very impressive. I wasn’t sure what to expect and having come from seeing so many little ports and islands I wasn’t really prepared to suddenly be thrust into a really major city. The cabbie said that Panama City has a population of about three million. That may not be overly large by American standards but to someone from New Zealand, where the population of the entire country isn’t too much more, that is a major city. As we headed out of the port in the dark the lights of the city spread out in front of us and I suddenly realised that this would be the biggest place we would see until we came to somewhere like Sydney or Melbourne and was certainly the largest place I had ever visited on the ship outside of Florida.
We drove for about 20 minutes through increasingly denser traffic and eventually arrived at the mall. Piling out of the car we arranged to be picked up again when the mall closed (a scant 45 minutes time) and headed inside. It was huge and everyone immediately dispersed and disappeared into the crowds. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for or even if I was looking for anything in particular. I guess I still wanted some magazines to read but didn’t hold out much hope of finding any English language ones and as it turned out I didn’t find anything resembling a bookstore anyway. This is not to say that there may not have been one, the place is so big that I didn’t see all of it before I realised I had to be back at the same entrance we had arrived at and had no idea where it was or where I was. As I’d walked around all of the shops had taken on a similarity of Spanish signs. There were any number of shoe stores and clothes stores and electronic stores seemed to be everywhere. If I’d had more time I undoubtedly would have figured it all out but not being able to read the maps made navigation a bit difficult. I bought myself a couple of cinnibons (hope I spelt that right) and just wandered up and down row after row of shops looking for the giant kangaroo that had marked our entrance. I probably should take a second to describe a cinnibon for those that may not be familiar with them. It is essentially a soft, gooey cinnamon roll covered in frosting. But to say it is soft and gooey doesn’t do justice to just how soft and gooey it is and to say cinnamon roll doesn’t come close to explaining how far away you can smell them and be drawn toward them in a magical way. Served hot they are a heart attack waiting to happen and if I was to have to admit to being addicted to one American fast food it would have to be them.
Anyway…I found the entrance and everyone piled back into the taxi and tried to decide what to do next. The other two Filipino guys wanted to go back to the ship but Francis and I and the musician wanted something to eat and decided to follow the advice of the cabbie and try out a restaurant he recommended. A short drive later and we were dropped off outside of an Argentinean restaurant that specialised in meat. Walking in we passed a very ordinary looking salad bar but the menu contained so many meat dishes that I was happy with the decision and settled in to decide what dead animal I would partake of. I ended up with a mixed grill at a very reasonable price and we whiled away the wait for the food with a pitcher of sangria and a general conversation of how we came to be on the ship, how long we were going to be on the ship and whether we intended coming back to the ships. The sangria went down well and the mixed grill, when it arrived, had so much sausage, blood sausage, steak, chicken and pork on it that I couldn’t finish it all. Not that I regretted the two cinnibons, not for one minute.
Leaving the restaurant we decided to walk back towards the bright lights we had passed on the way there, in search of the casino that the cabbie had pointed out. I’m not a gambler but I do have a sort of busman’s interest in casinos and have at least looked at many in different parts of the world. Francis wanted to play blackjack, the musician wanted a drink and I wanted a look, what could happen? As we walked along beneath the street lights I had what I guess could be called a moment, although not in the way that I usually have them. This time I looked around and thought, here I am in Panama City with an American and a Filipino, having just eaten in an Argentinean restaurant and I’m now looking for a casino. A couple of years ago that would have sounded like an impossibility but now here I am and it’s a weird kind of reality. As I lay on my death bed (hopefully some time from now) I’m going to have my life flash before my eye s and this is one of the moments where I’m going to wonder how I managed to find myself in that situation. Isn’t life weird?
We found the casino, having to politely refuse the entreaties of a man to at least come in and look at the lovely girls arrayed for our amusement in his establishment. Up the escalator in the lobby of an impressive hotel was an equally impressive casino. There may have been a lot of mirrors on the walls and the lighting may have been subdued but it still took up a lot of space and had a lot of machines. This was not one of the little places that you find on the Caribbean islands, this was a real casino. I wandered around for a while and was tempted to put a dollar note into a machine. Not a smart move as it turned out because I couldn’t figure out which buttons to push given that they were all marked in Spanish. All that happened when I pushed the one I assumed made the reels spin was a ticket printed out, marked with a bar code and for the value of one dollar. I had to take it to the cage and cash it in so I could get my dollar back. Not a good start but I found Francis playing a roulette table and when I found out that it was only a 25c minimum I broke down and decided to play roulette for only the second time in my life. I put $20 down, received a pile of chips and in short order had a stack worth $45. I’d bet on 10, having been born on the 10th of the 10th and it had come up. A nice little return for the dollar I had put on it and I gathered my chips up, tipped the dealer and cashed in my winnings. I’ve always said that the secret of gambling is knowing when to leave and last night I proved the theory. I’d ended up paying for my meal and I left the casino happy. The musician wasn’t quite so happy because it turned out that this was the one night of the year when you couldn’t get a drink in Panama City. We never really found out the complete reason, the cabbies English wasn’t really good enough for detailed explanations but it was a dry night apart from a few bars and restaurants. We’d been lucky to get our sangria.
Leaving the casino we wandered the streets for a while. There were plenty of places open and quite a few people out and about, especially considering that it was a dry night and a Wednesday night to boot. We passed a few women who must have been tour guides because they offered to show us a good time and we passed our friend with the establishment still trying to tempt us inside. There were the usual people out and about being seen to be out and about and cars cruising up and down the streets being seen as well. I never really felt unsafe or threatened, the temperature was warm, there was music in the air from the restaurants open to the street and the smell of food cooking at little street side barbeques tempted me despite the amount of mixed grill I was trying to digest. The three of us sat for a while at a table and chairs outside a closed café and had drinks we purchased at a supermarket and watched the people go past before finally calling the cabbie and getting a ride back to the ship. A nice night out and I have to admit to being disappointed that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to se Panama City in the daylight. I think it’s a place I’ll have to put on my “like to come back and see properly†list.