The Panama Tenderloin and the Canal

This made me think of you Denver

 

 

 

Jon was really into the Donut painting in this restaurant

Panama City

I can't believe this beer still exists!!!!

New Beige

Chicken Bus

Panama Canal

These things pull the cruise ships through the Canal

These are labeled as Bed Bugs-Yikes!

 

Tuesday, April 17 2012

I’ve been away from the blog for a little while so I’m having trouble recalling what happened over the next few days. 

We did some laundry at this Chinese do it yourself American quarter operated ‘mat.  It is really hot and grimy in the old part of Panama City.  It reminds me so much of San Francisco’s Tenderloin nayborhood even down to the nuances of specific smells.  This smell is of car exhaust, human urine and reeking garbage.  Here there are all kinds of dubious looking stores selling fried meats, incense or showing dirty movies just like Market St in the ‘loin.  The streets are covered in a black filth and the heat (about the only thing that doesn’t recall SF) and humidity just steams the smell off of it.  Besides nasal assault an additional hazard in Casco Viejo is stepping into an abyss on the sidewalk.  There are all kinds of open small holes and larger pits in the sidewalk and just off of the curb.  They are usually filled with a foul minging murky liquid that would most likely give you some sort of infection if you got it on you, and maybe make you kill yourself in disgust if you were ever submerged in it.  The biggest one that I’ve seen was about 15-20 ft deep and 3 feet across, but most are only nee deep ankle breakers.  There are no signs warning you that these are upcoming so you need to pay attention while site-seeing.

Anyway, so we’re in this Chinese laundry when a local young man came in with a tray of rice pudding in styrofoam cups that he was selling.  I bot one for $1 US for my breakfast.  After we made this money for pudding exchange this fella goes into a Christian religious fervor in Spanish.  I think he must have recited a prayer because he said it in rhythm and real fast.  This guy was just ecstatic that I had just bot this pudding cup from him.  He was grinning from ear to ear, blessing himself and rambling on a mile a minute en Espanol while the other laundr’o’mat waiters all turned to watch this loon.  The same kind of stuff happens in the Tenderloin all the time. 

Later that day we went to see the Hunger Games in English at the local mall.  It was entertaining but a little too long for me to sit in one place. 

We stayed at the Colombian hotel again tonite.  They also run a restaurant and bar on the first floor but they refuse to serve us anything that doesn’t have meat in it so we can’t eat there.  I think we had the vegetarian staple of pizza somewhere down in the tourist district.  Around where we’re staying (Calle 16 and Avenuda Central) we are the only white people that you see. 

Wednesday, April 18 2012

I thot we were going to check out of the Colombian hotel today but things were still in flux with shipping our truck to Colombia the country.  The flux is that it costs too much.  So we stayed another day made calls and sent emails to dozens of shipping companies.  I’d estimate that we got responses from 5% of the companies that we contacted.

After pulling my hair out in the hotel room all morning we went out for a walk around the greasy, sleazy streets.  We walked and thot.  And sat in thot. And came up with a new plan.  We are now going to ship New Beige to Miami, Florida, USA instead of Cartagena, Colombia.  We’ll then fly to Miami and drive back to South Carolina and then to Massachusetts.  When we return to Colombia a few weeks later it will be without New Beige.  But I’ll probably bring Joey along.  I could go into a lot of detail as to why we decided to change up our plans but I have other things that I want to do tonite.  So with a new focus we returned to our Colombian war room and set the wheels in motion.

Later we had some beers at the bar downstairs and then took a cab out to another part of the city to pick up some documents from Fed Ex.  We used our new location as a jumping off point for a walk around a new part of Panama City.  We walked a lot and stopped at a few places to have a snack or a drink but we really didn’t do anything interesting.  The area we strolled around in reminded me a lot like the generic stripmall sprawl of Los Angeles.  It was just auto part store after fried chicken joint after apartment complex after hi-way interchange. 

   

Probably the worst thing about staying at this hotel is that so many buses roar by all nite.  It’s non stop, also a lot like The ‘Loin, so it makes it hard to get peaceful rest.  

~Jon

Today was also the day that our friends Nick, Lauren and Lucy Long welcomed the newest member of their family, Isaac.  Congratulations you guys! ~Marcie

Thursday, April 19, 2012

We got the ball rolling early this morning and finally moved out of the hotel.  We only got a little lost driving out to the shipping company’s office.  After taking care of business there we rolled New Beige out to the Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal.  We sat up on the balcony over looking the canal of the fine dining restaurant at the visitors’ center.  We watched the giant cruise ships go thru the locks. 

~Jon