Sort of woke up around 11ish but got up about 12:30. I had a read through the guide book and have booked up for a hostel in David, the second largest city in the country and about 7-8hrs by bus west, for Sun-Wed nights included.
There is far too much of the "take a bus to X and ask to be let off at Y, then take a taxi to Z. If there is no taxi, call Jose on nnn-nnnn or Mike on mmm-mmmm to arrange a pick up" kind of stuff for the whole country in the guide book. But David looks like there is potential to visit other nearby places as day trips with a simple bus ride and I couldn't see any much better option.
I was going to stay at the Purple House, but apart from possibly not having a room on Sunday night, I was frankly put off by their budget airlinish insistance on charging extras for things like hot showers and air conditioning.
I formed vague plans to visit the Panamanian history museum, some art museum near a ruined convent and some ruins of one of Noriega's favourite clubs, all in Casco Viejo, then dragged myself out about 2:30. The museums shut at 3:30 and 4 respectively according to the guide book.
The history museum seemed completely closed, I could find the ruins of the convent or whatever but not the adjacent museum and what I assume to be the club ruins are possibly visible but if so are now fenced off and look like they are about to be turned into a hotel.
It was absolutely stifling as well. So I had no plans left and it was maybe 3 by this time.
I needed more cash and I basically ended up walking for about two or three hours up Av Central (it turned into Av Central España later), after a quick USD3 plate of rice, lentils and chicken at that restaurant I went to on my first day, which seems not to advertise its name but the guide book suggests it is Restaurant Jonathan. I had a 1.5 litre bottle of ginger ale with the meal (all for USD3) and consequently felt rather bloated when I left and sort of decided to walk north.
There was a busy street market kind of atmosphere immediately north but I didn't feel particularly at risk at any point. Maybe I just got lucky but I don't know. I didn't see any obvious signs of the "high density slum" I believe the guide book mentions.
I took a GPS reading when I finally stopped walking about 6pm (I was knackered, it was starting to get a touch desolate and also sunset was impending). I don't know exactly how far I walked until I can faff around with that later, but I think I got well past the junction with calle 74 Est Bis, the last side street whose name I vaguely remember.
(Oh, earlier I walked past the bar I have been calling "Lady's". The handwritten sign says it is something else, which has slipped my memory, but something vaguely like "Bar Plata xxxx". Clearly the neon sign is not the name, just ungrammatical English indiciating the presence of women.).
I didn't see anywhere with any potential on that walk, so I got a cab over to calle Uruguay out of lack of a better option. USD3 and although the driver seemed to keep asking me things I didn't understand and to struggle to understand me saying "corner of Uruguay with 48", we did get here OK.
I was here too early but I took advantage of the daylight to have a bit of a wander. Calle Uruguay itself seems a touch elusive but the street signs suck and I believe Habibi's is on Uruguay so I must have been there. Quite a few places but nothing astounding looking. I figured I'd give The Londoner another try, I can always go elsewhere later although I don't want to be out too late. (I haven't asked about checkout but it would be good to leave by 10 and be on the bus out by 11 if possible, if it's a 7-8h trip. There are supposed to be hourly buses, I hope being a Sunday won't fuck this over.) The club/bar I mentioned seeing here from the cab back was not open when I did my walking around earlier tonight.
There were one or two other customers when I got here and there might be about five or ten now. It's fine, I'm not looking for anything overly lively.
The new hostel is supposed to have a bar, and a pool for that matter. I suspect it may be a little like the hostel in Puerto Iguazu, but we shall see. I am not sure if my room will be airconditioned, but as the 'superior double room' showed at the same price as the 'standard double room' I naturally went for superior, so I might hope for aircon.
I may well go for a dormitory again at some point, perhaps in Mexico, but my limited experiences so far suggest it is a bit inconvenient, admittedly a lot cheaper and practically neutral in terms of meeting people. I guess this due to a certain offpeakness but I don't know. I expect a full dormitory would be worse on the inconvenience and better on meeting people but I haven't experienced that yet.
(I can't help also thinking my belongings are a bit at risk in a dormitory, I have only one small combination lock with me.)
I haven't looked into canal tours (via other companies or the annoying one) or accommodation for my return to Panama yet. I will probably try to do that tomorrow night or Monday. Getting the plan to go to David and booking the accommodation there was the top priority and I felt I ought to get out and try to see stuff after that rather than staying even longer at the hostel.
20:30. Just got back from the bog and my table and that next to it have been 'Reserved'. That always seems a bit of a cheek somehow. I have moved to another table but it seems near the kitchen and there's a slightly foul reek of vinegar.
Oh, I did see a yellow bus yesterday with "FOOBAR SCHOOL DISTRICT" stencilled on the side, the FOOBAR blacked out with a rectangle. And I saw another one today which said "SCHOOL BUS" on the back. I am sure these were regular public buses, so maybe my comments on their appearance the other day were more strictly accurate than I thought.
I remember observing the hostel room was quite good when I arrived. That was excessive. It is quite large but the walls are rough whitewashed concrete or stone, the ceiling has a few black gaps in the white 'suspended ceiling' type tiles and there's not much furniture. It's certainly acceptable, but I was being a bit generous at the time.
21:15. Just lost my table on another trip to the bog - it's not rammed but it did command a view of the boxing on the TV - so now perched at bar on my own. There is a bilingual 'The Visitor' newspaper free at the bar, I see there are plans to shut bars at 2am here. Apparently it's proving a bit controversial. The main arguments for it seem to be curbing murders and incidents of violence and reducing drunk-driving accidents. Surely the latter at least could be handled by, I don't know, stricter drunk-driving laws? And I can't help finding the murder claim superficially ridiculous. Violence maybe, but surely not many people get tanked up and commit un-premeditated murders? Oh well. It's kind of heartening to see it's not just the UK where things are moving speedily in the direction of more and more restrictions.
I did hear some woman order a Michelada just now. Even in Mexico the term seems to have varying meanings, so I won't bother ordering one here. I am quite looking forward, now I've been reminded, to having a proper (Worcester sauce-based) Michelada in Mexico... I haven't had one in a year or two and that was at Macondo in London and it didn't seem very good. I think when I first went there they were better, the place did seem to have gone generally downhill on my last visit or two.
Flicking through some tourist magazine ("Focus Panama") also on the bar, I note "El Pavo Real" apparently exists but is on Via Argentina. I could maybe have found that out on the web, not that it was a big deal. I just may try it on my return unless any other places catch my eye.
From the newspaper, apparently the buses are being replaced with a new style of bus in about a year's time. So I guess at least that's something I managed to see before it was too late.
22:00. I'm feeling a bit angrily hacked off. Not very angry and not that hacked off, but I can't describe it better. Maybe a certain sense of discontent. I don't know exactly why.
I think I am feeling a bit lonely, there's been a bit of a conversational drought again of late, though contradictory as it may seem I am not particularly gagging to meet anyone right now. Maybe I will naturally end up chatting to someone in David, and failing that I have some vague idea I'll be a bit more open and 'adventurous' in Mexico, perhaps in part as (although it's coming to the end of the trip) I will have more time.
I don't think it's particularly great here, though it's just about OK and I suppose it's cool to have been here and (as with Encarnacion) to at least have an opinion about the place. I have also been oddly pushed for time lately, admittedly in part due to getting up late, but I've only had three full days here and (accepting the late awakenings) I spent one haring around getting hacked off unsuccessfuly trying to sort out a canal trip and then today my plans fell through (not that that was an enormous blow in itself, none of them were incredibly appealing) and I just found myself wandering around and frankly feeling a bit "so where is all the cool stuff?". Though it was slightly cool to walk that far and defy the guide book on the northern part of the Casco Viejo peninsula and I guess, as with yesterday, I have seen the city in a certain and perhaps slightly unusual way.
I can't help thinking - as I may have done elsewhere, perhaps in Asuncion - that wandering around Panama City is like walking down an enormously extended version of Euston Road in London. That part of central London has always struck me - and I have traversed its length on a few occasions seeking entertainment - as a desolate wasteland of ugly buildings with no decent bars or restaurants. As I walk down stretches I find myself thinking "FFS, can London be this dull?". And that's a bit how it seems here. And to stretch the analogy, I am sure there are decent places away from there but I doubt you'd easily stumble across them as a visitor who ended up stuck walking from Euston Road.
I don't relish the prospect of having to go back to work either. Maybe I'll manage to be more laid back and ultimately not care so much and get less worked up when I return, but I doubt it. At the risk of getting overly wanky/philosophical, it's as if I have no plan for my life *and* I'm not enjoying pottering along without any clear goal. Oh well. I'm not back there yet, things WILL be at least a bit different when I return, I may come up with a plan and I assume there are still good times to be had on the rest of the trip. But I am sick of this feeling that life is passing me by and I'm running out of time. It's not even that I can't get what I want, I almost don't even know what I want. I just know what, in an ideal world, I don't want. :-)
Just listened to Chris Brown (whoever he is) sing "The Star Spangled Banner" as part of the boxing on the TV. Just a random observation.
22:35. There is a small sticker behind the bar bearing (I assume) a reproduction of some oldish looking ad. The slogan says "Melts in your mouth, not in your nose" (in English). Sadly I cannot read the name of the product, but my mind boggles at what that slogan might apply to. The only 'nose oriented' (in the sense that it might ever 'melt in your nose') product I can possibly thing off is snuff, but surely that never 'melts'.
I hope I can *get* a bus tomorrow, but I also hope it's a decent bus. Odds are good, but I am thinking about the Uyuni-Potosi trip in Bolivia for six (admittedly unproblematic) hours on that very clunky bus. Ideally I don't want seven or eight hours on something like that with no airconditioning and no toilet. I guess this doesn't show the right adventurous spirit, but sod it. If it is crap then obviously I will still do it and it will be OK, but I am hoping it won't be necessary. I suspect it will be OK all the same, this is the route between the two biggest cities in the country and (assuming it's about the country's wealth and Bolivia is poorer than Panama) the other Bolivian buses were no better or worse than anywhere else. Well, that's not true - the Potosi to La Paz bus was fine, but if memory serves the La Paz to Copacabana bus was also a bit clunky. Though that was a relatively short trip.
I note the local ads on the TV here seem to mention David as well as Panama City. I think the place is relatively tiny (hell, my 2007ish guide book says Panama City has a population under 0.5m if memory serves) but it's kind of reassuring, it sort of implies the place has genuine importance and Panama City isn't the only commercially significant city in the country and thus that the buses will run there and the city itself isn't a complete backwater.
00:15. Just got back. What a fucking joke. Got a cab (some other woman in the front seat), driver said USD4, fine. During the trip he talked to her but seemed to say to me in Spanish "the same church?" Same church as what?? I just said I didn't understand. As we came into Casco Viejo he pulled up and asked some guy where it was. We also picked up some youngish and as it turned out American woman. We pulled up outside a church and they claimed it was San Jose. I said it wasn't. I ended up talking to the American woman who said "I work round here, that's San Jose church". I was rather sarcastic about saying if you say so and I'll get out and get mugged. She asked me which hostel I was going to and I told her and she gave me length directions. I may not "work here" but I know FROM WHAT MY HOSTEL TOLD ME they are right next door to San Jose church, never mind my own experience. I fired up the GPS in the street (even though I could *probably* have found my way anyway, it was both easier a
nd I wanted proof we weren't near the hostel) while fending off advice from locals I didn't understand and we were indeed 150m away. Fucking useless taxi driver who doesn't know the main places in his fucking city and fucking overly confidently cocky American bitch for insisting that other church was San José when it so fucking clearly wasn't. I would have forced the cab driver to take me here if she hadn't interfered. As it was I could hardly argue and thought maybe we were just on the other side of the church, though in that case why lengthy directions to get here from American bitch rather than "just round the other side". I won't deny the churches look a bit similar but even I can recognise the one I want now.
At the risk of harping on, I just checked with the guy on reception and yes, the adjacent church is San Jose. I have visions of that bitch telling the amusing anecdote about my disbelief and nervousness (admittedly the walk back was OK, and I exaggerated with saying "I'll just get mugged" cos I was pissed off at being nearly certain we weren't where she said) tomorrow and it galls me, not that she was wrong, but that she was so smugly insistent about it. I might be a lowly pleb who is so boring he's just taking a few months off to travel and you're so dynamic and exciting you live round here, but I do have eyes and I do recognise the buildings near my hostel and I do remember what the adjacent church is called.
Anyway, case closed until I maybe bitch about this back in London.
Oh, I have to checkout by 12 though I hope to be gone before that and the guy said there would be buses tomorrow, almost in a way that implied "of course, why even ask?".
No comments:
Post a Comment