The way to Panama City

Cahuita is already quite close to the border to Panama, and in about a week Hannah's parents will come over for a visit / holidays. We decide to skip everything in between for now, and spend the rest of the days in Panama City, hopefully with couchsurfers..

One bus takes us to the small border village of Sixaola. A couple of customs forms, randomly paid dollars and stampled passports later, we are ready to cross. Turns out that this is more fun than expected: Like so many other pedestrians, we walk over this really rickety railroad bridge.

Crossing the border means crossing this former railroad bridge. It's been there for around hundred years, so I guess it won't come down just we are walking over it..

On the Panamanian side, we have to show a copy of our flight tickets out of Central America. This is new, at least for land border crossings. Also for the first time, a border officer makes a snide but good-humoured remark about my passport photo. (Photo: Clean shave, short hair, no backpack, and almost looking like a civilized person. Reality: somewhat different...)

When he opens Hannah's passport (Photo: Long hair, etc.), he sighs, puts in the stamps, and sends us on our way with a resigned look.

A touristical entrepreneur (=rip-off) invites us to pay 10 dollars for the trip to Almirante. He explains that the public bus service for the same trip will take about twice as long, and will cost us about 8 dollars each, and we'd have to switch buses three times.

Hannah is clever enough to ask for the price with the regular bus drivers, and it turns out that the trip to Changuinola is 70 cents. There, we'd actually have to change the bus, and pay another dollar. Riiiight.

While we wait together with two other travellers from Bavaria, the guy comes back several times and lowers his prices to 4 dollars in the end. Patiently and civilly, we explain that we do not enjoy being lied to, and would now rather walk the distance than use his servce.

Of course we don't have to, and on the bus to Changuinole we even meet a 17-year old German exchange student, who offers to guide us to the bus terminal in the city.

Turns out that this is a lot of help: Changuinola is busier and more confusing than expected. We even manage to get on board of a directo to the city of Davíd, on the opposite coast of Panama. Continuing to Panama City today would be unrealistic.

Then, Caribbean to Pacific coast, crossing the Panamanian highlands, in about 5 hours. Since David is actually a bit of a detour, we ask our ajudante if we could stay in Chiriqui (the village, part of the province of the same name), and a shave off one hour of the trip to the capital in the next morning. Sure we can, is the answer. And of course there are cheap accomodations there as well.

So we jump out of the bus, pick up our backpacks and... and look around. Chiriqui turns out to be a road crossing with a gas station, a closed general store and a couple of houses. Hm.

Two ladies sitting on the patio of their nearby house watch us curiously. Mochilleros, here? We are obviously something new. When asked, they shake their heads in union: No, there are definitely no hotels nor hospedajes here. Never have. The ajudante is obviously a hombre malo. Mal suerte. Damn.

Thankfully, there is another bus covering the last leg of our journey for today, from Chiriqui to David. So we wait a quarter of an hour, hop on board, get blasted with the Spanish pop version of some Christian Rock band for about 30 minutes, and arrive in David.

By the time we find a hostal, it's already dark. Okay, it's cheap, relatively clean, and the personel really friendly. One last effort to find food, and we are done for today.

In most hotels they put neatly folded towels on our pillows, in some even a little chocolate treat. This is definitely more down to earth.

Since we are quite fed up with bus trips, we decide to stay for a day in David, rest, explore, and then take the night bus to Ciudad de Panama. After an hour, we are already bored, because it turns out David is really not pretty. So we have plenty of time left to explore the internet, read some chapters in our books, drink fruit smoothies, and shop for new hats. Yay!

Finally, our bus arrives (a great big double-decker monster of a bus!), and we try to snuggle into our seats and get some sleep. Tomorrow: Panama City!