In the summer of 2007 we were looking for a new place to spend our first wedding anniversary. We had gotten married on the beach in Antigua the previous November while on Kelly’s first ever cruise (my fifth cruise – not fifth marriage) , and had spent two weeks in the Dominican Republic in March near Puerto Plata (rained 8 out of 14 days), but we wanted to try somewhere new. So there we were, having lunch in a restaurant … browsing through some travel brochures we had just picked up … looking at some places that we had visited on the cruise … let’s see … St Maarten … too expensive … Grenada … too expensive … St Lucia … uhhh, no … when Kelly says … ‘Hey, check this out…’ and shows me this beautiful, very affordable, interesting resort in … Panama. Panama?? Who goes to Panama?? All I really know about Panama is they have some ditch or something connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific and the last dictator (Noriega) sought asylum in the Vatican Embassy while the American Marines blasted out Aerosmith tunes 24 hours a day until he gave up. But the resort looks interesting … and it’s relatively cheap. So, we read the reviews on Trip Advisor (had never heard of it before, probably wouldn’t last as a review site … right) … they’re great!! So, in the spirit of adventure … and it’s relatively inexpensive … we book for a week … and spend the next couple of months reading all the reviews, looking at the pictures, reading about its history … and thinking … hey, this might be okay!! So the big day arrives … we drive to Toronto … get on a Cram Jet (really CanJet, but as they need a shoehorn to get you in and out of your seats, you can’t use headsets as your knees are blocking your ears … ) for a 5 hour flight to Tocumen International Airport just outside of Panama City. … And a 2-hour drive to the resort. But that’s okay … we get to see the city and the country as we’re driving through … the Panama City skyline … wow!! It’s like a cross between Miami and Manhattan, all the skyscrapers and hotels in the new city … the mountains, the valleys, the glimpse of the Pacific Ocean in the distance … absolutely beautiful.. We do a pit stop at Capira (“…where the people are friendly, and make good cheese!!”) for a bathroom break and to buy beers for the rest of the trip. We get to the resort (Royal Decameron) just before sunset and check in … about 10 minutes and the bags delivered to our room in our building (the place is big … about 852 rooms in 49 3 story buildings on two levels, garden view and ocean). We come through the main lobby and from the top of the stairs leading down to the ocean side (88 stairs, more on that in a later post) you can see an island in the distance, beaches that go on forever …. ( there’s roughly 48 miles of beach stretching along the coastline at that point). The sunsets are beautiful, the food is pretty good, and the next day we just spend wandering around the resort (10 pools and 10 restaurants) and the surrounding area … Noriega’s old summer mansion, now in ruins … the little village of Farallon down the hill … a couple of souvenir stores and vendors on the beach … and Woody’s Restaurant … (pretty much an institution now … 4 or more franchises) . The 7 days (really 6 whole days and then travel time) goes pretty fast … we booked two excursions … one to explore Lake Gatun, the other to Panama City and the Canal Zone … and as these both involve two hours travelling there and two hours back … they make for an all day adventure. Lake Gatun was pretty cool … the second largest man made lake in the world (Lake Meade is the largest) … on the way there we learned that pineapples don’t grow on trees (..”on your left one of our many pineapple plantations …” ..”where, where, I don’t see them on the trees?? “… “… duh, they grow in the ground”) and we took launches ( long skinny motorized boats) around the many islands in the lake … got to see crocodiles, birds, monkeys (tiny little capuchins that would jump on the boats …”get him off me, get him off me!!) … large freighters and cruise ships going through the canal zone. Had lunch on a big barge with Captain Mike and his assorted pets (pythons, crocs, birds … Captain Mike is no longer there, something to do with immigration). All in all, a pretty good day … and we got to stop at Capira again on the way back (“… people are friendly, yadda yadda). Two days later we went on the Panama City tour … that was pretty impressive. Panama City (population approx. 2 million) is divided into 3 different sectors … Antigua Ciudad, the original city … ruins now … destroyed by Captain Morgan around 1678 .. Casco Viejo, where people moved afterwards and still live .. and Panama Nuevo, with all the skyscrapers and modern buildings. We toured through Casco Viejo (which a lot of the old buildings were being renovated at the time, all done now) … saw the old city hall, cathedrals, the Altar of Gold (pretty good story about that) had lunch in a Hard Rock Café in one of the biggest malls I’ve ever been in, and finished up with the Miraflores Visitor Center at the pacific side of the panama canal locks. That was pretty impressive … and strangely enough, the one ship we saw coming through was a Celebrity cruise ship, the Infinity. I say strangely enough because we had already booked our next trip, a cruise, for February 2008 with Celebrity. It was like … a sign … that we were fated to be with Celebrity … and we have been for 12 more cruises and counting. It was a long day, but a pretty good one, and we headed home to Decameron … stopping of course in Capira (…where the people are friendly, yadda, yadda …). We really enjoyed our week in Panama … we met great people … Kelly learned Finnish (long story, but a good one) … had great food … and it started our love affair with Central America … (“El Salvador?? Who the heck would go to El Salvador?? … Guatemala?? You kidding me?? )
“I'm aware that not all kids can pick up and fly to Panama. I'm very lucky.” Jenna Bush