So Luke and I were terrorizing Panama City. With only the occasional night out in the city, it’s easy to get carried away. Drinks, food, people, horns, trash, sewage, and everything that comes with visiting a big city. It’s kind of a culture shock, but I’ve spent enough time in Panama City that it feels familiar.
Panama City
First stop the other night was a bar with, you guessed it, pizza. And beer, of course. Stop number two was a rooftop bar. Honestly it reminded me of being in Austin at a couple of our favorite hangouts. Nice place, expensive though. The gringos here stick out like sore thumbs, us included. The good news is that we were able to pick out the Canadian girls without trying too hard.
The Canadians agreed that we should leave the rooftop bar. I closed the tab, we went back to the pizza joint where Luke and I started. They were having a special on beer in a bucket – so we did that. We really liked the beer buckets and being a few drinks into the night, decided the beer buckets would look especially nice on S/V NOMAD. I took a trip to the head, and when I’d returned the Canadian girls had stashed the beer bucket for safe-keeping. Over the rest of the night, we took a couple of cabs, shut down a swimming pool, and eventually woke up in our beds with thinner wallets. One report has us back about 4AM, another after 5:30AM. The good news is that we did manage to keep that beer bucket. And it does look really nice on S/V NOMAD. That was a damn expensive beer bucket though.
When Luke finally started stirring around it was about 11AM, I’d been awake for a couple hours but was having trouble moving. In theory, we were leaving the city that day – heading back to NOMAD and doing some shopping along the way. Of course, when you start your day with a headache at 11AM, it’s unlikely that you’re going to do hours of reprovisioning, boat shopping, and then drive across a country to load up a dinghy to move all of said supplies to your sailing house. Spoiler alert: we didn’t go back that day.
Instead we spent the day drinking beer at the pool. I resolved to rest and not stress my eye – which was feeling better, but certainly wasn’t healed. That night we ordered pizza (seeing a pattern here?), played cards, and just hung out. I was planning an early bedtime, but I met an interesting French chap and we began discussing the differences in the French and US militaries (both of us having served our respective countries), which led us to a discussion about hour the way our language is constructed determines so much about our culture. I’d explain, but it’s late-night beer-drinking discussion. So I retired late.
Luke was stoked about seeing a sunrise from a hill overlooking the city. He tried to convince me to wake up at 5AM with him and go hiking, but that sounded remarkably like those physical training sessions in the military that we did while hungover, with no sleep. I don’t remember those fondly, so I passed – plus somebody had to have their shit together tomorrow for the shopping marathon and the driving chaos.
Luke’s alarm (my phone) woke me up. It sucked, I tried to go back to sleep, no dice. Then an hour or so later Luke showed up. He wanted to talk, I wanted to rest. I gave up and got up. A quick breakfast, a cup of coffee with some (now) friends at the hostel – and we said our goodbyes. Next up – shopping, driving across a country, and getting back to boat-world (and boat work).
Panama City
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