Panama City

Panama City is also only a transit point for me to Colombia. My plan is to find a yacht that brings me to Cartagena but in the first 2 days I realize that it wont be as easy as I thought. September/October is the worst time of the rain season and the low number of travellers makes it difficult to find a boat that leaves straight away. My sights are set on Colombia and I cant see myself hanging around in Panama City and play the waiting game and so after 3 days I decide to book a flight and fly out the next day on the 28.09.10. On Monday, a day before my departure I take a walk through the city in order to find a bookstore where I could get a LP for South America. On the day I arrived in the hostel I had the chance to exchange my LP for Central America for South America but I stupidly left the book on the shelf thinking no one else could be interested and a few hours later it was gone to a Norwegian couple. Bad luck!!! But what can you do and so I take a taxi to the old part in Panama City (Cajero Viejo) and from there walk for 4 hours from one end to another. On the first sight Panama City reminds me of Barcelona with its climate and the sky line. The city is very clean and pretty. I have never been in a city where so many sky scrapers are build. It is astonishing on one side but shocking on the other. 1 million people live in Panama City, which is a third of the Panamas population but those apartment blocks are not made for them. They will be home to rich foreigners, mainly from the USA. As the only country in Central America Panama has the Dollar as its currency which only shows its drive towards the USA. For rich Americans with yachts this is a perfect place to be with the Panama canal connecting the Pacific side with the Caribbean and so they buy themselves apartments here to have a place to stay on their journeys. Very convenient for them but it makes Panama City for me a soulless place without any kind of identity. Only at the beginning of my walk when I am in a poorer district I can see some indigenous females wearing traditional clothes but when I enter the sky line districts Panama City becomes an undistinguished place. In this districts I am almost the only person on the streets even though its afternoon. No one here walks, everybody sits in their air conditioned cars, travelling from one spot to another. The scenery is almost eery and at the same time depressing. Even though I have no idea what its like to live here I cant imagine it to be very exciting. Even with a good job, which you certainly can find it due to the huge amount of banks, related industries and service agencies, one would end up living in one of those apartment houses. 14 floor, room number 1427, 2 bed room apartment with view on the sea. Sounds perfect but I imagine it to be extremely lonely! As I continue my walk I am struggling to find a bookstore. I try it in different sopping malls (all huge and modern) but not one of them has even one book store. The same on the streets – not one store that sells books. I find it very shocking since we are here not in Nicaragua where people neither can read nor can afford to buy books. Here in Panama City people, especially foreigners, are educated and literate but no one seems to be interested in buying and reading books. At the end I give up and return to my hostel without the LP. All I have seen during that 4 hours makes me clear that there is no reason to come back to this place again.