Panama 

Panama City, a city full of skyscrapers which is growing and growing very fast. We spent 5 days in Panama City and after that we did a 3-day sailing trip on the San Blas Islands. A lot of tourists attractions are quite close to each other and it doesn’t cost much time to visit them.

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Let us start with Panama City

It is quite easy to enter the country, with a German passport, you don’t need a visa and you don’t have to pay a fee. A taxi brought us directly to the Hard Rock Hotel.

A lot of people call it „The Dubai of Central America“. By the way, the best view is from the Hard Rock Hotel

Facts about Panama City

• The population of Panama is currently 4,2 million, but already 1,5 mil. living in Panama City of course tendency rising.
• The biggest income is the Panama Canal, the hugest project ever.
• Casco Viejo is the small old town of Panama City with a lot of old houses of the former french colonial time. They restore these houses with a lot of effort and afterward they sell or rent it out as luxury apartments. They building a complete new quarter with an old charm.
• Panama has the 3rd largest harbor for import and export

The skyline of Panama City

         The Panama Canal

One of the most complex project in the history, which they were planning already 500 years ago. It was the idea from Kaiser Karl V to avoid the dangerous way through the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1999 the 82 kilometers long Panama Canal officially opened. Since ships from all over the world are passing the canal 24/7 the average income per day is around 5-7 million dollars a day.

But the ships are getting bigger and bigger, so Panama are building a second one so that the gigantic ships can pass the canal.

As we visited the canal we couldn’t admire any ships, although we were hoping to see a huge container ship from our home city Bremerhaven.

Power Couple

But we visited the museum and were watching a quite interesting movie which took 10 minutes about how they built the canal and how everything worked out, we got a lot of great information and it was very interesting.

The museum

Old City El Casco Viejo

Casco Viejo is the old town or the historical side of Panama City and the UNESCO declared it as a world heritage site. The front of all houses got a new fresh pastel-colored paint and we could really see that they want to change a lot.

Sometimes we could still see some unfinished buildings, but the city is also planning to renovate them and rent them out or sell them for an expensive price. We are sure, that the expectations for this quarter is quite high.

Panama City

A small trip to the Gamboa Rainforest

We picked the small monkey tour but we did not want to visit the Indian Village, because we made a couple of bad experiences. Most of the time it is a tourist ripe -off and absolutely not worth it.

We started our tour quite early in the morning at 7:30. Our guide was picking us up and brought us to the pier where the boat trip started. We drove along the Panama Canal with our small boat and got to admire a couple of really huge ships.

We had a lot of luck, that we were one of the first tourists so we had all the monkeys only for us. So our advice is to start your trip to the canal as early as possible.

Conclusion 

You should also carry a lot of small money and coins with you, because the taxi drivers don’t like to change at all means. You nearly have to force them, if you want your change back.

We didn´t experience any crime in this city. But people told us it is better to avoid to walk through the old town Casco Viejo at night.

We think 3-4 days for Panama City is really a good time for sightseeing. After that we can highly recommend to explore the area outside of Panama City, especially the San Blas Islands are quite great and worth to travel.

We are quite curious how the city looks like in ten years, because the city is really growing a lot.

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