Middle-aged flash packers

One of the massive positives of our trip to South Africa was no jet lag. I had forgotten the joys of being wide awake at 4am despite managing to stay awake well past 10.30pm. Having said that, jet lag is getting easier to handle as these days my mind quite enjoys waking in the middle of the night and ruminating on all sorts of things that seem utterly pointless once daylight arrives.

The difference with jet lag is you don’t feel tired in the slightest, and by 5am we were drinking coffee and planning our day.

We thought we’d be the first to breakfast but in spite of being at the restaurant on the dot of its opening at 7.30am, it was already full of other jet lagged Europeans and also bright eyed and bushy tailed Americans. No jet lag for the Yanks, they just like being up at unearthly hours, all cheery and annoying.

Breakfast was surprisingly good and once sated, we were off to explore the Metropolitan Natural Park.

Once again, we have been told a pack of lies about our travel destination. (This harks back to monkeys in Myanmar to name but one incident – see the blog for more details). We have been told Panamanians are super-friendly – not so, so far they’re ok but definitely not super-friendly; it’s very expensive- it isn’t; no charge at the national parks – untrue, they do; and the traffic is so bad in the city you won’t want to drive anywhere. This is a gross exaggeration but one I stupidly bought into and became obsessed with using buses and the metro. S went along with it, so we began researching how to catch a bus.

You may mock us, but this is not like the UK where you go to a bus stop, wait an interminable amount of time for a bus to appear, get on the bus, pay the driver and wait to be delivered to your destination. No, in Panama City, it is much, much more complicated.

First of all, you need to download the bus app which has various maps showing which bus goes where. Trying to make sense of these maps is like doing one of those logic puzzles where after 20 minutes of staring at it you are no further forward and are reminded of what a complete dummkopf you really are.

Next, you need to work out how to buy a ticket. You don’t, you buy a card that you have to load with money. But you can’t use a card to buy the card, you can only use cash. And you can only get these cards from certain places. Mysterious places that the internet seems reluctant to reveal. I was beginning to lose interest in this public transport malarkey but as I made such a big thing about it, I felt obliged to continue.

The concierge at the hotel desk suggested we get our card from the Metro station just down the road. He also gave us some bonus information- you can use the card for two people and as well as buses, it covers the metro trains – and toilets – too! Things were looking up.

We made our way to the metro and managed to decipher which hoops we had to jump through and eventually obtained a bus and metro card.

Sorted. Apart from finding the bus stop and working out which bus number applied to the one we had to catch. Our first attempt was an epic fail, resulting in a very nice lady telling us we were on the wrong bus and we’d be better off getting a taxi.

The next bus appeared to be the right one but the bus driver was unclear and rather impatient, resulting in S being a bit flustered and trying to use our hotel room card instead of the bus card. After much confusion, we managed to get ourselves off the bus and into the metropolitan Park Natural.

It did not disappoint. A lovely morning was passed, meandering through rain forest, craning our necks, looking for sloths and exotic birds.

We saw coatis, a deer, agoutis, birds (ask S what type, I have no idea) a sloth and a Jesus Christ lizard. I have seen one of the latter before – they literally run on top of the water. Their name comes either from the miracle of Jesus walking on the water or the exclamation from someone who saw the lizard bolt.

Our journey home was (I can hardly bear to say this) by taxi. $5. Took 10 minutes. Bus card now in bin.