The honeymoon. This journal isn't nearly as interesting as the journal I did for Europe, largely because instead of the travels of a lone, semi-budget concious backpacker getting into ridiculous situations over the course of a couple months, this is a journal of an exhausted couple of newlyweds relaxing in style after the wedding. Enjoy.
 6/25 Miami 6/26 Isla Colon 6/27 Isla Colon 6/28 Isla Colon 6/29 Boquete 6/30 Boquete 7/01 Panama City |
7/1 - Panama City, Panama We got up early, to see what the weather was like because we were hoping to do the canopy tour. The weather looked very windy and rainy, so we went back to sleep, assuming there wouldn’t be one. It turned out that they did go through with the 8 am tour, but it was too late at that point. After checking out, we went into town to get some breakfast. Over greasy eggs, disgustingly fatty bacon, and some moderately tasty corn cakes, we decided to attempt the 11 am canopy tour. We had originally decided that we couldn't do the tour because we had to catch a plane in David at 5, which was an hour's drive away. The tour was supposed to be over at 2, so we said what the hell. It turned out to be quite worth it. Now, when I had heard about this before we went, I was somehow picturing walkways through the forest canopies and an actual guided tour. This was nothing at all like that; it was more like a low impact adventure sport. We got suited up with harnesses  in the office in town, and we piled into a military style transport truck to go up to the mountain. The road was steep and somewhat less than paved (read, not at all) so the ride was extraordinarily bumpy. We got to a stopping point where we had safety procedures explained to us and then we got into a smaller, more nimble truck to go the rest of the way. The truck was at about 45 degrees most of the way (one of the guides was actually hanging off the back of the truck in a harness). We hiked a short ways down from where we stopped on the road and came to our first platform.
This was a wooden platform built around a rather large tree with a steel cable extending from the tree to another platform about a hundred feet away. We watched several guides go across first, and then the first of our group to go across was of course the very eager Kirstin. They hook three carabiners into a roller that hooks onto the cable, and then send you off, preferably screaming. I got to go right after Kirstin, and it was quite a ride (and that was just the first one).
We went through 12 cables in all ranging from short hops through the trees to long ones across valleys. We were responsible for controlling our speed on the cables by braking with the leather pads on our hands. This of course means you could be going too fast or too slow when approaching the next platform. Only one guy in the group came in to fast on one cable and they had a nifty forced brake that stopped him rather suddenly at about 15 feet out. More often than not people came in too slow (too much braking) and at that point you have to pull yourself along the rest of the way (I had to do this several times).
One entertaining side effect of doing this all in the rain was that the moisture combined with the grease on the rollers meant that we were all covered in black grease, head to toe. I ended up losing one of contact on the way due to having a glob of grease end up in my eye. I also ruined a pair of pants and a shirt. Fun times.
We got back to town at 2:00, right on schedule, so after a quick wash up to make ourselves vaguely presentable we headed down the road to David. It was a pleasant drive that didn't quite take the full hour we were told it would. After a few wrong turns, we found our way to the airport. Returning the car was interesting, because the guy didn't speak any English and I had forgotten to fill the tank. That and I'm sure he was wondering what the hell we'd been doing to get so dirty (I think he did the damage check on the car a little more suspiciously as a result). We cleaned up a little more in the airport bathrooms, watched people watching France beat Brazil on a tiny portable TV, and eventually got on the plane (somewhat larger than the last, but still not a jumbo jet) back to Panama City. From there we took a taxi to our hotel near the airport, with a brief detour for the driver to pick up his son from getting a haircut. We finished out the evening and more or less the honeymoon itself unceremoniously with dinner in the hotel restaurant. Then off to bed before the hell day of travel with three separate flights.
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