A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA

I knew two things about Panama before we arrived:

1. Van Halen have a song called "Panama"
2. There is a canal in Panama.

The Van Halen song isn't that great - It goes "Panama... Panama-ah". To be fair, they get top marks for a very focussed chorus but when you consider how good the first Van Halen album was then it's a big step down in quality as far as I'm concerned. The US army weren't quite as fussy apparently and played the song repeatedly at high volumes in order to torture General Noriega as he hid in the Vatican embassy in Panama city.

As for the canal:
Dan Cohen, old friend and mentor, explained to me once that A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA is palindromic. This was quite an interesting chat for me and Dan; usually we spent lunchtimes discussing whether there is any need for 3/4 length trousers, the benefits of crossing the road diagonally and Dan's theory that it only makes sense to read popular books at least 2 years after everyone else has read them.

Another UBS colleague told me that of all the places in the world, he would most like to see the Panama Canal before he dies. His wife and kids thought he was a bit batty as I recall and I have to say that I was on their side at the time. Having visited the canal - or more specifically one of its three big locks - I think he might have a point. 77km long, it took 34 years and 27,500 lives to carve a path through the rainforest and connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. All very impressive and now they are expanding it to take even larger ships.

Other than visiting the canal, we hung around in Panama city for a couple of days - A very busy city with quite a cool dillapadated old town but otherwise not hugely interesting. We then took a bus to the mountain town of Boquete - ranked as the fourth best place on the planet for a cheap retirement by the US retirement magazine: "Departure Lounge". Boquete is a mediumly-charming town set amongst beautiful mountains covered in cloud forest and coffee plantations. The principal attractions for visitors are hiking, coffee plantation tours, cheap beer and American junk food. Mrs R and I achieved 2,3 and 4 but were dissuaded from our inaugral hiking expedition by 2000 inches of rain falling in 12 hours. Apparently the rainy season has come early to Panama this year.

Spooky castle, Boquete

We are now in very hot and super expensive Costa Rica. After 4 buses and a taxi we have not quite reached our target destination and so are hanging out in a sleepy town called Sierpe waiting for tomorrow morning's boat to take us to the rainforest town of Bahia Drake. Fingers-crossed for lots of wild animals and not too many mosquito bites when we get there.

That's it for now.
S&R