Going home

Sitting at the Tocumen airport in Panama waiting for my flight to take off. Woke up at 5am this morning, bleary-eyed, with a slight sangria headache, probably because I forgot to buy water (or local beer as a souvenir, damn!) to drink last night, meaning, earlier this morning. Uff...after the lazy sun dappled last few days at Bocas, Panama City in one night was a frenzied affair involving angry taxi drivers swerving crazily through the streets, and a whirlwind tour of the old city, Casco Viejo. The buildings were muy nice, but the sun had set more than an hour ago and my teeny flash wasn't going to cut it. So we just walked and talked, and looked out for muggers hiding in the small dark alleys.

Since I was in Latin America, really wanted to check out the local nightlife. After all, have been listening to lots of salsa, bachata, etc over the radio, in taxicabs, spilling out of cafes...how hard could it be to find a place with live salsa band and great dancing to watch huh? As it turned out, it was pretty hard. The one name I got off the web was closed for the past year, and the security guard on the street recommended another place which Gideon refused to enter, as he had gone in last night, and found it filled with deafening music, unfriendly bouncers, and worst of all, scantily-clad women with appreciably enhanced assets. Wandered the side streets for a while, which were filled with Chinese restaurants, before admitting defeat. We did find a nice restaurant that had live guitar music which was really good, and excellent sangria, so the night wasn't a total loss, heh. But I still don't believe that isn't a single nice salsa place in the city!