Adventures in the USA: Denver, Colorado (to Panama City, Panama)

April 2, 2015

The weather was lousy when we woke up--snowy and sleety and cold, but we headed for Red Rocks anyway.  

Actually I missed the exit off the interstate, so we headed west further than we had to, but it ended up being the scenic route as we were well towards the mountains before I could turn around.

Once at the park we almost immediately ran into a bunch of deer along the parking lot.

We went for two short walks and saw lots of red rocks, of course; some interesting plants, including at least two kinds of cacti; a tunnel through the rock; and, besides the deer, rabbits and birds, including a robin and some blue birds we didn't recognize.

There's our car, way down below.

Then we stopped by to see the Red Rock Amphitheater, a depression-era project that created a pretty epic open-air concert venue.  It's not quite the Hoover Dam, but a fairly impressive project nonetheless.

From Red Rocks State Park we drove to the other side of Denver, where we dropped the car and shuttled to the airport for our 13:10 flight to Panama City.

The flight was close to six hours, but was actually a pretty nice flight, because my brother and I each got an entire 3-seat row to ourselves!

We were amazed getting off the plane in Panama at how hot and humid it was.  I had arranged a ride with the hostel, and we were met by Alexis and his friend Isabella.  Alexis is a Chinese immigrant to Panama and Isabella is a Taiwanese graduate student on exchange to Panama to study Spanish.  They were pretty interesting to talk to during the drive, which was about one hour long from the international airport (PTY) to Casco Viejo.

We learned, for example, that there are lots of Chinese in Panama, and they originally came here to work on the railroad, just as in Canada.

It's holy week (semana santa), so Casco Viejo was hopping with churchgoers and partiers.  We checked in at Magnolia hostel, and then went for a bit of a walk around the neighborhood.  There wasn't much to see in the dark and all, but we did get some drinks and fruit at a little grocery store and sat in the Plaza de la Independencia in front of the Iglesia Catedral, which was teeming with Good Friday throngs.