Page 12 - Panama Review

“ARE WE THERE YET?”
Then this happened ...
By this time it was after midnight and once again, the first gentleman miraculously
appeared from thin air. He told the great English-speaking gentlemen that we spoke to
in Spanish, that the young lady had to go off site to pick up the rental car from another
location and she is on her way back. Fifteen minutes later, she finally returned.
As we were about to leave, we put the address of the hotel in the smart phone. For
some reason, it would not operate correctly. My wife in her wisdom says, let’s go get a
map from the attendant to guide us. Guess what? As it turns out, the map was in
Spanish and they had no maps in English. Luckily, at least so we thought, the GPS
kicked in and we were on our way. What we later discovered about Panama, they are
experiencing tremendous growth and construction sites are everywhere. From new
roads and bridges to the reconstruction of the Old Town area, the place is being
remodeled. As such, GPS coordinates are not as reliable as they should be. We found
that out the hard way, as we ended up in some rather nefarious looking communities
near the airport. We could not find the main thoroughfare that would lead us to the
highway, which was supposedly a straight shot to our hotel. We literally kept riding
around about a five-mile radius returning to the same location because the coordinates
of the GPS were all out of whack. We bravely stopped at gas stations and grated-
window stores to ask for directions. “No hablas Ingles” was the common refrain.
What we had noticed, with all the construction taking place at night, there was a heavy
police presence. We finally pulled over and asked three policemen, “Hablas Ingles?”
Finally, there was someone who spoke English. We sighed with relief. However, his
English was muy poco (very little). Between the five of us, we managed to explain that
we needed to get to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in downtown Panama City. One of the
policemen waved us to follow them in their truck. They actually led us with lights
shinning and sirens wailing about two miles from where we kept circling around to the
freeway and finally we were on our way. By this time we were too tired to be tired.
We actually started laughing and became extremely giddy. We were relieved that
everything turned out better than we thought. My wife called the hotel to alert them
we were on our way and we should be there in about 20-minutes. They told us no
rush.
Then this happened ...
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