Articles / Panama Tourist Guide
Tags: bocas_del_toro, boquete, breathtaking_country, chiriqui, David, hotspot, mild_climate, national_scope, Panama, panama_city, peak_temperatures, rafting_adventures, republic_of_panama, spanish_conquistador, water_rafting
November 27, 2008
With an extremely proud sense of heritage and some of the most impressive vistas in the country, the province of Chiriquí is widely regarded as a place with autonomy of its own… and for a while, that assumption might’ve been a reality. With its capital in David, the province of Chiriquí is divided into 13 districts: Alanje, Barú, Boquerón, Boquete, Bugaba, David, Dolega, Gualaca, Remedios, Renacimiento, San Félix, San Lorenzo, and Tolé. It’s located on the west side of the republic of Panama, limiting north with the province of Bocas del Toro and the Ngobe-Buglé native reserve, west with the republic of Costa Rica, east with the province of Veraguas and south with the Pacific Ocean.
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Articles / Español / Memoirs / Panama Tourist Guide / Video
Tags: cabs, charter_buses, chump_change, culture_shock, diablo-rojo, emergency_doors, gross_understatement, occasional_bus, panama_city, public_transport_system, youtube
November 12, 2008
I was driving down towards my home one fateful Saturday night when I unexpectedly got into a car crash. Luckily no one got hurt and all damages were cosmetic, but the crash triggered a series of events that ultimately left me without a car for a number of weeks, having to rely on the Panamanian public transport system to take me places. Considering I left cabs and buses when I started driving about half a decade ago, this new status quo had some degree of culture shock packed within it. What follows is a reprise of the trials and tribulations of getting around in Panama City when you’re on nothing more than your own two feet with chump change to get you in the occasional bus or a cab, and the pros/cons of the current system. The funky colors and highly inaccurate likenesses painted on their emergency doors are about all that’s attractive about them, and cabs can come in all shapes, sizes, creeds and levels of danger. To say I will enjoy the catharsis this piece will bring is a gross understatement.
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Articles / Panama Tourist Guide / Porto Diao and Friends / Video
Tags: bella_vista, crimson_ghost, halloween_costume, halloween_parties, internet_portals, midnight_fireworks, october_31st, Panama, panama_city, Porto Diao and Friends, portodiao, rebels_motorcycle_club, social_calendar, social_phenomena, Video, vimeo, zombie_horde, zombie_movies, zombie_walk
October 22, 2008
Looking for something different to do this Halloween? If you’re tired of the club scene and Halloween parties that appear in the social calendar every October 31st, then you are invited to participate in a special event that will make the “dead” rise and walk the earth for one night only.
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Articles / Blog / Panama Tourist Guide
Tags: all-in-latino, altered-states, conscious_state, construction_boom, cure_cancer, cuts_and_bruises, deep_meditation, delicious_apple_pie, driftaway, epsom_salts, flotation_devices, isolation_tanks, monumental_task, muscle_pain, Panama, panama_city, public_buses, scientific_explanation, sci_fi, voldemort, william-hurt
October 10, 2008
In a place as hectic as Panama City, where the traffic is horrible, everyone seems like they’re a nudge away from popping a vein and getting things done may seem like a monumental task, not unlike that of Odysseus in “The Odyssey,” it seems imperative to find a place to relax. Most people go far away from the capital in search for the slices of papaya heaven spread across this beautiful, delicious apple pie most commonly referred as “Panama.”
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Articles / Panama Tourist Guide
Tags: almirante, Bastimentos, boat_ride, Bocas del Toro, Bocas Town, bocas_del, city_slicker, dive_bars, fertile_soil, geographical_structure, heaven_on_earth, humble_folk, intents_and_purposes, Isla Colon, mainland, middle_class, natives, panama_city, pan_american_highway, personal_opinion, piece_of_heaven, Red Frog Beach, role_playing_videogame, unsuspecting_tourists
September 25, 2008
If there’s one thing a tourist will take back to their homeland once they leave Bocas del Toro, it definitely has to be they way how it manages to change the way you look at life, all for the better. For all intents and purposes, the best way I can describe the allure of Bocas is that the entire province falls under the distinct geographical structure of a role-playing videogame, or RPG for short. You have your mainland in Almirante, mostly a port town that used to be highly prosperous decades ago due to the fertile soil and banana processing companies. Due to worker unions and other ass-backwards decisions made by the very people who lived in the area, Almirante now is nothing more than a lower-middle class port town that tourists on a budget must pass through in order to get to one of the top destinations of the region, favorite to both you and old: Isla Colón, only a short boat ride away from the mainland.
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Articles / Panama Tourist Guide / Video
Tags: awesome_concept, CNN, esposas de alquiler, female_counterpart, former_canal_zone, franquicias, handymen, latin_american_country, maids, maridos de alquiler, morbidity, Panama, Panamanians, panama_city, plumbing, sexual_context, spanish_name, youtube, youtube_clip
September 20, 2008
In the past couple of weeks, just for kicks, I talked about this with a couple of friends and loved ones, every conversation degrading into a discussion on what would the rates be for a “happy ending.” I’m not going to talk about the amount of time my mom was able to mine the hell out of this joke (answer: three days) and much less how far she went (hint: Gorilla Mask, anyone?), but it’s safe to say that everyone I talked to had a field day with the name of the company and their imaginations flew so, so far.
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Articles / Panama Tourist Guide / Video
Tags: azuero, Azuero Peninsula, carnaval, carnivals, Chitré, city_slicker, enthusiastic_energy, foreigner, inexpensive_restaurants, las_tablas, luxuries, Panama Tourist Guide, Panama Travel, panama-tourism, panama_city, panama_tour, panama_travel, public_transportation, strip_malls, taxi_driver, tourism_package, tourist_destination, transportation_situation, youtube
August 29, 2008
One would think they have entered Prozac Nation upon arrival but that first impression is not something that can be held accountable to the residents of Chitré; on the contrary, the problem is that many of us that are so used to the hectic, smog-dominated city life that visiting such a tranquil place is nothing short of a system shock. You can literally feel the darkness of your soul slowly peel away the further you venture into the city. The air feels cleaner, everyone says “hello” to each other and, unlike Panama City and its traffic, modeled after the southwest ghetto district of the 7th ring of hell, drivers are actually courteous on the road. You can actually tell how many people from the capital are visiting Chitré by the way they’re driving… because they’re so damn rude.
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Articles / Panama Tourist Guide / Video
Tags: appendage, beers, business_appointments, calle-uruguay, cornucopia, cover_charges, crazy_adventures, diao, gangbangers, glitz_and_glamour, hell_street, la-casona, labor_day, mafia_style, many_a_time, mentality, nightclubs, nighttime_entertainment, night_clubs, panama-news, panama_city, party_animal, Porto Diao and Friends, rainy_day, sahara, sexual_healing, the-gallery, the-godfather, Video, yamile-moral, youtube
May 7, 2008
Due to an oddball series of events that I dare not discuss here, I found myself perusing the nightlife of my fair, beautiful Panama City in search of fun, sexual healing and assaults to my senses that can only be found under the multicolored lights of the many nightclubs that pepper the town. My hard-partying [...]
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Articles / Memoirs / Panama Tourist Guide
Tags: 1989-invasion, Articles, calle-uruguay, entertainment_field, german_dialect, german_pub, Hard-Rock-Cafe, hunger, invasion_of_panama, Memoirs, multicentro, Panama Tourist Guide, panamanian, panama_city, pub_restaurant, Rock-Cafe, Steinbock, tacos, u_s_army
December 5, 2007
Oftentimes I find myself in the unenviable position that forces me to make a choice in regards to post-drinking eatables, and since I’m not one to be rolling in excess the options before me can be somewhat limiting at, say, 2AM. I recently found myself in that particular crossroads: I was at one of my [...]
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Blog / Español / Panama Tourist Guide / Porto Diao and Friends
Tags: almanaque_azul, artefacto, art_and_culture, Blog, blog-radio, blogger, blogs-panama, butterfest, cool_beans, Culture, entourage, Español, flip, gonzalo-horna, guayabera, hare_krishna, horna, jorge-yau, krishna_culture, local_art, lovely_ladies, lucho-romero, mp3, music_realm, Panama, Panama Tourist Guide, panama_city, Porto Diao and Friends, radio-10, radio_10, Rob-Rivera, short_and_sweet, spicy_chicken_wings, umm_yeah, yau
January 30, 2007
This will be short and sweet because I’m still feeling the after effects of eating ridiculously spicy chicken wings and I’ll wrap this up here to put my ass in a bucket of ice-cold water: Last night an entourage of bloggers composed of Jorge Yau, Gonzalo Horna, Butter, Flip and myself were invited to Artefacto’s [...]
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