Locked out in Bocas, Homeless patrons in Panama City, and planning for San Blas... Can we have that "to go"?

Today's adventure started before last night's even ended... Around 6am Amanda went to bed, leaving Sam and I to stay up chatting in our hammocks at Mondo. A little while later we thought it would be best to get to bed as well before the Mondo staff started getting the place ready for the day, so Sam went to bed, and I headed to my room as well only to find a locked door... After knocking on the door for a solid 20 minutes I went to Sam and Dov's room to see if I could at least wake one of them up. Dov woke up after a few knocks (Sam was already out cold of course!) and decided to give me his key to use to open up my room... I couldn't give him too much of a hard time for this since I think he was pretty much sleep walking at this point, so I just entertained the idea and watched as he tried to key into my room with his room key.

When that didn't work he had a genius idea of using his snorkel to shout Amanda's name through the crack in the bottom of the door. Imagine the sight: me standing there behind Dov watching him on his hands and knees, butt up in the air, shouting "Amandaaaaaa!" into a snorkel. At this point I was so amused I didn't even really mind anymore that I was still locked out of my room. We went back outside to get to his room and I watched as he sat on his bed brainstorming, noticing big fat raindrops starting to fall from the sky. I was about two seconds away from asking Dov if I could just crash in his and Sam's room for the night (that would be a cozy double bed with the three of us!) when he had yet another brilliant idea. He said "My alarm wakes me up, maybe it'll wake Amanda up too!" So we proceeded to set his alarm for a minute later, and went back to my room and slid his alarm under the door (this is the same door that had enough room underneath it for an actual crab to crawl in as well). A few seconds later his alarm went off and voila! Amanda woke up! Dazed and confused, she opened the door and Dov and I went our separate ways to get a few hours of sleep.

Two and a half hours later I woke up to the sound of heavy rain, which was refreshing after days of about 100 degree heat, but also surprising and slightly confusing since we had had absolutely perfect weather up until that point. I drifted back to sleep for a little while until Amanda and I woke up and started to get our stuff together and check out of Mondo Taitu. Dov had woken up early and had done some yoga in the morning (I was thoroughly impressed!), but I had to go wake up Sam to see if we could keep our stuff in their room for the day until we flew out later... We finally got everyone rallied to go and Dov, Sam, Haley, Amanda, and I headed to Lili's Cafe for an excellent brunch on the water.

On our way back from brunch we walked down Calle 3, the main drag, on the look out for hammocks for Amanda. We found her a fabulous Panamanian hammock for only $15, picked up our stuff back at Mondo's, and then walked behind the boys who rode a tandem bike (with a flat tire) all the way to the airport. Sam and Dov were, of course, singing their much practiced rendition of "Ain't No Sunshine" the entire way to the airport, attracting attention from locals as they swerved all over the road in their tandem bike (Dov has a video I took of this feat, which I'll have to upload at a later date). As we came around the corner on the unpaved road Amanda and I caught our first glimpse of our airplane; a toy, twin engine plane that looks like one you'd find under a Christmas tree because it was so small. We exchanged nervous glances which had become commonplace during our transportation adventures from a few days before, and kept trucking towards the airport. We said our goodbyes to the boys who waited outside to (hopefully) see our plane take off, and then proceeded into the airport to check in and pick up our heavy plastic boarding passes. While hanging out in the waiting room which consisted of a total of about 30 seats, we were pleasantly surprised to see the tiny plane take off to another destination, meaning we wouldn't be boarding that one... We would have to wait to see what would come for us! A few minutes later a slightly larger (and more reassuring) plane came, and we made our way out to the runway with our passports and unfamiliar chunks of plastic that would hopefully get us on the plane back to Panama City.

We arrived at the regional airport in Panama City about an hour later, and were happy to quickly find a taxi and be on our way back to Luna's Castle. As we made our way down the street the taxi driver and I chatted in Spanish, and I told him how we were planning on going to the San Blas Islands tomorrow. He asked if we had purchased our tickets already and that's when it hit us... Our original plan was to buy our tickets at the airport as soon as we had landed, but I guess we were so excited that we made it back to Panama City without any glitches we completely forgot to stop at the Air Panama or Aeroperlas counters. Our taxi driver brought us back to the airport, only for us to find that both airlines were already closed... Bummer for us! We got back into the taxi and made our way to Luna's.

By the time we got to Luna's we only had a few hours to figure out how we were going to get to San Blas tomorrow, unpack from Bocas and pack for San Blas, find dinner, and get some sleep. Thankfully the staff at Luna's is incredible in accommodating confused travelers, and arranged for a jeep to come pick us up at 5am tomorrow morning. We booked a flight to come back to the city on Thursday so we can have one full day in the city to explore the Canal and any other attractions we haven't visited so far. Then it was time to find dinner... We had heard about a place called Cafe Coca-Cola's which was down Avenida Central, which apparently had to die for fried rice, so we thought we would check it out. We made our way to the cafe which was only a few blocks away, but then had to find an ATM as well since we were clean out of cash and the cafe didn't take credit cards. We mistakenly walked right past the ATM that was next to the cafe, and continued to walk way too far into old city looking for a bank. We started to get some bad vibes about the part of town where we were walking and gave ourselves to the end of that block to find an ATM. If not, we would have to turn around and get food somewhere else that took cards. Well we were in luck! There was not one, but TWO cash machines at the end of this block. We got our cash and hi tailed it out of that part of town.

We rushed back to Cafe Coca-Cola excited for the food that awaited us. As we ordered our food we realized this was a popular hang out for locals... Particularly older, disheveled, homeless locals. We had been planning on eating there instead of taking our food back to Luna's, but the final straw was when a decrepit old man with a diseased and droopy, bloody eye sat down next to us. I had been too busy darting the never ending stare of an obese patron sitting behind Amanda to notice the newcomer that had sat down next to us until Amanda pointed him out... We immediately changed our order "Para llevar" (To go!), and only controlled our laughter at how ridiculous this scene was by the sobering realization that this wasn't the safest dinner option we could have chosen for the night. We got our food and made it back to Luna's in record time, where we were still so grossed out it was hard to enjoy our food.

Now we're heading to bed to wake up at 4:40am, to take a 4-hour jeep ride through the jungle to the San Blas Islands! This whole waking up early thing is getting easier and easier every day... Especially with the promise of this at the end of our adventure tomorrow!