Mugging, bathing and sightseeing in Panama City

As we want to truly discover the heart of Panama City, we thought today it was time to try to be mugged...Yes we believe it is important to evaluate the safety of a city to have a clear idea of it : we are serious investigators!
So as we were trying to find the bus station for the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal which are located 13km away from the Capital, we got into a dodgy looking district (which is actually in front of the Justice court..how ironic is that?). After walking 30 meters in this street, a woman made us sign and told us something in spanish that we later interpreted as "Go away stupid foreigners, it s a dangerous place here". We then turned back to go to the main street (still looking for this secret bus station) when a guy jumped on me (=Amelie) and tried to rip off my bag! What a disgrace! My handbag is a cute little hand made bag with a colourful chicken on it that I bought in Bocas del Toro just a few days ago. I managed to hold on to it and it seems this surprised the robber as I finally managed to save my bag. Weirdly, my first feeling was not fear but anger. I screamed a majestic "F..k you!" to the guy, at this moment I realised that this guy could actually be more dangerous than me and we ran off. We don t quite know what Peter was doing during this time:placing bets in his head on the outcome of the bag fight? Well after this 30 seconds rush of adrenaline, I was actually quite shocked...I have now recovered from this unfortunate incident so it is now time to talk about bit more about this cool city.

Next to Panama City, there are a few islands and we went to visit one of them: Isla Taboga. This island is the sunday get-away of the Panamian city inhabitants. The boat was full of local families: we don t see that many tourists here. The island is really pretty and after being in the past the home sweet home of some English pirates, it became at the beginning of the 20th century the quarantinee zone for canal workers. By the way, Paul Gauguin, the painter was there in the sanatorium so I was not the 1st French on this island.

In case you are wondering, we finally managed to get a bus (actually 2) to the Miraflores Lock.
The Canal of Panama has 3 sets of locks and those one are the one on the Pacific ocean's side. Next to them there is as well a visitor centers where we could learn more about the history and the technology of the Canal. A few interesting facts:
-this gigantic project was first started by a French company (same than the one of the Suez Canal) which failed mainly because of the Malaria and Yellow fever that killed more than 22000 workers.
- It was inaugurated in 19174 and was operated until 1999 by the USA
- In 2006, there was a referundum in Panama on the future of the Canal: the population agreeded masively in enlarging the Canal which allow more traffic and bigger ships to cross the 2 oceans.
- The smallest toll was paid in the 1920's by a swimmer for 0.36$ (80km)
- The largest toll was paid 3 weeks ago: 375 000$