What an early morning the 12 of us meet downstairs at the Florida Hotel and Conference Center at 5:15 a.m. to head to the Orlando International Airport. We arrived safely to the airport and were all super excited to for our Flight to Panama! Until, Copa Air's system went down and they had to manually check each of us in. Our flight is scheduled to depart at 8:04 a.m and at 7:45 we have just made it through customs. Myself, Marty and Kelli Fulkerson go running to our terminal to ensure that we do not miss our flight. We arrive and board the plane, to find out that our flight has been delayed. So the I-CAL Team is sitting on this plane anxiously waiting the time to depart for what seems like hours as we doze in and out of light sleep. I forgot to mention that we had not had breakfast at this time. So finally it is time to depart, and off we go! As the plane gets settled in we find out that we get BREAKFAST, amazing. Pancakes, fruit and a roll arent to bad on a plane, or maybe we were just hungry.
Finally we make it to Panama! As we approch the coastline, it is one of the most beautiful sights that you could see. We land, wait for a few minutes for a terminal to open and we unload from the plane, get our luggage and make it through customs. Our "Friend" who is serving as our Tour Guide and Translator was waiting for us, and took us to our hotel, which is right off of the Panama Canal. We then had lunch at a small outdoor resturant next to our hotel. As we all are trying to step out of our comfort zones we decided to try new food. I got Pork Chops Marslania (That could be spelled wrong), and if I may say so it was delicisio!
After lunch it began to rain, we learned quickly that the sun can be shinning bright one minute and then pouring down rain the next! So we go back to our hotel gather our umbrellas and head out to tour some of the city.
Our first stop was at the Panama City Fish Market. This is unlike anything that you would see in an American Fish Market. Located right on the ocean this is the Panamanians source of fresh fish. At this market you buy your fish in one location, take them to another, have them cleaned and you can even take them to the resturant to be cooked. The market was a large area where many "vendors" gathered and competed to sell fish all of which came off of similiar boats. Christopher told us that you walk around the market before buying your fish to find the best price. The standards of cleanliness were not as high as found in America but this was truly an amazement to me of how clean they were.
After our tour of the market we headed to Casco Veijo the Old Panama City for an amazing tour. We saw the ocean, the Presidents house, The Mayors house, the French Embassy, and many other historical figures that create the rich history of this country. While in the city we were able to visit the Catholic church. This may have been one of the most beautiful churches that I have ever seen personally. Amazing architecture and gold were the centerpeices of this great masterpeice. When Captain Morgan came to Panama to get gold the current Mayor already expected his arrival and had all of the gold in the city painted black so that it could not be recognized, it burned much of the city down and the gold was lost.
One experience today that was valuable was seeing the ghetto. We actually got to ride through the ghetto on our bus and to see the pride that even the Panamanians that lived here had was humbling. I would have expected it to be much dirtier than what was seen, but it actually was no worse than some places that we can see in our home country.
We finished the day off with a wonderful meal at Aldente an Italian Resturant and returned back to the Country Inn and Suites for a team debreifing and preperation for tomorrows events.
From Panama, The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same,
Matt
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