Final night in Panama

Monday we left our friend's house early and went into town and had breakfast at Olga's. Olga was a nice Panamanian woman who ran a kitchen out of the front of her house.  She greeted everyone with a "buenos dias," and a kiss on the cheek. The breakfast was good and very reasonable. Each of the tables in the patio area where guests are served were unique dining-room sets that look as if they had been purchased at garage sales over the years. We pulled out of Boquete and turned off on a circuitous route that took us through the Caldera area. We drover over a hydroelectric dam and along bolder populated rivers before being dumped out on the Pan American Highway headed towards Panama City.  John was familiar with these back roads from his previous excursions in Panama. The Caldera area is more of a high plateau between the cities of David and Boquete and the weather is between the climates of those two towns also.  John said the weather there was most like the area of Waikoloa where we live in Hawaii. The landscape revealed a much dryer climate than that of Boquete but the plateau seemed to have an abundance of rivers and streams.

The drive back on the Pan American went fairly smooth until about an hour outside of Panama City, where we ran into a huge traffic jam. While we were waiting one of our tires went flat and we had to pull over and change to the spare. At least the traffic was creeping along instead of whizzing past at eighty miles per hour.  We discovered the traffic jam was caused by a jack-knifed truck that had been carrying sand which was now all over the road. Before we reached the Puenta de las Americas we turned on the GPS and told the device to take us to the hotel. It did without a hitch. We unloaded the car then John drove it around to the rental place and turned it in. When they inpected the tire John said it was worn completely through in large patches with the steel in the belts freyed out around the edges of the wear spots. I'm thankful it didn't blow out when we were cruising at high speed.

I met John on the street and we went to dinner at the Pomodoro Cafe across from the hotel. We hadn't eaten since breakfast except for some nuts and berries I had packed with un for our journey. Back in the room I crashed in front of the TV with Monday Night Football playing.  John showered and packed all his stuff during the game. He woke me up and sent me to bed as the game ended. I knew I would wake up early and get my stuff packed. This was our last night in Panama.