Our first Panamá explorations

 Forecast: 86°/78° with possible definite afternoon thundershowers; 

Sunrise 6:10 am., Sunset 6:34 p.m.

Our Airbnb is in a gated community just outside of the main part of Panama City, not too far from the Mira Flores locks, and also not too far from the Ciudad del Saber and Fundapromat (Foundation for the Promotion of Mathematics in Panama). Jeanette, my host, was delighted with the place when she dropped me off here, and agreed that it was nice that I was so close. And then she and her cousin drove me from my Airbnb to her offices, a meandering drive along crowded roads that took about 10 minutes. "Close" is a relative term. 

If you look on a map, we're close as the crow flies, but the roads between here and there are anything but direct -- it's more like 5 miles that way.  As someone who's used to my 10-minute walk from my home in Lancaster to my office, and who can count the number of times I get in a car each month using only my fingers, I have to admit I was a little dismayed at what Jeanette described as "close".

Ah, well, I know I'll need to get used to ubering around.

The view along the street near our AirBnB.
This is a very walkable, but entirely residential, neighborhood!

The evening we arrived, Neil and I were both exhausted from the long trip; he'd risen at 3:15 a.m., and  I got up only shortly after that.  When our plane landed in the early afternoon, it was lovely to be met at the airport and given a personal escort.  Jeanette has a take-charge energy that I'm super, super grateful for; she was the driving force (even though her cousin was doing the driving) behind locating a translator for some of my upcoming immigration paperwork, helping me photocopy documents at a local Arocha (kind of like a CVS?),  and arranging a meeting with a translator that very day. I didn't have either the know-how or the initiative to start that myself, but having her take charge allowed me and my brain-dead self to follow along. It is wonderful, wonderful to have that piece of business well underway.

So we finally arrived solo at our Airbnb toward the evening, figured out the Internet, and began preliminary unpacking. As I said, we were both kind of exhausted, but we decided to do one exploratory walk around the neighborhood before we hit the sack. I am so glad we did! For one thing, the neighborhood is beautiful. It's lush with trees and greenery and beautiful houses. It's very quiet, with the exception of birdsong and bugs and also occasionally neighborhood dogs greeting one another. I saw a capybara [whoops:] agouti! (At some point, I need to take a better picture of a capybara [whoops:] agouti; I've seen a few now, but they are shier than I am so we haven't made friends yet.)

A shy, fuzzy cabybara.

We were meandering through the neighborhood, with Neil checking out Google maps on his phone, when a man hailed us from his house and asked, "Are you guys looking for the shortcut?" I said we must really look like a gringos if he called out to us in English, but also that sure, we'd love to know about shortcuts. 

Something-crossing sign.  
Not sure what animal this represents, but clearly it owns the road.

It turns out that he's the head of a neighborhood association, and he invited us to a meeting they'll be having at the end of August, an invitation which fits in with what everybody has told me about people in Panama being super friendly. He then gave us directions to a cute little shortcut through the forest that takes us past some embassy apartments and out to a bus stop. From that bus stop, it turns out, it looks like it's very easy to catch a bus that goes straight to the Ciudad del Saber.  The bus runs, according to my app, every seven minutes; it takes seven minutes to get to the Ciudad del Saber. Is that amazingly wonderful, or what?!?

After that highly successful, preliminary exploration, we both hit the sack at around 6 p.m., even before the sun went down.  What a great day, and what an auspicious beginning to our trip!