the lone patrons

For the past 6 weeks, I have been gallivanting across Panama, studying mangroves with various members of the Sousa Lab. This experience occurred a few weeks ago, but due to the delay in starting this blog, it is being released at a later date. It does not revolve around food, but due to their eccentricity, the events of my morning need to be relayed to you. It was one of the weirdest days of the trip. Emily and I still shake our heads in wonderment at the events that transpired.
We stayed at a very nice hotel on the outskirts of Panama City because Emily stumbled upon a good deal on hotels.com. It is the rainy season in Panama and their "winter" (even though they are in the northern hemisphere, but our winter vacation is the summer vacation for students). Thus, most hotels we stay in have very few guests - this one was no exception. We arrived in the late afternoon, wandered around the hotel, made gin and tonics to drink before dinner, and then went to dinner and drank more sangria. It appears that I am an alcoholic. Don’t worry mom, I’m not. But I digress. We then ate and drank until we were the last ones in the restaurant, which was not difficult because a total of 6 other people were dining at the same time - 5 of which were in the same party. That evening was fairly uneventful, but the scene needed to be set.


(Panama City is in a constant state of renovation, construction ebbs and flows depending on the state of the economy).

Now for the real story. The next morning we wanted to go swimming because a) it is always hot in Panama and swimming is refreshing and b) we could delude ourselves into thinking we were exercising and we were are a hotel with multiple pools, so it was practically begging us to jump in. We knew that there were two pools, one of which had slides and was obviously the top candidate, but that one did not open until 10, so we decided to stop by the first one before trekking to the second one. The first pool turned out to be a small bathtub sized rectangle (ok, it may have been slightly bigger, but still) with both leaves and dead bugs floating in it. Needless to say, the murky water did not beckon as we had hoped. We decided to wait it out and walked down to the next pool, which turned out to be a water park with many slides, a lazy river, a wave pool, and concession stands. Not to mention cages with monkeys, peacocks, and other exotic animals. WEIRD. A water park with a zoo. In a hotel. Who would have thought. The one kink in the plan was that the park was not supposed to open for another half and hour. But when we asked a worker if the park was open, he said yes and we walked in to find a tons of lifeguards, people cleaning and no other patrons. It was so empty. We thought we were in for an amazing experience, you know, the whole "because you've been so good your dad has rented out the entire waterpark for you and a friend" situation. Well, not so much. Upon closer inspection the slides were slightly dilapidated and there was no water running down them (think painful metal-skin contact) and even when we tried to get in the lazy river, a group of workers after watching us struggle to obtain 2 intertubes and perch ourselves on the floating cheerios, then felt it was appropriate to shout that a man was still cleaning and we were not permitted to get in the water yet. How friendly.
We then decided to wait it out because, uh duh, wouldn't you wait to have a water park all to yourself even if it appeared to be built in 1980? I feel that question does not even merit asking. We situated ourselves and started reading our books when a man, the same man in fact who had told us the park was indeed open, ambled over to us, stuck out his hand to shake it and promptly sat down. And spoke, in Spanish of course, about how his favorite team from the US is the Atlanta Braves and blah blah blah. So forward and Panamanian. Finally, after much sitting around and an awkward trip to the bathroom where two ladies were still cleaning and I was taller than the door of the bathroom stall (because I am taller than 95% of the Panamanian population) we were allowed to float on the river. It moved slowly and we were gawked at by an inordinate amount of pool workers, but in all we were laughing so hard about the situation that it really did not matter that we were inching along at a rate of a snail who is taking valium.
Then we got up, waved goodbye to our new friend who loves the Braves and retreated to our giant room for a shower and packing. It was such a weird morning. The most ironic thing is that the hotel advertisements portray people enjoying themselves immensely at the hotel, including on water slides. Maybe it just needs to be the dry season and the place fills with people. Who the eff knows.