Lots to tell!!

I have been in Panama now for 1 whole week and have not had time to blog till now. So much has been happening.

I will start this first post with my first 3 days in Panama City. After an 11 hour plane trip I went to a "casual" hotel in the city. Hotel La Estancia was enjoyable, but my room was more like a hostel as I had to go across the hall to get to the bathroom. And that meant there was no air conditioning in the Bano!! and no window, so it was more like a steam room while putting my clothes back on to go back across the hall to my room!  No complaining here, I am a sport!!! OK, I did do some complaining while in the john, but returned to all smiles when going back to my air-conditioned room.

High points while there, was the hotel advertised having sightings of sloths and monkeys in the trees from the guests. I thought this would be great, but then thought when I arrived (not wanting to be tooo disappointed) that it was probably all an advertising line. But, hold on, whats that big dark thing in the tree. Right outside my private balcony was a sloth hanging maybe 15' away!!! Unbelievable!! That was my first sloth sighting ever. Wow, they really did mean what they said! It was very cool and it actually moved faster than I thought they could. Not fast by any means, but definitely quicker than a crawl.

And then the next day, I discovered 2 monkeys swinging on the hanging bananas right across from the balcony. Little Capachin(sp) monkeys, their faces were about the size of a ping pong ball. The birds did not like them eating their bananas and I kid you not, they dove into the monkeys actually hitting them hard, I really think I could hear it, until after a bit the monkeys left. The birds were much smaller than the monkeys, thats what made it so striking.(no pun intended).