Geocaching in Panama City

This morning after getting ready and eating breakfast (generic Coco Krispies) Linda and I went to the Albrook Mall (https://www.albrookmall.com/), which is the largest Mall in Latin America. The American girls that had joined us for dinner when we did the cooking class had told Linda that they found a lot of stuff with “Panama” on it, and since we haven’t done a lot of souvenir shopping Linda wanted to check it out. I just wanted to get steps, but didn’t have any specific shopping that I wanted to do. The mall was much like any American mall (back in the day when malls were a thing). A majority of the stores were American stores/brands. We did find a couple of Panama souvenir kiosks and stores, but not as many as we were expecting. Linda got a Cinnabon and I tried a passion fruit donut from Krispy Kreme. The donut was good but wasn’t as strong of a flavor as I would have liked. Linda bought a couple of things before we found the Super 99 grocery store where we picked up water and a couple of snacks. I think we were at the mall for about an hour and a half total.

I brought Linda back to the apartment and put on tennis shoes, as next up on my agenda for the day was to geocache. I drove down into the heart of the city and parked in one of the parking lots on the Cinta Costera parkway (near the Panama sign). I decided to go for the Challenge cache for finding 10 or more caches in Panama first. This cache was located on the same walking path that Tom and I had walked when I made my first cache find in Panama. We had walked right past it but I didn’t even think about checking it out at that time. So back I went .. . just to be disappointed that I couldn’t locate it. I think it might be missing.

So back I went along the pathway passing the Fish Market, the Panama sign, and other sights I had seen previously walking along the path. The second cache took me to a sculpture by Sydia Reyes, a Venezuelan-American. According to the information at the sculpture: “This work “Sketch for a forest” has been planted and remains in different cities such as Chicago, Wisconsin, Caracas, and Panama. Each one of them designed with different measurements and some variants, this being the tallest and the first with integrated lighting.” I didn’t know Wisconsin was a city. I found on her website: “Green Bay, Sketch of The Forest III, Wisconsin USA” but couldn’t find a picture. Maybe if I keep searching I will find it, but for now it’s time to move on with this post. I’m happy to say that I found the cache right away!

Next up was a cache in a park at the end of the Cinta Costera in an outdoor gym. Thankful for the hint, I made the find here as well.

Starting to head back I remembered there was a puzzle cache along the pathway as well. I phoned a friend and called my Mom to see if she would be willing to solve the puzzle while I was still in the area. She started tackling it and I walked back to the given coordinates to get a hint to solve the puzzle. At the coordinates I found a pay phone, so I let my mom know right away that we had to convert the letters in the puzzle to the corresponding numbers on a phone key pad. While she solved the puzzle I bought a Gatorade and potato chips to snack on. Once the puzzle was solved, we video chatted so she could virtually come find the cache with me. The solved coordinates took us to another pay phone. There were a couple of people sitting on a bench near the phone, but I went to search it anyway. I didn’t find it on the first pass and sat on a nearby bench while my Mom looked at the image gallery for the cache. She saw that it was a nano cache. From my spot on the bench I looked up and I could see it on the pole under the phone booth. I went and grabbed it and brought it back to the bench to log the find, all the while my mom was still with me on the video chat. I’m sure the two ladies on the bench next to me watched the whole thing, but they didn’t say anything. It was fun to cache with my Mom in Panama!

After that find it was after 5:00 and time for me to get back to the apartment. I found Pete, Laurie, and Linda playing Swoop. They hadn’t eaten dinner yet, but Pete and Laurie had a big lunch so they were not hungry. Linda and I Googled some places to eat and checked out their menus and decided on a place called “The Wallace”, a Scottish restaurant (https://thewallacepanama.com/). We had a Scottish Egg for an appetizer (Linda had never had one before. She thought it was good) and I had the Roast Beef Panini. It was excellent! We splurged and got a dessert called Cranachan (Strawberries macerated in whiskey, granola, artisanal vanilla ice cream, and whiskey cream). It was a good ending to the meal.

When we got back it was time to write the blog and get to bed! We have a very early morning tomorrow. We are getting picked up at 5:00a.m. for our overnight excursion to San Blas Islands. I’m not sure if we’ll have service on the islands, so the next blog post may be delayed until we get back to the city.

Stats of the Day

Steps: 21,405
Geocaches: 3 Found/1 DNF
Cost of 1 Gatorade and 1 Small Bag of Lays Potato Chips: $2.25