Two main things to cover today.  We discovered on our very first night here that the sidewalk had a giant death hole in it.  Turns out they are all over the city.  We now refer to them as “Huecos de Muerte,” or Death Holes because I’m pretty sure some of them could kill you.  Seriously, some of them are big enough for the clown from the movie It to hide in.  Eek!  There is no texting and walking around here, which makes navigating on Google Maps tricky.  I’ve started pulling over to the side, checking my map, and then proceeding along my route.  I’m not taking any chances.  I’ve taken a few photos of some, but there are two problems with taking pictures of them.  First, taking a picture down into a hole doesn’t give you any idea of how deep it is.  Secondly, the worst ones tend to come out at night.  But for what they’re worth, here they are…

Eric en un Hueco de Muerte

Hueco de Muerte

Hueco de Muerte

Last night we turned left instead of right down Avenida Balboa (northeast, I suppose), and headed towards the fancy part of town called Punta Pacífica.  That’s where Trump Tower is, along with all of these exclusive condo buildings, including The Point, which Wikipedia calls the tallest all residential building in the western hemisphere.  I guess if you break it down like that, you can have a tallest [insert specifics here] building anywhere.  Anyway, we hiked around all of the huge condo buildings until we got to the bottom of it.  I trust wiki.  It’s tall.  And I say that we hiked because this city has a lot more hills than you would imagine!  I was definitely out of breath when we got to the middle of the hill that led to The Point.  Strange since it’s right on the water.

Looking towards Punta Pacifica near the beginning of our walk. The Point is the tall one all the way to the right.

Punta Pacífica

Towards Casco Viejo (the old city) with Punta Pacífica behind us.

Today was a business day.  Eric worked all day while I got some errands done.  I looked at an apartment and practiced my Spanish with the realtor, got copies of our passports and entrance stamps made and laminated, and checked out a Spanish language school.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but when it’s all over the city, 90 degrees, no car, and all in Spanish, it makes for a long hot day.

Tomorrow we’ll get a tour of the Johns Hopkins affiliated hospital (kinda just because they offered), then head to the bank.  We have no idea whether they’ll allow us to open an account.  The States have made it a big pain for Panamanians to let Americans have accounts here, so a lot of banks just don’t want to mess with us.  Apparently it’s a lot of paperwork.  So we’ll go in armed with all kinds of IDs, 8 letters of recommendation from banks and other businesses, promises to give them our firstborn, slaughtered lambs, and the like, and we’ll see what happens.  If you think about it, please say a prayer.  We’d really like to be able to get some money down here.  It could make paying rent or buying a car or, well, a lot of things really difficult if we can’t open an account.  Oh, and if you have an extra prayer for my nerves, that’d be great.  If I’m already a pain because I get nervous and lose all my Spanish suddenly, that might not help us.  Hopefully the teller will speak slow, clear, non-Panamanian sounding Spanish.  Fingers crossed.

Thanks for keeping up with us!  We appreciate your support more than you know!  Love to all of you.