Casco Viejo and San Blas

Steve came to visit me in Panama this weekend and it was so great to get to share my Panama-life with someone else. On Saturday we walked around Casco Viejo, a partially run-down but increasingly high-end, group of colonial buildings on the west side of Panama city. Here is an old building that was completely gutted with no roof - which I thought was rather liberating... Steve and I in Independence Plaza. Most of the couples and families strolling around in this area on Saturday afternoon are locals and there was a concert in this square later in the night complete with bongo drums and dancing women and a Aztec beer garden.
Right on the ocean, is this former house / pool / mansion complex that has been abandoned for a long time: there is a tree growing out of the chimney and its ocean-facing courtyard and pool area are now a hang-out for scateboarders....looked like fun
The atmosphere is extremely relaxed and I was so glad to walk around for a change instead of shuttling directly between work, hotel, and restaurants. Later that night, Steve and I checked out Calle Uruguay - a hot-spot in Panama City for restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. there were a few places with huge crowds that spilled into the streets until it started raining heavily.
All in all, our luck with the weather was amazing, given that the rainy season has begun. We took a 6am flight from Albrook Airport to El Porvenir in the San Blas Archipeligo (a native reserve for the Kuna people - one of Panama's indidenous tribes) and arrived around 6:30am. There was a guy from the hotel we were interested in waiting when we stepped off the plane so we hopped in the long, green, wooden boat and moved past several densely-populated islands before arriving.
The smallest inhabited islands are the size of a basketball court. Some islands aren't inhabited at all and the ones that are, are usually packed to the gills with local Kuna inhabitants. The lifestyle that the Kuna people have been able to preserve is relaxed and tidy. The houses are made almost entirely from coconut trees and the children help parents with daily tasks of fishing, cooking, and cleaning but mostly do a lot of playing around the islands.
Here is a picture of me in one of the hammocks outside our room.
Here is a compelling image of one of the many outhouses placed right off the shore - the guide book recommended against swimming near the inhabited islands....
However, there are a bunch of uninhabited islands that our "hotel"'s host took us to. Walking around this island takes about 5-10 minutes, but the water is perfect and the shade of the palm trees on the beach is quite refreshing. We were a little concerned when our boat-guy left while we were sleeping without saying anything, but he left one of the little boys who had hitched a ride to the island with us and he was always nearby lining up some seashells or sleeping against the sloping trunk of a coconut tree so we were pretty cure he'd come back for us.
not bad...
After much lying in the hammocks reading, and then once the sun when down and the generator came on, looking at the incredibly bright stars, it was time to go to bed.

We woke at 5:30am to heavily pouring rain, but by 6am it was getting light and clearing up and we hopped back into the green boat for the 10 min ride back to the "airport" island. Here comes the plane!
The whole 'airport-process' consisted of writing our names on a list and then waiting in a grass field outside for the plane to arrive. It was a full flight and it was pretty funny to see that even with the runway stretching the length of the island we bearly lifted off before we ran out of land...hahaha.