Casco Viejo, Panama City

So, here are the pictures of the Old Town. I'd say 1/2 the buildings had been refurbished, and the other 1/2 were still far gone. Many of the buildings that have been rehab'd are now government offices and that's probably because they take so much work to fix up. There are a few good places to eat that I've heard of, and if it ever stops raining we'll be heading there for dinner one of these nights. I happened to go on the one morning it didn't rain, so that was very lucky.

I'm Back (on the road!)

So 8 months after I traded my Black Corporate Amex for a comfy desk job in columbus, I'm back on the road! I did get to go back to Dubai in September, and had an amazing time with the teams there! I thought that was going to be my one trip a year, then we decieded; why not open up Panama, Costa Rica, Venezuala, and Heck- with all that let's start opening in South East Asia!! So- when I started to see my calendar fill up with all this new travel to all these new countries- I thought (was asked ;-) to start up the blog again. So: Trip #1 Panama City, Panama!

Did I ever imagine I'd go to Latin America?? No! But after we did a world wind Jet Trip last month to preview all the locations, I figured it was only a matter of time, and here I am! I have to say I never have known anyone to be here, never looked it up on the web, never have seen any TV shows about it- so it is like being in a movie! Like every were I've gone, they have good hotels, malls... and that' pretty much where the similarities end. Strange to me- they use US Dollars as their currency here! For Real! They use US dollars everywhere. Mostly because there is NOTHING American about this place. No one, and I mean 98% of the people only speak spanish. I literally went out to dinner last night and not even one word of english was spoken in the 4 conversations I had with the waiter. What you ask? I speak fluent Spanish?? HA! I wish! I just nodded and said Coke Light, and pointed, and smiled, and Voila1 Dinner was served. I trained the team Thursday, Friday and Saturday last week, so today was my off day. Luckily, Daniel had bought a Panama Travel book, so I brought that with me. I saw the Old Towne (Casco Viejo), so after a little prodding from Daniel I got out of the hotel and went. Why would I think twice? Well, Latin America is rough. Rough. Like Kidnapping, robbery, knife weilding mugging, and taxi cab's take you where you don't want to go and then leave you "Rough". I mean, I survived and traveled all over the Middle East and Eastern Europe without incident, and here, I'm a little on edge. When the local partner here, who has lived here all their life- locks their doors immediately when in the car, and tells me that we can't go to dinner after 8pm because "well just because"- you know it's the wild, wild west. I mean really, this is nothing like you would ever imagine. But I did make it to the Casco Viejo, and got some amazing pictures that I'll show in my next post. Glad to see you! And can't wait to blog some more! I've missed this, and hope you have too! ***Also- I'm on INSTAGRAM! To stay up to date before I post here, follow me: Curator89