When I saw Marvia’s post about driving in Panama I laughed out loud and then I sat back and let the memories wash over me. There is NOTHING like Panama driving and the only thing I’ve found that even comes close is driving in the Philippines.
Marvia is right – turn signals aren’t to be bothered with. Brake lights and head lights are also not important, (except I did get pulled once by a nice Panamanian police officer who spoke no English and wanted me to know my right brake light was out. Gee thanks dude – the other 300 cars on this road right now don’t even have brake lights, but hey, that was nice of him.) Also, the honking. Honking can mean 50 different things and usually something like “hey dude with the flowers, or the bags of oranges – I want to buy some and I’ll stop right here in the middle of the road while you bring them over, we haggle over some money and then I’ll take off without looking to see if anyone is attempting to go around me because I’ve sat here so long – and then I’ll honk the horn again because my mom’s auntie lives over there and she might have seen me driving by.” Horn honking in the US means nothing and is just an annoyance to me – at least in Panama, it meant something interesting.
That traffic she talks about, hahaha, oh yea. Bad. One of the worst experiences of my life was sitting in the middle of The Bridge of the Americas for 2 hours during dry season. I can’t describe it. It was. not. good. Thankfully, I did not have a child with me at the time. I’m pretty sure I’d have abandoned the car and walked home.
Marvia followed a bus to the bus terminal, hoping she’d get to where she was going – I’ve done that! Though actually it wasn’t a bus, it was a nice American couple and I figured eventually they would drive to one of the military bases and from whichever one it was, I could get home. It worked – took me 20 minutes out of my way, but hey, at least I was not lost.
Ah Panama, how I miss it.