End of the long bus ride

Arrived in Panama City yesterday after 3 days on long-distance buses from Tegucigalpa. Very heavy rains and flooding in Costa Rica, which delayed the bus 6 hours because part of the Pan-american highway collapsed. Giant waves on rivers we crossed over. This is the same highway that passes through KC as I-35.

Relaxing here at a hostel and looking into options for transportation into Colombia. The city here is very modern and not too unlike the US, but especially diverse being located between South America and the rest of Central America and the only Central American capital on the Pacific coast, so there's some Asian influence.

Read in the paper here that the "economy" of Panama grew 7.5% in the past year, but 64% of the population is in poperty with a third in extreme poverty, and the poverty has not decreased. Also read that at least by one account the richest man in the world now is from Mexico, another country where there is much poverty. Something's wrong with this picture! Whose really benefitting from the economic growth?

written by

cjones on October 14, 2007 from Panama, Panama

from the travel blog: so-journ

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