Welcome to the Panama Weekly News Roundup! Here’s the latest.
Welcome to the Panama Weekly News Roundup! Here’s the latest.
Panama sees surge in migrants crossing dangerous Darien Gap.
Panamanian authorities are seeing more people in the roadless, lawless region of tropical isthmus between South and North America.
Venise Felizor lay on a mattress in a warehouse-turned-shelter on a hot, sticky afternoon with her 20-month-old son, Wesly, in her arms, the boy coughing and wailing after suffering from diarrhea for days.
Originally from Haiti, they recently appeared in this tiny Panamanian village after a six-day hike through the jungle along the Colombian border, where armed robbers stole her husband’s backpack containing the $1,000 that he had saved from two years working in Chile. The thieves raped three women in their group.
“The way was very dangerous,” said Felizor, 26. “I thought my son was going to be lost. I saw scenes of death.”
Source: NBC News
Crossing canals on-board of a yacht: the Panama Canal.
The Panama Canal was constructed in the beginning of the XX century, connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific Oceans. The first journey through was conducted in 1914. Although it is not an easy one, roughly 14,000 ships yearly transit through the canal today.
If you have chosen to transit your own private yacht through the Panama Canal, there are some important things not to be neglected before embarking on the journey. The most significant matters shall become time and expenses, as traveling through a system of locks might come out really time-consuming, expensive and stressful. Still, the transition might become a unique adventure and even the most epic story to be told for the rest of your life. Here are some details to think over, before you decide upon a journey.
In terms of time limits, the journey through Panama Canal solely might last up to eight to nine hours. An intricate system of locks should be passed on your way through, guiding your private sailboat from one ocean to another.
Source: Yacht Harbour
Parents unknown: Mysterious larvae found in Panama’s two oceans.
Under the microscope, sea water reveals the larval stages of little-known marine creatures called phoronids (horseshoe worms), but finding their parents is another story.
“The global diversity of small, rare marine animals like phoronids is grossly underestimated,” said STRI staff-scientist Rachel Collin. “We don’t know what animals are out there, and we know even less about what their role might be in the world’s oceans.”
Because phoronid larvae swim and drift in seawater, they are much easier to sample than their adult forms, which live on the sea floor within sands, sediment or rubble. And the larvae do not look like the adults, making it difficult to tell which larva belongs to which adult without doing a sort of paternity testing: comparing larval DNA sequences to the DNA of their potential parents.
Source: Science Daily
On a budget? You can still enjoy Panama’s tourist-friendly Old City!
Casco is the “place to be”, and that means that by nature, prices for goods and services tend to be higher. Casco has lots of luxury options when it comes to dining, shopping, and seeing the sights, but there are also some great deals to be had, too! If you want to see the best of Casco on a budget, here are some easy-to-follow tips. Check it out!
Casco Viejo is very easy to reach from pretty much any part of the center of Panama City. You can get there by taxi or Uber for about $5 from downtown hotels, but you can also walk there via the Cinta Costera (Coastal Park), or take a bus to the nearby fish market, where you can easily walk to Casco in minutes. Once in Casco, walk everywhere. Taxis from place to place add up, and you can save about $10-$15 throughout the course of the day if you use your feet!
