CM IAD-PTY-GEO-PTY-IAD: Isthmus, Kaieteur Falls, and dumpy Georgetown
Dec 2, 2014, 6:37 pm
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: DCA
Programs: AS MVP Gold 75K
Posts: 947
CM IAD-PTY-GEO-PTY-IAD: Isthmus, Kaieteur Falls, and dumpy Georgetown
I took advantage of last summer’s COPA IAD-GEO promo fare with a visit to Guyana in October. The first IAD-PTY flight arrives after the PTY-GEO departs, forcing an overnight layover at PTY.
I won’t be including my own pictures in this first round, so I hope my prose will be sufficiently interesting. For this trip, as with most of my trips, I went solo and brought only carry-on bags.
Monday, October 6, 2014
CM357 IAD-PTY
737-700
0957-1400
This was my first flight on COPA and I arrived too early, so I ate a second breakfast in the famous Lufthansa lounge while charging my phone.
Once at the gate, boarding was both chaotic and slow-paced. I settled into my bulkhead window seat and waited for departure, which came more or less on-time.
The flight path took us down over the Carolinas, along the Atlantic coast of Georgia and Florida, across central Cuba, and down over the Caribbean to Panama City.
Lunch was not memorable - in Y, that's probably a good thing - and I spent much of the flight reading a cheap spy thriller novel.
Flying in, my normally-acute sense of geography was thrown off by the narrowness of the isthmus; having once taken eight days to drive from Atlantic to Pacific in the USA, flying across Panama in about 15 minutes was more mind-boggling than it should have been. Since I was on the left side, I got great low-altitude views of the Canal and Panama City with the lush green hills in the background.
We landed at PTY right around 2:00, and the rest of the day was a comedy of (mostly my own) errors. Immigration took a while and the Payless desk had no record of my Orbitz reservation and no unreserved cars to rent me, so I went with Thrifty. The one-day rental cost me $75 including insurance and 1/4 tank of gas, which is almost exactly what I used.
On the toll road Norte, I thought the "Tarjetas" lane was for credit card payment, and that turned out to be wrong. Some honks of the horn, a cash transaction, and several awkward moments of Spanglish conversation later, I was on my way.
The Miraflores Locks website (at least the English page) said the Visitor Center was open until 5:00; I arrived at 4:25 and found out the hard way that they stop admitting visitors daily at 4:15, with no exceptions. So I got to see the Panama Canal from outside the VC, after which I drove over the Bridge of the Americas and poked around the rural areas on the west side of the bridge (away from Panama City). The views at sunset were beautiful, and the sight of all that shipping in the bay was itself worth the trouble I'd had.
Next, I drove back across the Bridge of the Americas, heading toward my hotel, the Continental, in the central business district of Panama City. The rush hour traffic was horribly gridlocked (far worse than here in DC, for example), the streets were poorly marked, and the one-ways made things confusing. I had google maps open on my phone (no data signal, just the blue dot on the pre-downloaded map), and ... eventually ... found my way there.
The Continental was a nice place to stay, though getting to my room took a few more ups and downs with the stairs than was comfortable with my relatively small bags. Side note: I'm a professional freelance church organist and I go on these far-away trips once a month so that I don't agree to do work on those days (talk about nice problems to have!). In that light, randomly finding a Wurlitzer theater organ in my hotel in Panama City was the bizarre end of a perfectly memorable day.
I was too tired to go out around town looking for food, so I ate a nice steak with chimichurri and fries in the hotel restaurant.
On the way back to the airport in the morning, I learned the hard way that the "Tarjeta" I'd purchased for Corredor Norte doesn't work on Corredor Sur. There was more beeping, more Spanglish, more cash forked over, and some very awkward moments in traffic, but it ended well.
I won’t be including my own pictures in this first round, so I hope my prose will be sufficiently interesting. For this trip, as with most of my trips, I went solo and brought only carry-on bags.
Monday, October 6, 2014
CM357 IAD-PTY
737-700
0957-1400
This was my first flight on COPA and I arrived too early, so I ate a second breakfast in the famous Lufthansa lounge while charging my phone.
Once at the gate, boarding was both chaotic and slow-paced. I settled into my bulkhead window seat and waited for departure, which came more or less on-time.
The flight path took us down over the Carolinas, along the Atlantic coast of Georgia and Florida, across central Cuba, and down over the Caribbean to Panama City.
Lunch was not memorable - in Y, that's probably a good thing - and I spent much of the flight reading a cheap spy thriller novel.
Flying in, my normally-acute sense of geography was thrown off by the narrowness of the isthmus; having once taken eight days to drive from Atlantic to Pacific in the USA, flying across Panama in about 15 minutes was more mind-boggling than it should have been. Since I was on the left side, I got great low-altitude views of the Canal and Panama City with the lush green hills in the background.
We landed at PTY right around 2:00, and the rest of the day was a comedy of (mostly my own) errors. Immigration took a while and the Payless desk had no record of my Orbitz reservation and no unreserved cars to rent me, so I went with Thrifty. The one-day rental cost me $75 including insurance and 1/4 tank of gas, which is almost exactly what I used.
On the toll road Norte, I thought the "Tarjetas" lane was for credit card payment, and that turned out to be wrong. Some honks of the horn, a cash transaction, and several awkward moments of Spanglish conversation later, I was on my way.
The Miraflores Locks website (at least the English page) said the Visitor Center was open until 5:00; I arrived at 4:25 and found out the hard way that they stop admitting visitors daily at 4:15, with no exceptions. So I got to see the Panama Canal from outside the VC, after which I drove over the Bridge of the Americas and poked around the rural areas on the west side of the bridge (away from Panama City). The views at sunset were beautiful, and the sight of all that shipping in the bay was itself worth the trouble I'd had.
Next, I drove back across the Bridge of the Americas, heading toward my hotel, the Continental, in the central business district of Panama City. The rush hour traffic was horribly gridlocked (far worse than here in DC, for example), the streets were poorly marked, and the one-ways made things confusing. I had google maps open on my phone (no data signal, just the blue dot on the pre-downloaded map), and ... eventually ... found my way there.
The Continental was a nice place to stay, though getting to my room took a few more ups and downs with the stairs than was comfortable with my relatively small bags. Side note: I'm a professional freelance church organist and I go on these far-away trips once a month so that I don't agree to do work on those days (talk about nice problems to have!). In that light, randomly finding a Wurlitzer theater organ in my hotel in Panama City was the bizarre end of a perfectly memorable day.
I was too tired to go out around town looking for food, so I ate a nice steak with chimichurri and fries in the hotel restaurant.
On the way back to the airport in the morning, I learned the hard way that the "Tarjeta" I'd purchased for Corredor Norte doesn't work on Corredor Sur. There was more beeping, more Spanglish, more cash forked over, and some very awkward moments in traffic, but it ended well.
Dec 4, 2014, 6:32 am
#3
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Austin, TX -- AA Life Platinum; QF Life Silver; UA Silver
Posts: 5,462
Neat.. didn't realize Copa was starting to fly there. We visited Georgetown and the other Guianas several years ago.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...h-guianas.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...h-guianas.html