First date

When I woke up, the first thing I had to do was move to another room. As I already mentioned, despite booking, an unpleasant surprise awaited me upon arrival. Of course, I hadn't been left outside; instead, I was put in a room for six. And today, I finally got my room. OK. I had moved. All the same, they both lacked hot water and windows.

After lunch, I went for a walk, this time not to the old city, but in a different direction. The main task was to find at least some grocery store to buy food. And I found a whole long street - a mini-market - not very clean and pretty odorous. Along its entire length, there were small shops not only with souvenirs but with a wide variety of goods for both tourists and locals. In one of them, I finally bought myself some cookies :)

Upon returning to the hotel, I met Jose, a tall black Panamanian, a local policeman. He seemed to have noticed me a while before, as he mentioned my red bag, which I hadn’t had with me today. He asked me on a date, and I agreed because I really wanted to see the city at night, and for safety reasons, I did not dare to go out alone.

In the evening, Jose came for me, leaving his backpack in my room (later, I figured out the reason why), and we set off. It was Saturday, so there were many people downtown: everyone was having fun and relaxing. We checked a couple of bars and walked along the trendy streets of the old town and the esplanade. I note that even the policeman himself did not dare walk along the dark streets and constantly “twitched” from sharp sounds. Safety is not the right word to describe Panama.

At first, it was interesting to hang out with Jose: he’d been telling in detail everything about his country and seemed interested to hear about my homeland. His English was perfect, and he created the impression of an intelligent young man. But after a while, he started thinking with his other head down in his pants :( When he was walking me back home, he went up to my room supposedly to get his backpack - that was the reason! In fact, he needed everyone in the hotel to see him go up to my room for the night. Fortunately for me, he was more concerned about the opinions of others than translating his desire into action. That’s why, after whining for a bit (something like “How so, I paid for you at the bar”), he somehow took off through an upper emergency exit so that no one saw him going down, and I could be easily mistaken for a slut. This seriously messed up my impression of the Panamanians :( “To hell with him and everyone!” I thought and had fallen asleep peacefully :)