Lockdown Blues

I have no photos! I have done nothing now for 2 days!!

I was expecting to be in Boquete tonight, a small town in the Panamanian highlands on the edge of another volcano, instead I'm spending another night in this windowless room in a mediocre hostel on the edge of a mediocre city. That may be a bit harsh, maybe.

This turn of events started last night when I was told at 5 pm that the city goes into lockdown today. For one day. Apparently they have a load of little rules about travel that affect different people, such as men and women being allowed to travel on different days and foreigners being allowed to travel at certain times depending on the last number of their passport. Stuff like that, all confusing! But most importantly, no one is allowed to travel on a Sunday.

Quite how this stops the spread of Covid is beyond me, I figure people just travel on other days, but they seem to be doing pretty well with numbers, so who am I to argue? I just wish someone had told me when I booked this hostel to leave on a Sunday, or when I booked the next place actually for a Sunday!

To be fair to both hostels, they dealt with it pretty well, were both very accommodating, letting me stay an extra day here and moving my time in Boquete back a day, so no harm there. As far as I know though, I'm here in this hostel completely on my own, the manager gave me a key to the kitchen and her number for emergencies yesterday. All pretty easy.

The unexpected consequences came today.

After spending all day just watching movies and reading, I decided to go out to eat. I'd been to the Supermarket yesterday, but only bought enough food for one day as I expected then to be off this morning. I had enough for a bowl of noodles, but that was about it. Looking on Tripadvisor, there seemed to be a good few restaurants up on the main highway about half a mile away, so I thought I'd try there. As I arrived where the restaurants were supposed to be, I noticed that no only were they nowhere to be found, but all the other businesses were closed, however I spotted a McDonald's along the road some, so headed there. Unfortunately I was told when I entered that they were only open for deliveries!

Determined to find anything at this point, I checked Google Maps for an open Supermarket and headed towards the same place I shopped yesterday. About a mile or so away from my hostel, it was at this point that it started raining. Of course it did.

It was a bloody great storm, that's still going on now two hours later. It had some crazy thunder and lightening to go with it as well. I headed for the supermarket, getting shelter from overhanging roofs where I could and made my way there slowly, getting pretty wet along the way. When I finally arrived, it was of course, shut. It was supposed to close at 9 pm, some two hours later, but I guess everything is closed today as I saw nothing open at all on my 5 km journey. I made my way back, now with no shelter at all, just pretty much getting soaked.

My dinner tonight was spaghetti. No meat, no veggies, but a sauce, which is better than nothing. I also emancipated two slices of bread from the kitchen, but today has been pretty pasta heavy, I've had just that and about 10 cups of coffee today. The cat here fared better than me, I saw him with a lizard in his mouth earlier, at least he had some meat.

Tomorrow, Panama returns to normal. I don't know if this was a one off thing or weekly, although I'll likely be in another part of the country next week so they may have their own rules. At least now I've learned that these rules exist and I can work around them. It's all part of the journey I guess!