Flying into Panama City from the north is a very cool experience. The plane flew right over the entrance to the Panama Canal, and I could see dozens of cargo ships waiting to traverse the canal. It is a very busy harbor to say the least.

Since I will not be home for Christmas this year, my parents surprised me with a special gift when we arrived at our hotel in Panama: a Canon Rebel t2i camera! What an amazing piece of machinery this thing is. With 18 megapixels, 1080p video, and some of the best optics in the industry, it is almost difficult to take a bad picture...

We spent our first day sightseeing around Panama. There is a long road leading out into the ocean at the south tip of Panama City. At the end is four small islands, and each has its own perfect view of downtown.

Pay special attention to the giant yacht on the left side of this picture. Its called the Remember When, and you'll see it again later on this blog...

Panama City is much more built up than I had imagined. I think we were all surprised by the amount of skyscrapers which make up its skyline, almost Manhattan-esque. Unfortunately the inner city is in shambles, and extremely overrun with garbage and dirty apartment buildings.

We took our first of many drives over the Bridge of the Americas. The GPS maps we had of Panama were missing a vital piece of information: levels. It would invariably instruct us to make a turn while going over or under a bridge, as if the entire map was 2D rather than 3D. After getting lost more than not with Scott driving around Costa Rica, it was certainly better to have the GPS with wrong info than to not have it at all.

Our hotel was on the edge of the canal, with a great view of the Bridge of the Americas. When the bridge was built in 1962, it was the only non-swinging bridge connecting south and north America. The bridge was originally called the Thatcher Ferry Bridge, named after the ferry which it replaced.

The Pan-American Highway, of which the bridge is a key part of, runs right along the south-east side of Panama City. This was a rare beauty within the city limits, and I truly enjoyed the drive. To me, the boardwalk downtown looked like a very exciting place to live. It certainly is a city under construction, since nearly every building had a crane mounted on its roof.

The lens on my new camera is fantastic. It has a very wide angle (18-55mm in case you're wondering). At 18mm, it is just on the edge of a fish-eye look. Although this picture make look fish-eyed, it is not. The light poles on the Pan-Am highway are actually curved slightly inward.

We quickly came to notice the buses around town. The best we could figure is that they are individually owned and operated. They are all brightly painted, with extravagant decorations all around. Some had trucker style tailpipes sticking out the back. Many had blinking lights on the front, sides & back. The strangest thing however, was the decals stuck right on the front windshield, covering the entire top half of the window. That can't be safe!

That evening the three of us took a very nice walk along the canal, snapping up a few photos along the way. We found this pier shortly before sunset, and strolled down for some evening HDR shots. My new toy does auto exposure bracketing, which is my favorite feature to use now. Combined with the optical image stabilizer in the lens, the need for a tripod is nearly eliminated. As I get to know the camera better, the power it possesses is starting to become clear.