Getting out of El Valle was a challenge. We spent five hours waiting at the bus stop watching buses passing us by. Apparently it was the weekend after payday and the last week of summer vacation for the kids, so all the buses were full. It's funny, in Portland people get really mad when they wait an extra 10 minutes for the bus, but people in Panama don't seem to know the concept of "impatience". There were a bunch of people patiently waiting for hours. I was happy that we were able to roll with it as well. We were with our new friends, Margarite & Nilka who entertained us with some songs.
We ended up taking a bus all the way back to Panama City to take a bus to David. Margarite and Nilka took good care of us, they were very helpful and we could tell it made them feel good to help the clueless gringos get through the chaotic bus station and on our way. We had an 8 hour bus ride to David. The air conditioning was broken but there were bootleg movies to watch on the ride. We finally made it to David at about 1:30AM. We checked into a cheap hotel, complete with the TV's already on and set to a porn station. The room could have been worse (see our San Jose experience) and we were able to get a few hours of sleep.
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