colon,panama

[bigdawg86]

for those that don't do excursions what is there to do in colon. can you walk around the port( is there anything there) i also heard it is dangerous!! IF your not doin an excursion is it worth getting off the ship

[wwinfl91]

There are some shops there at the port. We weren't really impressed with any of them when we were there but that was a few years ago. We did the railroad excursion which was OK although I thought we would have been able to see the canal better from the train that you can actually.

 

As far as dangerous, when we went to board our buses at the port to go to the train I noticed several jeeps with Panamanian army troops manning them and they had heavy machine guns mounted on the jeeps. The men had on their helmets and bullet proof vests and seemed very serious. They were our escort from the port to the railroad station. That made me a little nervous and I asked one of the conductors on the train and he sort of laughed it off but admitted that Colon was not a good place for tourist to just try to wander around in. Evidently a lot of Panamanians still don't like Americans in spite of us giving them the canal and there are a lot of gangs some related to the drug trade that control areas of the town.

 

Anyway our buses on the other coast also had the same type armed escorts and then when the train returned to Colon the jeeps were there again to escort the buses back to the dock. I didn't even see many crew members wandering away from the dock area.

 

I would suggest either taking a ship's tour to see the locks, if you haven't seen them before or the railroad journey we took. Otherwise you might want to just use it as another sea day and enjoy yourself on the ship. It doesn't take long to get off and check out the shops at the port but just don't expect to find great shopping.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[LHP]

for those that don't do excursions what is there to do in colon. can you walk around the port( is there anything there) i also heard it is dangerous!! IF your not doin an excursion is it worth getting off the ship

 

I am usually not an alarmist but I would highly recommend a ship or independent tour here. You do not want to walk around Colon...even if

you are with the whole family.

 

We do plan to take a taxi over to the Gatun Locks...but that is only 9 miles away and we plan on having LOTS of time to go there and come back.

 

Roads are not the greatest...lots of construction delays...and from what I understand the taxi drivers are not the most "efficient" time wise.

 

Our ship docks at Colon2000 which (from what I understand ) does not offer much in the way of shopping. However, if your ship is docking at Cristobal (sp?) you may have some better options.

 

Good Luck!!