How much fun to be here when history is being made! Panama opened the first line of it new Metro Train in April (2014). This is one of the few trains in Latin America and apparently as we have heard, the first one in Central America. We rode on it the first week in operation and were quite impressed. The train, being free for the first month, is quite the attraction. We went on Saturday morning and it was packed!! People seemed to be riding on it from one end to the other, getting off and getting back on again. Goodness, I really hope this helps some with the traffic issues around here. But as I stood on the train, I realized that even though I have been on many trains around the world, probably most of the people on this train had never ridden one. I was told that during all the movies in the theater there were public service announcement about train etiquette. No one that lives here really knows what to do, so they were trying to teach the public before the train went operational. Just knowing to stand behind the yellow line was new information. On my ride, it was just packed. But one of my friends took the train a week later. She said the police in the cars would approach men that were using some of the few seats, make them get up and allow an older person or woman to sit. One time she was on the train and a police made a young woman get up to give her seat to a woman with a baby (there were no men sitting at that time). There are still two more lines that are in the plan to be built. One to the airport and one across the canal.
On another note about progress, we went to the visitors site to see the building of the new locks for the Panama canal over on the Atlantic side. Again, a fabulous trip. They were hoping to have them done by the 100th anniversary of the canal (August 2014), but that just isn't going to happen. Hopefully, they are open soon though. Much larger ships will be able to transverse the canal when they are finished.
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