News
Wednesday 14th February 2024.
February 13, 2024
The luxury, the colors, the murgas, the art, the culecos, the music and the beauty of the queens reached their maximum splendor on the last day of Carnival in La Villa, province of Los Santos.
Considered one of the busiest carnivals in the Azuero region, the La Villa Carnival had a tremendous Carnival Tuesday.
From early on, thousands of people gathered in the culecos area to enjoy the water spread from the tank cars, while music boomed from the speakers.
The long-awaited parade of the queens of Calle Arriba and Calle Abajo, accompanied by their respective prickly pears, was also a special moment on this last day of celebration.
The luxury of their outfits and the floats in which they were transported reflected the wonderful artistic expressions of the artisans in charge of this amazing work.
The Panama Canal will maintain, at least until April, restrictions on the passage of ships through its locks, an operation governed by the weather, the amount of rain that falls in the country, its storage and the rationed use of the resource.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Ricaurte Vásquez, administrator of the Canal, said that the restriction of 24 daily transits will remain in place until at least April of this year, compared to the 36 or 38 that usually cross the locks in normal times.
Vásquez told the news agency that they could increase the transit of more ships if weather conditions allow it, especially with more rain. However, he explained that this normalization is unlikely to occur before 2025.
The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) monitors the level of the Gatún and Alajuela lakes, in addition to water precipitation, so it can be confirmed with greater precision if there will be any change in the ship schedule between the 15th and the March 20, when the weather forecast is made for the next 45 days from that date, which has 75% reliability, indicated Vásquez.
At noon this Tuesday, February 13, Lake Alajuela had a level of 244.56 feet, when its operating maximum is 252 feet.
El Gatún, meanwhile, was at 81.04 feet and its maximum level is 87.50 feet.
Although neither of the two reservoirs is at its optimal levels, they do not show greater depression, precisely due to the water saving measures, considering the drought of 2033 and foreseeing very dry days in the current summer of 2024.
International travelers have Latin America on the radar of their plans for this first semester.
The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) indicates in a study carried out with the travel analysis company, ForwardKeys, that the arrival of visitors to the region will increase 16% between January and June of this year, in comparison with the same period in 2019.
There are cities that will register a greater movement of travelers. The air terminals of Cancun, followed by Panama City and Mexico City, will report the highest passenger capacity in this semester.
The report estimates that the Tocumen International Airport will move 5.5 million connecting or transit passengers in these 6 months, a calculation that is made based on the number of available seats that the airlines will have for that season. This figure represents a 13% increase in capacity compared to 2019.
The flavor of Panamanian specialty chocolate with cocoa from the lands of Bocas del Toro, Chiriquí and other provinces, seduced in Amsterdam, Holland, during the most important international fair of the chocolate industry, Chocoa, which was held between the 6th and 11th. of February.
For the first time, six companies that produce, market and process specialty cocoa and chocolate, exhibited their products, the technique and the flavors of this nectar of the gods.
Panamanian chocolate thus makes its way to export to international markets and become a reference as is geisha coffee and other specialty varieties for which they pay thousands of dollars.
Oro Moreno, Chocolates Bocao, Forest Finance Panama SA, kokoa del Istmo, Kotowa Chocolates Victoria and the Cooperativa de Servicios Múltiples Cacao Bocatoreña, RL showed their products at the fair attended by 2 thousand professionals and more than 8 thousand consumers.
This Sunday, February 11, while most people in the country participated in the 2024 Carnival festivities , two huge cruise ships arrived at the port of Colón 2000. The National Immigration Service revealed that they served 6,018 passengers.
These were the Aurora ship and the Rotterdam , confirming that the itinerary of the ships that are scheduled to reach the Panamanian Atlantic coast continues with the wind in their favor.
Both ships were huge, from a distance they looked like condominiums at the bottom of the city of Colón. They were at the dock all day.
Before these ships arrived in Colón, between Friday, February 9 and Saturday, February 10, the National Immigration Service had attended five other cruise ships.
One of these was Rhapsody of the Seas , with 2,324 travelers. On smaller vessels, such as Le Dumont, 283 cruise passengers were served. At the Winds Star, attention was provided to 257, while at the National Geographic there were 152 visitors received. 3 thousand travelers were reported on board the Norwegian .