Experiencing a 5.3 Earthquake 37 Floors Up in a Panama City Apartment
While we were staying in Panama City with my parents for our birthday, we experienced a 5.3 earthquake! That might not have been a big deal, but we were 37 flights up in our Panama City apartment we had rented through airbnb.
I used to live in California, so I have experienced a few earthquakes. That wasn't anything new to me, but what was something that was new was being 37 floors up and FEELING the floor move!! It was crazy and a little frightening.
The first thing I did was go to the stairwell to see if other people were making their way down to the bottom floor. No noise in the stairs. I checked the sites to see if an earthquake had been reported. That took about 30 minutes for me to find a report! My dad headed to the balcony. He said he was looking to see if a tsunami was headed our way since we were directly over the beach!
After we realized the shaking was over, my parents started sending messages to family and friends to let them know that we were okay. Then we started making plans on if the building really had started to fall. My dad suggested throwing the kids out as far away from the building as we could as we fell. My husband suggested climbing up 4 flights to the top of the building and riding it down like a surfboard into the mud below. Such a fun discussion.
We stayed in a really nice apartment while in Panama City. It was great to find it when we did because we were one of the first 3 families to stay there, so we got a nice discount. We paid $80 a night and they now charge $160 a night! We were taking a risk though since there were no reviews, so we weren't 100% sure what we were getting into. We were very happy in the end and the owner was so very nice!
It was a 5 bedroom, penthouse type apartment. Each of the bedrooms was off of a long hallway. There were also three full bathrooms and 2 half baths. The apartment also had a washer and dryer as well as a nice sized kitchen! It was also air conditioned and decorated nicely.
One of the highlights of this apartment was in the bathroom. There was a two person Jacuzzi tub. The kids literally loved this. There were lights you could turn on inside the tub which was pretty funny. Bubbles or jets were the two options. It took FOREVER to fill the tub up, but we did it once and the kids all had a blast. That bathroom also had an interesting shower!
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The bedrooms were also pretty nice! We let my parents stay in the master bedroom with the fancy bath and shower. I think they liked that.
My husband and I stayed in the room with a full view of the ocean. During high tide, the water came right up to the building. We had a great view of Cinta Costera as well. The shower for the kids' room was next door and it had a whole wall that was just glass...with a view of the ocean while you shower!
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One of the only drawbacks of the apartment was the amount of white furniture they used. Panama City has a lot of pollution, so when you walk around, your feet turn black. Then you step on your white bathmat and it turns black. You put your feet on the white couch and the cushion turns black. It was a constant battle to keep tiny feet off of furniture.
We also had access to the very nice pool and work out room while we stayed here. They were both really nice! My kids, of course, had a blast swimming in the pool!
This apartment was located directly next to Panama Vieja. It was a great location and I'm so glad that we decided to give it a chance. So much better than two hotel rooms for a family of 9...even with an earthquake included!!
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Wow, quite the vacation, earthquake and all! Looks like a great place to have your family and grandparents all together. Any place with a pool is a hit for kids. :) I'm so glad nothing bad happened due to the earthquake!
Yes, it was a great place! We had a delightful time.
Cool review mama. If we ever go to Panama to visit, hopefully we can get a discount like you did.
On the EQ, I think the folks are used to that "mini" EQ. Back in the Philippines, we had EQs too and we would just freeze and wait if it gets more intense. Starting around 6 or 6.5 is a big deal since the furniture starts shaking all the knick knacks off.
Yes, it was a tiny earthquake, but you really never know how big it will get as you're sitting through it. :) Ha! Or if any more will follow after!
That apartment looks beautiful – was the pool also on the 37th floor? If I'd been in that earthquake I'd probably have worried about aftershocks, though I don't know much about earthquakes.
Maybe the price increase was due to the cleaning bills!
Lol - the cleaning bills. Ha! They checked the place as we left and said all looked good! We were the first set of guests through. I can't imagine how it will look later. Since we were first, we got a great deal. She had it priced $115 when we first signed up and we got 30% off of that for being early on. Then she raised the price to where it should be for the area. The pool was on the first floor.
It's great being early to a place like that. I stayed at an Airbnb two bedroom cottage a few weeks ago, with a friend, and we got the whole place for a bargain price of £37 a night (about US $49), as it had just been listed. It was spotless, and we wrote glowing reviews. The price is higher now - it's still great value though, and I'll probably stay there again.
Wow, what an amazing apartment. Beautiful! I bet it was a little scary swaying in the wind during that earthquake. I couldn't imagine! @ironshield
Yep, it was a great place...even with an earthquake! :)
Hahaha :-) A friend of mine lived in Santiago, Chile, and said people didn't really worry until it was a 7 or 8. Apparently, the structures are pretty earthquake-resistant, there. It sounds like they must be pretty good where you stayed, too! The apartment certainly looks nice. I bet the view was pretty amazing from up there.
They could install some sort of collapsing building escape pods, like those human-sized inflatable hamster balls paired with high-pressure helium tanks... I was thinking about that earlier, considering whether I could get patron funding for a trip off of Niagara Falls that way... :-)
Hey, I like the idea of the hamster ball! ;) I mean, if you're in a high rise and there is a major earthquake, there really isn't much to do. We went through a few larger earthquakes in California, but you just never know if they're going to start out small and grow or if you'll have a large aftershock. The view was pretty good. It was mostly of the hotels around, Panama Vieja and the Cinta Costera. It was so cool to watch the pelicans diving into the water for fish during high tide, but I couldn't get pics of them thanks to only having a phone camera. When it was low tide, all you saw was mud for about a mile.
Looked like great accommodations even at $160 a night so $80 was a steal. I have only experienced one earth quake so far. It was on a Sunday morning about 11:00 and I had a major hangover and was visiting my mother at her house. We were sitting on the screened in porch and I had a glass of ice water on the table next to the chase lounge chair I was half sitting and half laying in. As I reached for the water to get a sip the glass started shaking on the table, being hungover I thought I was seeing things. It only lasted for a few seconds but I didn't even try and pick the glass up until it stopped moving because I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me and I didn't want to drop the glass.
A few seconds later she said , "did you feel that? I think we just had a little earth quake." At that point I was somewhat relieved knowing that I wasn't as bad off as I thought I might have been after waiting for the glass to quit moving.
She laughed like hell when I told her how the glass was moving when I reached for it. If she hadn't said anything about it being an earth quake I might have still thought that I was that screwed up that morning. The radio did report it about 30 minutes later so I know it was a real earth quake.
Being 37 floors up would have scared me to death if I had been there with ya'll. Glad everything worked out okay.
Lol - that is a pretty funny earthquake story! I bet your mind was playing tricks on you!!
I have been staying tuned to read about this earthquake you experienced during your birthday trip. Thank goodness it wasn't a major one that you all need to be evacuated from this nice apartment. The place looks fantastic, spacious and lovely, especially that pool there!!! Bet you had a blast with the fam, @apanamamama! :)
:) Glad I got around to posting it then! :) It was a great place!
What an awesome place! I'm from SC, so earthquakes aren't really my jam. When the big one hit Oaxaca a few months back, I think it was 7 something over there, but that's the other side of Central America. Couldn't have been more than what a 4 would feel like, but it lasted a good 2 minutes. It just kept going and going, and the vertigo was so bad I could hardly walk.
Wow, that's a long quake! The one we were in was super short, which was good! Just enough to let us realize that we were in one. Most people didn't even seem to notice. We have them here in the mountains of Panama on occasion and we miss most of them - I'm totally cool with that though! Yeah the Oaxaca one was really bad - lots of devastation.
I honestly wasn't even sure what was happening. It felt like it does when the washing machine gets loaded up on one side. The house is old and on stilts, so I'm sure that makes a difference. It just kept going, and I tried to wake my husband, but he just kept sleeping. When it was over, I tried to go outside to check on the dog, but I almost fell walking to the door from the vertigo. I ended up reading online that lots of people get vertigo from earthquakes. I can't imagine what they felt in Oaxaca and then for Mexico City to get hit with an even worse one just a short time later. The earth might be telling us something!
Wowo that is a lovely place to be...whitish heaven on the 37 floor...well i can feel how it would with the tremors...
Yes, it was a really nice place...even with an earthquake. :)
I am glad you and your family are okay. Earthquakes are foreign to me since I live in the middle of the United States. (Although we did receive a slight tremor maybe 10-11 years ago. I lived in a very old, 2-story house and it was a quiet, early Sunday when I heard the house shake. I thought it was a dream at first.)
Lovely, apartment BTW. Is it someone's condo that they rent out, too?
Yes, it's an apartment they rent out. I found it on airbnb. Earthquakes are so crazy - nice that you've only been through one. I used to live in California, so I have a few that I've been through.