Panama City

I guess you need to watch out for runners and body builders?

Panama City from the view of Panama Viejo, or old Panamanian Ruins

Friday of last week Stewart and I took a taxi to the Bogota airport, and boarded another jet aeroplane bound for Panama City, Panama. You dont truly appreciate the beauty and speed of modern air traffic until you have traversed these massive distances by land, a point especially true down here where they dont have interstates! A mere hour after taking off out of Bogota, we were descending into the Panama airport, a jouney that would surely have taken 2-3 days by land.


Panama city, home of the panama canal, is perhaps one of the most cosmopolitian cities in all of central america. On every street corner you are just as likely to find a Thai, Chinese, Greek, Indian, Turkish, or American restaurant as you are an "authentic" Panamanian. High rise towers straddle the pacific coastline, Donald Trump has his own resort, and AARP rated it the #4 place to retire. A lionshare of the international influence comes from none other than the US. I feel that few people realize what a profound impact we have had on this country and its culture.







After backing the Panamanian independance from Colombia in 1903, the panamanian ambassador to the US unilaterally represented Panama in a closed door treaty that gave the US sovreignty to all of the canal zone. The rest of Panama did not learn that we owned a portion of their country (splitting it in two) until we actually had soliders on the ground. This was the case until massive nationwide protests in 1979 forced Jimmy Carter to renegotiate the treaty, allowing them to have the Canal back in 1999. Then in 1989 with Norriega in power we went to war for one day to oust him, killing 2,000 civilians and wounding 20,000 others. This was actually the 4th time we had intervened militarily in Panama since 1903. US military presence contributed 300 million dollars annually to Panama, almost 1% of their GDP, and now the vast military bases sit empty and out of place throughout their country, like vestiges of a colonial past.



As the door to the plane opened it filled the cabin with a warm salty air, a veritable salvation from the past 3 weeks of cold mountain air. I inhaled slowely and deeply, infusing my lungs with the heat and excitement brought about a change in climate. Panama was also the flattest piece of land we had seen in a long time, meaning less walking up and down in thin air exhaustion.

A mile long causeway constructed by the US military to transport two giant 14" guns to the islands protecting the Panama Canal in 1914.

Our first night was spent in the Voyager International Hostel, which came highly recommend by the lonely planet. However, our taxi driver informed us that the Hostel had moved, and as we crawled up the small stairwell to the 3rd story apartment complex, we knew that this was not the same one seen by LP authors. The "hostel" was literally a converted large 4 bedroom apartment, except that in rooms meant for 2 people, they had somehow sqeezed in 10 bunkbeds. I was also firmly convinced that my "mattress" was actually a large covered piece of packing foam. I set about the next morning procuring another dig, and stumbled upon the cheapest, nicest hostel in all of central america. "Luna's Castle" is located in historic Casco Viejo in a turn of the century victorian mansion. This 10 dollar a night hostel was started by 3 guys from San Francisco who graduated together in 2004. With a million dollar view overlooking the Panama City Harbor, and right across from the presdents residence, this is truly a gold mine.

View from our Hostel

The historic center of Panama City stands in harsh contrasts to the Burger Kings and high rises just across the bay. Almost every single building is over a hundred years old, most pushing 200, but somehow it all fell into disrepair for the last 80. UNESCO declared it a world heritage site and so a renovation effort has begun over the last 10 years, followed by the security brought by the new presidencial residence. The narrow allyways are now home to boutique ice cream shops and 5 star restaurants where 10 years ago they were whore houses and drug dens. All of this renovation and construction also meant that Panama city was one of the most expensive places we have been to date, and so we needed to move on to save a little of money!

The next day we went out to check out Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal. As I rode the bus out past the maze of ex-US military barracks, I got to sit next to one of the tram operators that helps pull the boats through the locks on trains. He said that when the US left, life working at canal changed dramatically. Predictably the panamanians had a hard time keeping up with the quotas formerly set by the US, and despite now charging 200 to 300 thousand dollars per boat, all of the workers salaries were cut in half. Stewart and I watched a movie in the Miraflores Locks visitor center while waiting for the boat to come, and we both noticed that this was the first building in Panama we had been in with building code items like emergency exits, fire exstinguishers, exit signs, and emergency lighting. And then we realized it was built by the US...

Even though it was built a hundred years ago, it is still an amazing feat of engineering watching a giant cargo ship get lowerd 60 feet in a matter of minutes. I think that when the locks were first built they were large enough for any ship to date, but now it looks as if the boats themselves are built to fit inside the locks, as there is only 1-2 feet of clearance on each side and not more than 10-20 in the front and back for these half mile long ships.




Also of interest in Panama City were the ruins from the original city built by the Spanish in the middle of the 16th century. Panama City was the first city built by the Spanish on the Pacifc coast, and was preceded by Portobelo on the east coast. The object of these two cities was to facilitate the gold trade/theft out of Lima, Peru. Naturally since boats between Spain and this part of the world only came once or twice a year, these two cities ended up sitting on a LOT of gold waiting to take it back to Spain. This was too much of a temptation for English Pirates, and so both cities were sacked on multiple occasions.