Panama City

Kuna Indians selling their colorful clothes, all hand stitched

Casco Viejo

Ken likes big boats

Panama city taken from Casco Viejo

Christmas time in the old city

We arrived in Panama City looking forward to a bit of an extended stay at Hotel Montreal, a little time to see the sights of the city while we arrange transport to Bogota Columbia, of ourselves and the bike. What we thought would take us about 5 days has ended up being just a tad longer, 17 days to be exact, because we can´t get a flight out until after Christmas. All fights are full. Seems a lot of people live in Panama and go home to Columbia for Christmas. Well there are worse places to get stuck.

As you might know Ken and I are not big city people, we enjoy more the quiet and friendly atmosphere of the countryside. Panama City with its 700,000 plus inhabitantsdefinitelyy falls into the rather large city category but we do seem to be enjoying all that this amazing city has to offer. The skyline of the city can be seen from afar as you come east into town, more skyscrapers than Vancouver, and as you get closer and cross the Bridge of the Americas over the Panama Canal you can make out the distinctly different parts of the city. Casco Viejo or the old city in the forgound and the dazzling new ultra modern city in the rear. Casco Viejo is a blast from the past with many of the buildings dating back into the late 1600´s. Many are dilapidateded and should be condemned but instead they are still occupied, meanwhile the city has put forward a full scale attempt to restore others and promote tourism in the area. There is a wide range of museums, restaurants, open air cafes and the largest market in Central America, with nearly 1 km of pedestrian only streets full of vendors and liquidators. Prices are said to be the cheapest here. Our walk through this seccion of town wore a bit of tread off the sneakers. I love to look but no room to buy.

The contrast in the old and new parts of the city is so great I often ask myself how a city can be a hub of international trade and banking, I have never seen so many bank in my life, and at the same time so carefree. How do so many businesses here survive on panama time.

The biggest and oldest business here ( beside the drug trade) is the Panama Canal and a visit to the Miraflores locks opened our eyes to what a construction marvel the canal really is. Built in a time when none of the modern machinery and technology that we have today was available. The 80 km long canal took over 10 years to build using more than 75,000 workers, many of which died from diseases like malaria. The canal has 2 sets of locks on the pacific side which use water to elevate the boats 26 meters to Gatun Lake where they can motor the 38 km across the continental divide to a last set of locks on the east coast which lover the boats back down to sea level and the Atlantic Ocean.

A few canal facts:

• it takes 8-10 hours on average to traverse the panama canal
• boats pay by weight and volume, the smalles toll was paid by Richard Hallibum who paid 36 cents to swim the canal, it took him 9 days
• first crossing was on Aug. 15,1914
• fasted transit was 2 hours 41 minutes by a USA Navy hydrofoil boat in 1979

Eating and drinking, a couple of our favorite past times. Like in most big cities there are many restaurants here offering any type of food you could think of, but we have distinctive tastes...cheap. Panama City fills that bill nicely. We have found a great little vegetarian place where we can both eat for about $3.50, they don´t serve a lot of vegies with meals down here so this is one of our favorites. (Sorry dad no bbq steaks or ribs only tofu). We also found a pizzeria that makes great freshly made pizza with real crust not cardboard, a little place owned by people from California. It´s not as inexpensive as other places but it is good, a compromise we are willing to make, and happy hour is always from 4:30 to 7:30. For our breakfast experience we are off to Rays Grocery for yogurt and fruit, and maybe a treat from their bakery. Brenda coffee in Panama is excellent, not a cup of nescafe to be found, expresso machines abound. Yeh!!!

At last I can get a regular workout, we are on the 7th floor and the stairs are the only way to go. From our room it is only one floor up to the rooftop pool. This is also a great place to view the comical driving habits of the Panamanians. What would they do without horns? We can´t quite figure them out, they honk when they want to turn, when they want to stop, when they want you to go or want you to turn, just to say hi or goodbye, what the heck gives!! But it sure makes driving interesting for Ken.