Ephemerica

After taking a freezing cold night bus from David to Panama City, we arrived before dawn at the bus station. We had originally contemplated riding our bikes from the bus station to our hotel in the financial district where we were going to stay with Cindy’s dad, so we waited at the bus station until the sun came up. But by that time, we were both feeling a little tired after having not slept so well and not up to dealing with Panama City traffic, so we cheated and threw the bikes in the back of a pickup cab. We hung out at the hotel until Cindy’s dad arrived, and then celebrated his arrival with some, um, traditional Panamanian cuisine at a nearby Pizza Hut (it was Sunday, and everything else was closed, I swear!).

We took in both of the “old” sections of Panama City. The oldest chronologically is Panama Viejo, which is basically the ruins of some brick buildings that remained after the city was sacked and burned to the ground by pirates. The city is working to restore some of the ruins and just finished a renovation of the Cathedral Tower, which affords a nice view of the city and the Pacific Ocean. But among the other ruins, there wasn’t too much interesting to see. Two years after the city was sacked, it was moved 2 kms to the west; this section of town is known as Casco Antiguo. Here was some very interesting colonial architecture—very reminiscent of New Orleans, with lots of French influence. We went inside the National Theatre of Panama, and the building was absolutely gorgeous, done in old european style with fantastic ceiling murals. There happened to be a clarinet quartet practicing, and the acoustics of the building were amazing as well. I’m sure it’s an excellent place to see a concert!

After having talked about the older parts of the city, I have to address the newer parts as well. As you can see from the picture, the Panama skyline is quite impressive—perhaps even larger than the Seattle skyline. One of our cab drivers as one point told us there were 400 buildings under construction in the city! I’m not so sure about the exact number, but there certainly were plenty more skyscrapers under construction, mostly condominiums. Panama (the country) is pushing really hard for foreigners, especially people from the US, to retire there (it was nearly impossible to escape the advertising); hence the need for more condos! On a couple of our cab rides, we rode past the housing projects in the city, that were often in the shadows of these enormous buildings and the affluence they represent…very sad.

We also got up close and personal with that marvel of engineering known as the Panama Canal. The canal uses three sets of locks to raise and lower boats the 26 meters required to cross the continental divide. We visited the Miraflores locks, the set of locks closest to Panama City and the Pacific Ocean. Before we went, I was thinking to myself, “Eh, we got locks in Seattle, how different can it be?” Well, it’s not that different, except for the massive increase in scale. Boats that barely fit in each stage of the locks carrying thousands of cargo trailers. Boats so big that they need mini-train engines to pull them through the locks and tugboats to get them across the isthmus. Boats who save so much time and money on their passage that the $200K passage fee is actually a bargain. And of course, to my knowledge, 30,000 people didn’t die making the Ballard locks.

On another day, we took a jungle boat tour out on Gatun Lake, the lake that was artificially created to provide water for the canal passage. We got to see all sorts of fun wildlife: crocodiles, three-toed sloths, howler monkeys, white-faced capuchins, a basilisk lizard, an iguana, and some toucans (and a bunch of other birds I can’t remember the names of).

After Cindy’s dad left, we had to get ready to fly to Colombia, which meant getting the bikes (partially) disassembled and into boxes. Anybody who is interested in the gory details can check out our post on the Lonely Planet forums. The short version is that the bikes arrived mostly without incident—one arrived on the next flight and we had to pick it up the next day, and when it arrived, the pedals mysteriously disappeared from the box, so we needed to pick up some new ones.

We have been enjoying Bogota so far (although we are finding it really cold!), and are staying with another new friend from Couchsurfing. We are planning on riding as much as we can between here and Cali before bussing to Quito for our trip to the Galapagos!

Posted by Matthew on August 27th, 2007 | Filed under: Colombia, Panama