Wild Bells and a Wild Sky

Today was not only our last day in Panama City, but also the last day of the year. And some of Tennyson’s lines from In Memoriam seemed to capture the day perfectly: “Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky … The year is dying in the night; Ring out wild bells, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new….” We spent the day observing things old and new, and as the New Year began we listened to wild bells and looked at a wild sky. 

Compared with some parts of Latin America, Casco Viejo is remarkably clean. No doubt the Panama City municipal authorities deserve the credit for this, but they have some unpaid helpers who stop by each morning to see what they can help recycle. I think if we stayed any longer we would start giving these guys names.

Our big plan for the day was to finally use our tickets for the “hop on, hop off” bus and see the parts of Panama City we missed. But before we went, we wanted to take another walk through this oldest section of one of the oldest cities in the Americas. Reading my first entry, John protested that I had been unfair to Casco and had not pointed out all the astonishing restoration that has been done and is being done right now. What is so remarkable to me about this community is how the old and the new, the dilapidated and the restored are literally right next to each other. This is what we saw each morning from the balcony of our room. 

Not only is the old adjacent to the new, but in Casco rich are right next to the poor. For example, Plaza Herrera is a charming square at the edge of Casco Viejo. But all the guidebook caution visitors to be careful here because Panama City’s most notorious housing projects are only a few blocks away. Yet it is precisely this site that the owners of The Canal House, Casco’s most expensive hotel, chose as the site of their second, larger venture, the American Trade Hotel seen in the picture below. 

John loves to look at go into expensive hotels where we could never afford and ask to look at their best rooms. This time he pointed at me, told them I wrote a travel blog, and they were only too accommodating to show us around. 

The rooms are quite lovely, and the public areas of this beautifully restored place are absolutely elegant. Even though guests are currently staying there, not all the work is completely done. I suppose that is why they give a little break on the prices and the best rooms only go for about 600 a night right now. By the time these people figure out what kind of travel blog I really write I hope I will be safely out of the country!

Our friend Steve’s dad was born in Panama City and grew up here. Steve sent me an email asking me to check on the old house at the end of Calle 6 right by the beach. The last time Steve had been in Casco the place was in shambles. It was surround by cyclone fencing and a snarling dog guarded the yard; the windows covered by concrete blocks to keep out squatters, and the decaying balcony was barely held up a piece of wood. Today someone is pouring thousands and thousands of dollars into restoring it into the elegant home is so clearly once was. 

In fact, everywhere you look in Casco work there is restoration work being done.

But maybe this is not a complete surprise. One of the residents of the neighborhood is the President of the Republic of Panama. And there is nothing like a few pushy neighbors to help improve a neighborhood. Here is a shot of Panama’s own White House.

Everywhere you go in Panama they are selling Panama hats. Despite the protests of the vendors that these are made in Panama, I suspect the they probably are all manufactured in Malaysia or Bangladesh. And I am confident that I could get one far cheaper than the going 35 dollars on Amazon. John convinced them that he was planning to buy one to let him try them on. I am certain that all the vendors were dreaming of what they were planning to do with that money as John tried on one after another. And then, of course, he just walked away with a simple, “Gracias."

Our bus was supposed to arrive at 10:45. We were not sure quite where to watch it, but we finally asked enough people and found the spot. It did not come at 10:45. But at least we did discover some interesting fellow customers. The couple at the right are Norwegians. He works for the Statoil, the Norwegian energy company that has become in a recent years almost as big a Royal Dutch Shell or Exxon/Mobil. She works with mentally ill homeless people. The man in the blue shirt is from the State Department. He is leaving his post in Costa Rica soon to go to some place in China. They were quite impressed when I talked about my friend Ann’s time in Libya. “It’s really scary when that stuff is happening,” his wife said, “but it looks so good on your resume.” The world is filled with people who do more interesting things than talking about how to multiply mixed numbers. 

Even though the 10:45 bus came at 11:20, we managed to get a seat. We went through miserable traffic to MultiCentro, yet another enclosed mall in the heart of Panama City. We changed buses there. We sat around for what seemed like hours. When we finally left, the congestion was so bad that it took us about 15 minutes to to move one block. We finally made it to the ruins of Panama Viejo.

By this time John was not feeling well. We started to walk down towards the ruins, and he announced that he had "seen rubble before” or something to that effect went back to look at the museum which supposedly had a scale model of the old city. I went on.

When Balboa landed in Panama, he was disappointed that he found no gold or silver. But the natives told him that there were people who lived far to the south who had lots of gold and silver. Those were, of course, the Incas of Peru. After Pizarro had ruthlessly destroyed the Inca empire and enslaved its peoples, Peru’s gold and silver miles provided a seemingly endless supply of precious metal to the Spanish crown. The gold and silver came in vessels from Peru to Panama City where it was carried overland to Portobelo. At Portobello it was loaded on other ships and sent to Madrid. The English were intent on intercepting these shipments, not only because the money helped to fund the Spanish military, but because they frankly wanted the riches for themselves. And so the English Crown commissioned sailors to attack the Spanish ships and to pay themselves out of the stolen riches. Henry Morgan was among the most notorious of these “privateers."

Morgan landed his men on the Caribbean coast at followed the Chagres River overland to Panama. Even though the city was fortified, the Spanish sent their forces out to meet Morgan in the hills near the city. They were badly routed and fled. Morgan plundered the city and then set it ablaze. A short time later, the Spanish decide when they rebuilt the city a location further west would be more defensible. They salvaged what they could from the ruins of the city and let the jungle begin to overtake it. 

About 20 years ago, the government of Panama and UNESCO decided that it was a major archeological site and work began to preserve the existing ruins and to excavate the site. While not much of the original city is left, the outlines of Panama Viejo, as it came to be called, are fairly clear. Like all Spanish cities established under the Law of the Indies, it had a central plaza with the cathedral and government buildings in the most prominent positions around the squares. Further off, were houses of prominent families and the monasteries of the important religious orders sent to help convert the native population - the Franciscans, Jesuits, and the Dominicans. 

There were also a few religious establishments for women as well such as the Convent of the Immaculate Conception. These women were cloistered and were not involved in any missionary work. Instead, many were placed there by their families when a suitable marriage could not be arranged for some reason. Such women usually provided the order with a generous “dowry” and they entered the order with a servants and were provided with comfortable accommodations. The Convent of the Immaculate Conception was precisely this kind of place. Recently underground vaults, presumably for storage, have been excavated.

Much of the convent church is also still standing.

The real gem of Panama Viejo, however, is the ruins of the Cathedral. The design of the cathedral was unusual, though it was similar to some churches in southern Spain. While the church was on the plaza, main doors were located on a side street. There was only a single bell tower, instead of the usual two, and it was located near the high altar instead of by the doors of the church. The tower also served as a lookout for the community, and it was apparently so solidly built that it survived the fire that destroyed most of the rest of the church. 

An old photograph on display shows the condition of the tower a century ago. Today it has been stabilized and a stairs and platforms constructed inside so that visitors can climb to the top and be rewarded with a panoramic vista. No doubt it was from here that the first lookouts spotted Morgan’s forces.

I had a fantastic time at Panama Viejo. John unfortunately did not. When he went to check out the museum not only did he discover that it was closed, but an armed police officer was now telling people that they could not enter the ruins. Apparently they should have been doing this when I entered it earlier. John was livid that the bus had dropped us off here on a day when the only real attraction on the route was closed. He would like to send this picture to TripAdvisor, but somehow I am not sure they will use it.

But our troubles with the “hop on, hop off” bus were only  beginning. It soon turned into something straight out of the Twilight Zone. The bus went from Panama Viejo to the Multiplaza Mall. We asked the conductor - who insisted on trying to speak English with me when my Spanish was definitely better than his English - where we changed to the other bus for the attractions nearer the old Canal Zone. He informed me it would be the next stop. And then we proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. The other people on the bus, mostly Spanish speakers from other parts of Latin America, were furious and started to yell at him. He tried to give them some explanation. We finally began moving and were nearly to the final stop when the bus abruptly turned around and went back to the mall. There we were met by a large group. They seemed to have tickets of some kind for some other tour, and they were initially allowed to get on the bus - and then told they all had to leave! I have had some decent experiences with this kind of tourist transit in other places, but here in Panama City has been a nightmare. 

Once we finally made it to the transfer point, we took a seat on the upper deck of the bus. We never really “hopped off,” but John did step inside Albrook Mall long enough to take a picture. This is where ordinary Panamanians like to come to shop because it has over 700 stores and actually employs more people than the canal does. 

One of the projects that running years behind schedule here is the biodiversity museum designed by Frank Gehry. It’s not finished and already starting to fall apart!

In the evening when we got off the bus we decided we would go to the fish market and have a quick ceviche. It apparently was closing early for New Year’s Eve, and only one stall was left selling food and the line there was too long.

So we just walked around a bit. We went up Avenida Central a local shopping area now closed to automobile traffic. We passed through Santa Ana plaza where some young ladies called out, “Mi amor, ¿por qué no me visitas?” We also came across some of the police, who looked an awful lot more like the army, getting ready for a night of crowd control.

We went back to the room and regrouped for a bit. We showered and decided to go out and see if we could get anything to eat. As we left the hostel, we heard half a dozen bells ringing and ringing from the nearby church of La Merced. I had to check out the “wild bells” for Lord Tennyson. They were having a mass that evening, presumably for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother on God, on January 1. They were doing it quite properly with a vested deacon and a thurifer. John snapped a picture from the inside of the church that seemed to capture the moment perfectly. 

We walked around some more. There were only a few restaurants open, and those were full. Panamanians like to spend the New Year at home with their families. So we finally just went to the the local market - what the Panamanians call a  “chino” since they are usually run by the Chinese - and picked up some crackers and peanut butter. From our balcony we could see the young Americans and Europeans at Tantalo celebrating. 

As we grew close to midnight, we had a “wild sky” that Tennyson could not have imagined.

So Happy New Year, near readers. Even better, as they say down here, “Prospero año nuevo” - have a prosperous new year. And thank you all for your comments and we take our journey. It is nice to hear from all of you.

New Locks, Old Forts, and a Black Jesus

We had to get up early this morning because we had a train to catch. But it was not just any train. It was the celebrated Panama Canal Railway. This railroad is older than the canal itself, and it is certainly historically important! Not only did it carry miners to California but the gold it carried from California to Washington probably provided the Union with the funds needed to defeat the Confederacy. The route of the rail line was moved with the creation of the Panama Canal in the early part of the twentieth century, and it now runs directly adjacent to the canal. This gives travelers the sensation of going through the canal without spending eight to ten hours doing so on a ship.

All the guidebooks suggest trying to get to the train early and finding a seat in the observation car. We were not early enough for that and we told that it was full. We consoled ourselves by just taking a picture.

Not that the other cars are particularly shabby! They had lovely dark wood furnishings and old-fashioned lights. And the view out of these windows is not bad, either. 

But we heeded the advice of our guidebooks to find a place on the open air platforms between the trains. These had the best views of all as we went through the jungle and past the ships in the canal. 

We met up with Karloz, our driver, in Colon. He was driving his little red Mercedes. Karloz has quite a history with cars … but more on that later. 

The Caribbean terminus of the line is the city of Colon. Even politically-correct guidebooks like Moon or Lonely Planet cannot find a single redeeming feature about Colon, and Karloz told us it was barely safe to drive through the city, much less to walk around in it. So we went on to see the Gatun Locks. There are two sets of locks on the Pacific side and this one on the Caribbean. This helps to adjust the elevation between Gatun Lake, a reservoir created by damming the Chagres River as part of the construction of the canal, and sea level. 

Watching ships go through locks is really not interesting, but having come this far you do it. And somehow after waiting around for 45 minutes, watching sluice gates open almost seems exciting. 

It is remarkable to see just how close these ships come to the edge of the locks. There is less than 8 inches of distance on each side. The enormous ships are pulled through the locks by electric locomotives. 

They had one by the entrance so that silly tourists like me could pretend they are guiding container vessels across a continental divide. 

From the Gatun Locks, we drove north to towards San Lorenzo. On the way, Karloz stopped the car and pointed out a Capuchin monkey. It was off in the trees by the time John found the camera, so this photo from Google gives the best idea of what we saw. 

Monkeys were not the only ones ready for some food, so we stopped by yacht club in Shelter Bay for lunch. This was once an American military facility and parts of it are still used by the Panamanian navy. There were sailboats moored there with the flags of half a dozen countries. I had a local specialty, stewed octopus in a very spicy sauce served with coconut-flavored rice.

As we ate, Karloz gave us more details about his life. He was born and raised in Columbia. He started a successful car dealership Bogota. He soon started a new and lucrative service, adding armor and bulletproofing to cars. Karloz made a small fortune doing this, but at a terrible cost: his brother was kidnapped by guerrillas and Karloz was given 48 hours to raise 600,000 dollars if he wanted to see his brother alive again. Karloz sold everything and put the cash in an old Ford Ranger and drove to the rebel strongholds in the mountains near Medellin. Once there one of the people he saw was his former maid who apparently had passed information on his finances on to the guerrillas. Being Angelenos, of course, all we could think about when we heard this was what a great movie it could be. Maybe we’d change it a bit to make the cleaning lady the hero, call is C. I. Maid, and cast Jennifer Lopez in the lead….

At San Lorenzo we came on to the ruins of Spanish fort. The Spanish transported gold from Peru across Panama to take it to Spain. This made Panama an target for the English pirates, and this fortress was attacked and destroyed by the notorious Henry Morgan. I am fairly certain that Morgan kept his shirt on when he was looting and burning, however. 

We retraced our route back to the Canal to get a look at its expansion. When the canal was first built by the French and the Americans, ships were far smaller and nobody had even thought of container shipping. Today there are many “post-Panamax” vessels sailing around the world. This means that they are too long and wide for the Panama Canal locks. The Panamanians are understandable nervous about this development, particularly when they hear that Nicaragua is negotiating with the Chinese for the development of an alternate canal through their country. So a few years ago the Panamanians in a plebiscite authorized the widening of the Pacific and Caribbean channels and the building of new locks on both sides of the canal. The size of the chambers is staggering. Each one - there are three on each side - is larger than an Empire State building laid sideways.The project is running behind schedule, but still should be completed in two years.

The new construction is worth seeing, but the 15 dollar admission charge seemed a little steep. So when we learned we had to wait 35 minutes until the next showing of the in the visitors center, we decided to wait get everything we paid for. There was a little cafe there shaped like a ship’s bow. We had some coffee and Karloz had some soup.

We learned a little more about his life. Karloz had emigrated illegally to the United States when he was young. He learned English, saved money, started a taxi business, and found a nice house in the Long Island suburbs. He also fell in love with a woman and married her. Unfortunately, he learned later that she was already married to somebody else and had five children with her other husband. She told him that he had to pay her or she would report him to the IRS for failing to pay taxes. He not only agreed to be deported, but gave all of his assets to the government so that his “wife” would get nothing. Karloz returned to Columbia and started over.

After the kidnapping, Karloz worked closely with the army to hunt down and kill some of the guerrillas responsible for the abduction. Some of them survived the fire fight with government forces, and Karloz and his family were clearly targets for revenge killings. Karloz’s brother requested and received asylum in the United States. Since Karloz had been deported previously, he was not eligible despite the obvious danger to his life. So, with only seven dollars in his pocket, he landed in Panama and started over one again. It was here that he decided he needed something to help people remember him, so he changed his name from Carlos to Karloz. There are dozens of guides called Carlos, but only one Karloz.

These are the new gate for the locks. They will roll in and out of the chambers like ten-story pocket doors. We learned that they had been built in Italy. This was the first time I began to have my doubts about the new expansion project….

We had to backtrack through Colon. The traffic was even worse which made the city seem even more hellish. We continued east toward a final destination, the small city of Portobelo. Once again we saw the ruins of another Spanish fort.

But the big attraction in Portobelo is the parish church here. It is not a particularly remarkable piece of architecture, even with clouds straight out of a Flemish painting by Jacob van Ruisdael.

The real attraction here is the shrine of the "Black Jesus.” Supposedly the arrival of this statue in Portobelo ended an outbreak of Yellow Fever. But even more important than this is the belief that the “Nazareno” is the patron saint of thieves and other petty criminals. Since Panama has more than its share of these, the shrine is popular throughout the year, but there is a celebration each October when thousands of pilgrims come to Portobelo, many dressed just like the statue. 

You can read more about this in this article from Atlantic Cities. To be honest, I found all this more interesting to learn about than to actually see. The town of Portobelo, like so many poor Latin American communities, is strewn with trash. There are mangy, emaciated dogs running around everywhere foraging for something to eat. And it is probably my own racism, but I feel a sense of hostility towards outside visitors in Afro-Caribbean communities. I could not wait to get out of Portobelo. 

We had a long and boring car ride back to Panama City. We stopped by Niko’s cafeteria, a local Panama City chain, to pick up dinner to eat in the hotel room. As we did so, we watched Joan Rivers trashing celebrities for bad fashion choices on satellite television. I wondered what she and her guests would make of the Black Jesus’s robes….

Trumps and Trunks

Despite music blaring from nearby bars and discos until the early hours of the morning, we both slept quite well! We spent more time with our new best friend Uri at the desk of the hotel trying to figure out how our voucher for the “jump on, jump off” bus was supposed to work. We finally learned that we could not actually redeem it on Sundays. That was certainly annoying because suddenly we had to rethink our whole plans for the day. We went off to a nearby deli for a bit of lunch and pulled out our guide books to make some other plans. John decided he really wanted to see Trump Tower here, so we haggled with a couple cabbies until we found somebody who was willing to take us there for a reasonable amount. 

Despite its status as a five star hotel, Trump Tower has minimal and unimpressive public areas. The lobby is less interesting than your average Hilton. The only part that dazzles in any way is the pool.

John was interested in stopping here because he liked the curve of the building. 

We did not think we were going to spent much time at Trump Tower, but we were finished with it even more quickly than we expected. The only even remotely close to it that merited a mention in the guidebooks was the Metroplaza Mall, supposedly “...the most upscale shopping center in Central America." The Trump Tower concierge told us that there was a shuttle between the two attractions, but the bellhops at the entrance told us we would have to wait over an hour to catch it. We decided to walk.

One of our guidebooks described the architecture of this area as “pedestrian, but not pedestrian-friendly.” It is an apt description. Despite the Manhattan-like profusion of high rises, there is no effort to create an interesting or even tolerable street environment. All of these buildings are designed for cars. No wonder the traffic is so horrific. Part of that may be that when you are out of the towers you discover that they were largely built on what had been housing for the poor, and many of the poor are still there. 

If the Multiplaza Center Mall is Central America’s most upscale shopping, then the economy of this part of the world still has a way to go. All of the usual kinds of shops are there and a multiplex, but it looks like every mall in every small town in America.

In fact, it is really depressing to travel this far and to feel like you have never left your own country. It made me wonder, was it like this for the ancient Romans? Did they have the depressing feeling of traveling through the Empire from Aegyptus to Britannia Inferior only to see the same damn aqueducts, theaters, and forums? I wonder. The only thing not straight out of the United States were the huge displays sponsored by Samsung like this one. 

From here we needed something more upbeat. We negotiated a fare with a cabbie and in about fifteen minutes found ourselves in the Metropolitan National Park. Covering nearly 700 acres, this park provides Panama City residents with a bit of tropical rain forest in the heart of the city. There several different trails through the park. We took them all. There are also several “miradores” or view points where you can see either the city or look further west toward the canal. It was a warm afternoon, and as you can see, John has staged a superb recovery from his surgery. His instinct to pose, however, is incurable. 

Amid the dense tropical foliage, we saw some beautiful flowers. 

We saw these nests throughout the park. I think they are probably for some kind of wasp, but I am not sure. Gentle readers, if you know anything about this, let me know. 

We did see some leaf cutter ants. I was quite excited to see them because there is a little section about them in our fourth grade science book. They do not eat the leaves, but carry them to underground nests where mold grows on them. The ants actually feed on the mold. It is one of only a few instances of agriculture among insects. 

The most impressive things I saw was a quetzal. I am sure I would have missed it, but a Panamanian man just ahead of me on the trail pointed it out. I had seen one years ago in Costa Rica. This one was smaller and not quite as brilliant in color, so I think it was a female. I could never have taken a proper picture, so this one is shamelessly stolen from Google images.

 

 

We took a cab back to the hotel to enjoy the air-conditioning for a bit. Since the Magnolia Inn calls itself a “luxury hostel" we figured that we probably would come back to the same mess we left. To our surprise, the beds were made and the room was spotless. John wanted to make it perfectly clear that we are not staying in a hostel. Our room is billed, perhaps a little too grandly, as a penthouse.

 

 

In the evening, we went out in search of a bit of dinner. We ate at a place called Diablo whose specialty is Panamanian cuisine. The service was a little confused - we ordered ceviche for a starter but ended up with some delicious empanadas served with a pineapple-infused butter sauce - but sitting on the street in the right next to the Beaux Arts National Theater building was pleasant. We strolled around Casco a bit more on our way back to our room.

 

 

Tomorrow, it’s off to see the canal zone.