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….
