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.
