Casco Viejo

We left Los Angeles Friday night. Jason drove us to the airport to catch our 10:30 flight to Panama City. John had splurged just a bit and bought us seats in business class. On Central American airlines, this only costs a couple hundred dollars more than economy, but it was worth every penny of it. I slept most of the way on a seat that actually reclined! Six hours later, I woke up to breakfast. They served me something called a “Montecristo.” This is a turkey and cheese sandwich dipped in batter, deep fried, and served with maple syrup. Somehow I do not think it will be a regular menu item at our house.

We arrived and cleared customs without any problem. As our Suzie, our fabulous travel agent, had arranged, we were met by driver holding a sign with our names on it. What a pleasure to not have our first minutes in a country not spent dealing with predatory cabbies! We had a thirty minute ride into from the airport into town. Along the way, we saw an enormous new city where a few years ago there had only been mangrove swamps. 

We had been given the option of staying in this part of the Panama City, but we chose to stay instead in Casco Viejo, the old section of town. We are staying at the Magnolia Inn, a strange combination of youth hostel and hotel in the heart of Casco. We arrived at about nine o’clock in the morning, so of course our room of was not ready for us. We left our bags at the hotel and went off to explore a bit of this historic area. The Magnolia Inn is near the old central plaza, and like any proper Spanish colonial city, the cathedral sits on the east of  square.

As I walked around taking some pictures an old man came up and started to talk to John.

He introduced himself as Conrad and explained that he had been raised in the Canal Zone and educated in American schools there. He told us that he had lost his wife and his house in the American invasion in 1989. Conrad became our guide for an hour as we walked around Casco. He did not provide that much information and kept repeating the same things over and over again - including the assertion that 40 percent of the new construction was owned by Jews! - but he was basically a harmless old guy. 

Panama City was destroyed by the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan in the seventeenth century, and when they rebuilt it Casco became the center of the new city. This area was obviously quite prosperous through the early twentieth century. However,  by the later part of that century Casco had turned into a dangerous slum. Now identified as a UNESCO World Heritage site, Casco is becoming quite chic. Dozens of colonial buildings are being beautifully restored.

There is still a lot of slum left, though at the pace of change I doubt much will be left unrestored in five or ten years. Walking around Casco reminded me of being in SoHo in the 1970’s or South Beach in the 1980’s. A little nostalgie de la boue, I suppose. 

As we strolled around we saw some of the famous sites such as the Iglesia de San Jose with its gilt altar.

We also saw the famous flat arch at ruins of the Santo Domingo monastery. Panamanians say that the Americans decided to place the canal in Panama instead of Nicaragua because when they saw this arch they decided that Panama must not get earthquakes! The arch sadly collapsed in 2003 without the aid of a temblor, and this is the repaired structure.

We did have some practical matters to attend to, so we went shopping for shaving cream. This proved surprisingly hard to find. We did, however, find Panama City’s Chinatown.

At a bakery there, John convinced a slightly bewildered Asian sales clerk to let him snap her photograph. 

By this time we were exhausted, not having had quite enough sleep on the plane, and we returned to the room to take a good long nap. When we woke up, we couldn’t quite decide what to do with the rest of the day. I decided that we should go to see the Municipal Park, a huge expanse of rainforest in the center of the city. But before we left to get a cab, we decided to ask Uri, the young Dutchman at the desk, what suggestions he could give us for seeing the canal.

Uri told as that the hotel had a full-time driver who could take us around and that he was expected back at the hotel soon. We actually waited close to an 45 minutes until the driver Karlos - his spelling, not a typo - arrived. We liked Karlos and made arrangement with him to go on Monday. 

By this time, it was a bit too late for hiking in the park. So we walked a little more around Casco Viejo. It was about five in the evening by this point, the time of day that David Lean called “the golden hour” because the light is so perfect for photography. Here is the monument to the Venezuelan liberator, Simon Bolivar.

I took this shot of the new Panama City rising through the rubble of Manuel Noriega’s Officer’s Club, one of the first buildings destroyed in the 1989 invasion.

Uri, along with a couple guidebooks, suggested that we go to the rooftop bar at Tantalo for sunset. It was definitely a happening place. We had a reasonably good dinner there as the sun went down and the city lights came on. 

Tomorrow, we’re off to explore more parts of the city. Maybe we’ll even check out that new high-rise district on the other side of the bay.

Independence Day

Today was my 56th birthday! Happy birthday to me! John gave me a lovely pair of cycling gloves because I had mentioned how freezing my fingers had been last winter. I won’t have a chance to use them for a while, but what a sweet thought!

Speaking of sweet thoughts, we mentioned in passing that we might go to the “B-E-A-C-H” today and Eli seemed to think the thought was positively edible.

Of course, to be fair, Eli think that just about everything is edible. We need not go into details here….

We drove down to some place that was maybe in Moro Bay or maybe in Cayucos. At any rate, it was a lovely flat beach filled with happy dogs. Here’s Kathi with her adorable Brooklyn and Barkley.

Rick is such a good dog daddy, and he loves to play with Barkley.

Speaking of Rick, in addition to be one of the finest appellate lawyers in the State of California, he is also a superb nature photographer with a particular interest in birds. I love birds; I’m a member of LA Audubon. But I can never remember the names of any of them. Not only can Rick do that, he snaps pretty impressive pictures of them, don’t you think?

Many of Rick’s other fantastic pictures can be seen at his Flickr site. Check it out!

Alas, this is the end of our trip. Tomorrow it’s back home to Los Angeles.

Big Sur, Big Seals

We left the Riverside Campground and Cabins without any regret this morning. We piled everything in the car, using a wagon to carry it down an endless ramp to the parking lot, and as we left reflected that if this was the worst choice we’d made on this itinerary, that proved that it was a pretty darn good road trip.

We enjoyed the usual Highway 1 scenery.

We stopped off at Pfeiffer Beach. Despite the same name, this is Forest Service land, not state parks, and so dogs were welcome.

Highway 1 usually washes out every couple years or so when there is a major rain, so CalTrans has been making an effort to create tunnels through the most problematic areas so that the road is not closed for months at a time.

We stopped off at San Simeon to watch the elephant seals. Years ago, when we first did this drive, the colony had only recently settled in at the beach there and we could actually go down and walk among them. Now there are herds of people as well as marine mammals, and the beach is quite sensibly fenced off to protect them. This is a good idea as some of the males can be pretty aggressive.

We drove through some lovely countryside up California 46 until we arrive at our friends Rick and Kathi’s house in Atascadero. They were lovely hosts to us as always. Rick cooked dinner.

Kathi and I chatted.

And we all four enjoyed a fabulous repast in the gazebo. Edie, meanwhile, mournfully look at her bowl as if to say, “I want what they’re having!”

On the Road to Big Sur

It took us a while to pack up and leave the Bide-a-Wee, but it was finally time to say farewell to Pacific Grove. John suggested that we take the 17 Mile Drive since we had not done this for decades. We stopped along the way and saw the most famous sight, the Lone Cypress.

We also caught glimpses of some of the local real estate. You sure do have to be rich to live around here!

From there we went on into Carmel. We had to stop off at the beach for Eli. Edie and John were feeling a little more like just relaxing.

We did some window shopping.

And we ate a very dog-friendly restaurant called The Forge in the Forest. I have no idea what that name means, but it gives me a certain J. R. R. Tolkien feel.

It was not far from Carmel to a evening’s destination, the Riverside Campground and Cabins in Big Sur. It’s on Highway 1 right near Pfeiffer State Park.

This is just about the ONLY place on this part of the coast that takes dogs, and that is the only thing it has going for it. If there was ever a place to utter the classic Betty Davis line, “What a dump!” it is cabin 10 at the Riverside Campgrounds and Cabins. The toolshed where they keep the lawnmowers at Ventana must be way nice than this place.

Edie preferred to stay outside. I couldn’t blame her. She always was a dog with good taste.

We decided to take a walk around the area. It was surprisingly hard to go anywhere without coming across big signs saying “NO TRESPASSING” and somehow you knew they were serious about it. It seems like it isn’t a big leap from the Summer of Love to Deliverance.

John was bored, so when he found a rope hanging from a tree he decided to try swinging on it. It was fun for a moment.

But, unfortunately, he ended up in the creek.

We heated up some food we brought from Pacific Grove and went to bed early. There was nothing else to do.

Repeat Visits and Second Thoughts

We spent most of the day seeing things that we had seen before. Of course, since the last time we had been to some of these places was twenty or thirty years ago, there were certainly some changes. Some seemed like changes for the better, others saddened me a bit. But our first trip to was to some place I had never seen before, Lighthouse Avenue, the “high street” of Pacific Grove. It’s a relatively attractive commercial stretch. You can tell from how wide the street is that an electric trolley once ran down the middle of it. I’m sure they regret tearing that out now!

We continued on to Monterey to see some of the historic sights. John and I went to many of these places on our first trip down the coast in 1983 and I’ve returned to a couple of them later. But all of those visits were before digital pictures that can be inserted into PowerPoint for the instruction and amusement of fourth grade children. We parked by the Larkin House, the residence of the first - and only - American consul to California. Unfortunately, we could not really get any good pictures of that historic site. Here is a less significant one, the home of the first alcalde or mayor of the city.

The real attraction, at least for fourth grade teachers, is Colton Hall, where the first constitution was written and signed in 1849.

Rooms are set up there to look like the Californio and American drafters had just stepped out for lunch, and would be returning shortly.

We continued on to another important site, the Presidio of Monterey. This is still an active army base and most of it is quite off limits to the public. It is particularly sensitive because it is where not only the army much most of the military trains its personnel in foreign languages. During the cold war, they studied Russian there. Now Arabic and Farsi and Chinese are the dominant tongues. However, little bits of the base have been turned over to the public. There is a small museum there. I had a chance to walk around it a bit. A well-meaning docent engaged John in a long conversation and he never had the chance to see anything!

Behind the museum is a monument to Commodore John Sloat. At the time of the Mexican War, Sloat was the commander of the American Pacific fleet. It was not a large force, but he was in the right place at the right time, and Sloat sailed into both Monterey and San Francisco and claimed them for the United States. The sculptor, we learned from the cell phone tour, had created a properly heroic statue of the naval hero, but it was destroyed in the 1906 quake. Too cheap to commission a second, the committee just settled on an eagle that the artist has been making for a different project.

There is also a monument to Junipero Serra, the Franciscan priest who helped establish the first missions on the coast.

At this point, we had decided that we had enough pictures for children. We decided to take a second look at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. So we found a shady, quiet spot for the dogs in a parking garage and headed over to the old cannery. We hoped that by three in the afternoon the crowds would have thinned out of a bit.

We both had an initially quite negative reaction to the aquarium. Quite a few things had changed. The aquarium had always distinguished itself from other institutions by focusing only on the marine life of Monterey Bay, and it had been set up to showcase the different environments. Now there were fish from around the world - and penguins, too! The longer, more intelligent signage I remembered was gone. In its place were colorful, and relentlessly bilingual, signs, obviously designed for children. And there were now Disneyland style shows, too.

Why, it just makes you want to buy Finding Nemo in the gift shop, doesn’t it? At least the sea otter feedings, even though they’re a little silly, actually impart some meaningful information.

But after a bit we learned to avoid some of the most awful spots in the aquarium and just find quieter places where we could look at the fish.

And by the end, we decided that we still sort of like the Monterey Bay Aquarium. But after three hours, it was time to give the dogs a treat. So we went went Carmel town beach, hands down the best dog-friendly beach on the Pacific. Eli likes to walk along the water’s edge with his ball. I like to walk along the water’s edge watching the surfers.

Edie found a friend to play with.

The fog was close to the shore, so it didn’t seem worthwhile to wait for sunset. We drove around Carmel a bit. We stopped by mission briefly. It was closed for day. But that’s fine - I have a lot of mission pictures to stick in PowerPoints.

Across the street from the mission was this little bit of Snow White land. However cute, it is located on a pretty busy street and had not much of a setback.

We continued on to Carmel River State Beach. This is not particularly dog-friendly as it is prime nesting territory for birds. So we contented ourselves with just looking around a bit.

And, after stopping at Trader Joe’s to pick up a few things to eat, we went home to the Bide-a-Wee.