Panama City – Bien Pretty

The first thing you notice when you leave the airport in Panama is the tropical heat. Sometimes the heat is also the second and third things you notice. But very quickly you are certain to notice the buses.

Panama has the most outrageously pimped buses in the world. In an earlier incarnation they were staid and respectable boxlike Bluebirds shuttling North American highschool kids around. When they were retired off they promptly swapped their boring mustard-yellow livery for a riot of lurid paintwork and hypnotising day-glo graffiti. There are garish pink buses that look like monstrous wedding cakes on wheels, emblazoned with Looney Tunes characters or fairytale castles; there are other hellish ‘death squad vehicles’ bearing hosts of vampires, ghouls and tormented spirits and with giant fibreglass shark-fins rearing from the roof. And of course many of the rest fall into three categories: busty pouting blondes, football players and the Virgin Mary.

On any Panama City street you can witness a parade of pimped buses that would make most custom car shows seem downright lame. Drivers and owners will pay thousands of dollars for a paintjob that is bien pretty (to use the ubiquitous Panamanian expression for everything cool). A bus that is bien pretty is sure to win passengers away from competitors. Many Panamanians will happily ignore several buses while they wait for their favourite to turn up. After it is like riding home on a fairground carousel.

There is also a safety aspect to all this. The so-called Diablos Rojos (Red Devils) have a terrible safety record and passengers hope that a well-painted bus might also have some chance of having functioning brakes.

Amid the phenomenal political posturing that is all part of the forthcoming elections here, plans are underway (…and then off again…and then back on again) to scrap all 1,200 of these rolling works of art. They will be replaced with the usual oblong Chinese-built buses that people here refer to as ‘refrigerators.’ As one bus artist pointed out to me though: “Who’s ever going to take the trouble to make a refrigerator look bien pretty…?”

For the time being these buses are hard to ignore and remain a colourful reminder of an old-time Panama that is changing fast. The Casco Antiguo (the old town) is surrounded by water on three sides and has a feeling more of a village than of part of a big city. It was once considered impregnable to attack…until Captain Morgan and his army of swash-buckling louts came swaggering into the city to a rousing chorus of ‘There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight.’

These days that watery barricade seems to be proving more effective as a defence against the modernisation that is rapidly sweeping all along the waterfront from here to the so-called Banking Zones and the luxury condos on Punta Paitilla.
The Casco Antiguo remains a sleepy little village of pastel coloured townhouses, crumbling palaces and whitewashed chapels. But there is always something going on in Casco Antiguo. Wandering out for coffee this morning I meet a protest group of displaced indigenous people from Bocas region and a couple of roving Chilean rafting guides in a fluorescent hatchback that has come all the way from Canada on vegetable oil. Just an average morning in Casco Antiguo.

Nightlife in this barrio has a feel all its own too. There are a couple of wonderful terraces on the pretty Plaza Bolivar and a couple of late night drinking spots on Plaza Herrera. All of them are known for loud music. Bar Comedia is a Colombian-run place that sometimes hires very bizarre street performers. Late at night you check out the live music at La Casona, a great, high-ceilinged warehouse of a bar that is often very lively and usually has ongoing exhibitions of sandstone sculptures or oversized driftwood wind chimes. Later still you pick up a takeaway bottle of Seco Herrerano (local rum that is traditionally drank with milk) and mosey down to Los Baños Publicos. These were once literally the public baths. Now it is just an unmarked door leading to one musty room with a mix ‘n’ match collection of sofas and chairs. A homemade stage is set up for random jamming sessions. More of a squat than a bar this place doesn’t even have a license – hence the takeaway seco. It’s about as Bohemian as you can get…sometimes excessively so.

Panama’s old town is building a reputation as a bulwark of Latin American art (although some old-timers predictably complain that ‘the scene’ is not what it used to be). Even so this unique little patch of Latin American urban waterfront can at times give a feeling of what Montmartre might have felt like in headier days, or Greenwich Village, or even Haight-Ashbury. Several photographers have set up third floor studios (there are few building higher than that) that make the most of the cool Pacific tradewinds. Artists prop their easels on the waterfront at Las Bóvedas to paint the sun setting behind the Bridge of the Americas. Guitarists pluck their strings in tree-shaded Plaza Santa Ana.

Meanwhile in a cheap coldwater room in Hotel Colon a roving writer sits typing on a mattress in which the springs are busting through. He rises to close the slatted windows in a futile attempt to subdue the blaring merengue that rises from the street. His mind drifts to thoughts of a chilled bottle of Balboa beer. Then he goes back to putting the finishing touches to a story that he had hoped might to some extent capture the character of old Panama…

‘There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight

Panama City – Rain in the Concrete Jungle

The early morning mist rises through the jungle canopy and sets the howler monkeys off. The locals say that they only set up this incredible Godzilla-esque roar when it is going to rain.

My eye flickers to a flash of blue in the shadows and I catch sight of a better omen: a giant blue morpho butterfly flutters past, looking like the patch of fallen heaven that the ancient Mayans thought it to be. Farther along the trail a toucan sets up its strange, froglike croaking call as a troop of tiny squirrel monkeys swoop past. Within a few minutes we have also added agouti (like a cross between a deer and a giant rat) and coati to our sightings.

It feels like we are in pristine rainforest, a million miles from the heat and bustle of Panama City. In fact, if I listen carefully I can hear the drone of the rush-hour traffic jam and, where the canopy thins on the hillside, I can easily gaze out to the skyscrapers of Panama’s banking zone.

The 232 hectare Metropolitan Natural Park is unique as an example of pristine jungle that exist within the boundaries of a major city. Just fifteen minutes from downtown Panama City (and five minutes from the shanties of one of the worst slum districts) you find a wilderness where ocelot prowl and anteaters forage. As a habitat to 284 different trees and 322 animal species, Parque Natural Metropolitano provides the perfect introduction to the Latin American rainforest. In fact it is part of a wilderness corridor that stretches right along the Canal almost to the Caribbean ocean, fifty miles away. It was not so far from here that a jaguar was seen actually swimming across the Canal itself.

Lilmarie de León and Rafael Gómez have agreed to guide me here. They and their team at the research and animal rescue centre have worked hard in the community so that the local people have built up a respect for this area and almost see themselves as unofficial rangers. Few poachers would risk the enmity of this particular quarter by hunting in the Metropolitan Park.

We spend several hours trekking through the rainforest but as the day progresses the sky begins to darken. It seems that the howlers were right about the rain after all. By the time we reach the crest of the hill slanting sheets are already falling like a curtain across the view of the canal. In the other direction the skyscrapers are fast dissolving in the mist. Within minutes we are thoroughly drenched by the first real storm of the new rainy season and by the time we get back to the research centre the whole area seems to have been converted into a river. It is not called the rainforest for nothing.

…At the very moment that we are emerging sodden from the jungle an old taxi driver called Danny Lopez is driving through El Chorillo. This barrio is routinely known as the Red Zone: pretty much a demilitarised zone where even the police do their best not to get too involved unless it is strictly necessary. My hotel is just on the edge of this slum though and I have to pass through it several times each day (although always with doors locked and windows up and with the idea that you will stop for nothing).

Danny Lopez told me later that as he was negotiating the growing floodwaters that were already beginning to block most of El Chorillo’s junctions he saw a teenage boy running along the sidewalk with a pistol clutched to his groin, half-hidden. In a moment shots were ringing out in the street from all around. The thud of bullets was drowned out by the rain that hammered on the rusted iron roofs. It seemed to be what the gangs were counting on. They had been waiting for the first hard rains of the wet season for a cover for their shoot out.

The police never even heard about it until later. It turned out to be just another show of force though. Gunshots are not uncommon in El Chorillo. This was just neighbouring gangs anxious to show off their hardware. And it was over fairly quickly without even any casualties.

“It happens often,” Danny told me later. “We were better off in the days of Noriega…he controlled all the guns and drugs himself…anyone who considered themselves a bad guy very quickly ended up floating face down in the sea.”
“…and a few of the good ones too,” I pointed.
“Well yes,” Danny admitted, “…but that was just politics.”

Viva la democracia.

For more information on Metropolitan NP, and Panama in general, check out the Panama Tourism Authority website: www.visitpanama.com

Panama City – Melting Pot of the Americas

 

I’m eating a four-dollar plate of rice, refried beans and ropa vieja beef (literally ‘old rags’) in Café Coca Cola. This is apparently the oldest café in Panama. Of course it wasn’t always called the Coca Cola: the most elderly clients still know it as La Apuñalada (The Stabbing). This can be a pretty gritty neighbourhood and nobody seems to think that was an unreasonable name for a café.

Just a block down the road there is the supermarket called El Machetazo (The Machete Attack). The Stabbing has been known to local people for years as about the best value eatery in the whole city and at any time of the day it is almost always packed. But it is also about the best place to soak up the atmosphere of the old town so I go there as much for the people watching as for the ‘old rags.’

I find a stool at the counter and the old guy next to me immediately introduces himself. John speaks unusually good English. I guess from his name and accent that he probably spent a lot of his working life in the American-controlled Canal Zone. In fact he tells me that he grew up on the Canal itself and that his family originally came here from Jamaica to work as labourers.

Looking around the room I take in the mix of cultures and understand again why Panama has been called the ‘melting pot of the Americas.’ There is one table of silently eating Chinese and another where two Indians are leaning forward in intense conversation. They are Asian Indians but two of the girls behind the counter look like they might originally have come from the indigenous Embera villages of Darién. (The Kuna people of the San Blas Islands are generally rich enough so that when they come to the city they seem to prefer to eat at Burger King or MacDonalds).

The usual foursome of old guys in embroidered shirts are at their customary table. They could be Panamanian but something tells me that they originally come from Argentina or Chile. There are many Cubans in this quarter too – people who, for one reason or another, chose the Panama of Noriega over the Cuba of Castro. And there are even quite a few Basques who abandoned the Spain of Franco for the ‘New World.’
About a quarter of the people in the room are black. There is a good chance that, like the Chinese and the Indians, their forefathers (from Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados) also came to work on the canal.

I am staying at Hotel Colon, just a block back from ‘The Stabbing.’ It was originally built to house these imported labourers and some say that the musty corridors and crumbling rooms still house their share of ghosts. Some estimates say that as many as five hundred labourers died for every mile of the Panama Canal.

Modern-day Panama City grew out of one of the most impressive engineering projects the world has ever seen. It is the sheer unimaginable scale of the Panama Canal that makes it so astounding. The locks are fed with water from Gatun reservoir and about 200 million litres are lost with each transit. This makes the Rio Chagres the only river in the world that flows into two oceans at the same time. A Panamax ship (the biggest that can pass through here) will be up to 294 metres long and will have a foot of clearance either side between the hull and the lock walls. These walls were the first major structures to be built with (at that time space-age) cement and since nobody yet knew how durable cement would prove to be they are 55 feet thick. The ships are guided through the locks by a team of 50-tonne electric ‘mules’ that cost USD2.1 million each. There are 100 such mules working on the canal. But it costs as much as USD350,000 in fees for a single ship to make the transit and the canal averages 36 a day. In 1928 Richard Halliburton swam the length of the canal. Based on his water displacement his fee was worked out (some might say by overly pedantic accountants) at 36 cents.

The work of all those thousands of canal labourers has made Panama one of the world’s leading maritime nations: more than 8,000 large vessels are registered under the Panamanian flag. Now work is underway on a separate run of locks. This new project is estimated to cost USD5.6 billion but when it is competed the biggest ships in the world will be able to pass through the Panama Canal.

It is said that if all the earth and rock that was shovelled out of the original canal was loaded onto a single train it would circle the earth four times. This new project might be almost as immense but thankfully Panama has progressed well beyond the point where it was necessary to keep a tally on human lives per mile.

For more information on the Panama Canal check out the Panama Tourism Authority website: www.visitpanama.com

 

Mark Eveleigh
Hotel Colon,
Panama City,
Panama