The next morning, as we were in Panama City, we decided that we would spend the day exploring the Old City, Panama City and the Canal. We decided to get a tour guide that would give us historical and current information about Panama City. We went to a Tour company. This strategy can be overwhelming at the best of times but, more so, when the spoken language is not English. After much discussion, the young woman, arranged to have a tour guide for us in the afternoon. She then recommended a wonderful cafeteria/restaurant with authentic food. The walk to this restaurant was quite the hike uphill, but hunger is a good motivator. We had a lovey lunch, yet again, despite our lack of language skills. Pointing is under rated.
old Panama City
Being fortified by lunch we again hiked back to the tour place where we met our guide and driver. Our guide was a 67 year old man, formerly pilot of 20 years, who returned to school and then worked in the hospitality business for some 20 years before retiring. His retirement consists of taking on various guiding missions. This man was very informative. He confirmed that the very tall buildings we have been seeing in the downtown area were built in the last 10,15 years.
He talked about single story house dwellings being bought up and torn down, with very high condos and apartment building going up in their place. He shared that many people buy condos and use them for a month of the year and then rent them out for the rest of year, i.e., time shares.
As he was born in Panama, he had many stories of what places looked like when he was a child and what they look like now. When we drove by a park filled with mango trees, he remembered going to the park for picnics and picking the mangoes, often on the ground. He talked about making green mango salad with vinegar, salt and pepper and how delicious it was.
We visited the Museum de Sitio Panama Viejo where we were introduced to more history of Panama pre 1671. The museum contains a scale model of the old city Panama Viejo and some of the few surviving colonial artifacts found.
Panama Viejo was founded in 1519 and was the first European settlement along the Pacific. For the next 150 years it profited mainly from Spain´s armed bullion pipeline which ran from Peru´s gold and silver mines to Europe via Panama. Because of the amount of wealth passing through the city, the Spaniards kept many soldiers here and their presence kept the buccaneers away.
In 1671, 1200 pirates led by the famous Captain Henry Morgan strategically overtook the Spanish, everything of value was either plundered, divvied up or destroyed by fire. For the next three centuries, what remained of the abandoned city, mostly beams and stone blocks served as a convenient source of building materials. Most of the remnants of the one-time city were still intact as recently as 1950 when the limits of modern Panama City reached the ruins in the form of a squatter settlement. Unfortunately, by the time, the government declared the ruins a protected site in 1976 (Unesco followed suit in 1997), most of the old city had already been dismantled and overrun. As our guide kept repeating -- they were ten years too late, its too late, its too late. As we toured the ruins, we could see that the work to restore the site was painstaking overwhelming.
Leaving the site, we bought coconut ice-cream from a vendor. We bravely ate the delicious, not too sweet, ice-cream. We then headed towards the Panama Canal, the Miraflores Locks, the first set of locks near the Pacific Entrance. As we were here in the afternoon, we watched ships passing through from the Atlantic side into the Pacific Ocean. In the morning, the ships pass through the locks from the Pacific towards the Atlantic Ocean
The Canal is truly one of the world`s greatest man made marvels, stretching for 80km from Panama City on the Pacific side to Colon onto the Atlantic side. After a failed attempt by the French to build the Canal, the Americans were successful and it was completed in 1914 with the loss of approximately 22,000 people to Malaria and Yellow Fever. The Canal cuts right through the Continental Divide. Nearly 15,000 vessels pass through the Canal each year and ships worldwide are build with the dimensions of the Panama Canal`s locs (305m long and 33.5m wide) in mind.
Ships pay their passageway through according to their weight. The average fee is approximately $30,000 U.S. The highest amount of fee paid was approximately $200,000, paid in 2001 by the 99,000-ton cruise ship, the Infinity. The lowest amount paid to go through the Canal was 36 cents paid in 1928 by a swimmer who swam through.
The Canal has three sets of double locks, the Miraflores, Pedro Miguel Locks on the Pacific side and the Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side. Between the locks, the ships pass through a huge artificial Lago Gatun, created by the Gatun Dam across the Rio Chagres and the Gaillard Cut, a 14km cut through the rock and shale of the Isthmian mountains. The Canal belonged to the United States, until President Jimmy Carter signed it over to Panama. An American has told me that some Americans are still angry at Jimmy Carter for this decision.
As container ships have become bigger, the need to accommodate them was evident. In 2006, in a Referendum Vote, 78 percent of Panamians voted to expand the Canal. The expansion will be completed in 2014, increasing the number of containers on a ship able to go through the Canal from 4,000 to 10,000. Many Panamanians expect the increased traffic and volume through the canal will inject a huge boost into the economy. The Panamanian economic boom includes the restoration of the Casco Viejo site for the tourist industry. Panama City will also be replacing all of its public buses to newer models and every taxicab in Panama City will have to be yellow in preparation for the tourist boom. Previously, resulting from the Americans owning the Canal, Panamanians were dependent on the U.S., now they are planning their own future. Remembering the Panama Canal as a footnote in grade school history it was truly amazing to see it in all its grandeur and take in its significance.
Leaving the Canal we toured the Casco Viejo area in which we were staying. Following the destruction of the old city by Captain Henry Morgan in 167l, the Spanish moved their city 8km southwest to a rocky peninsula on the foot of Cerro Ancon. This new location was easier to defend as the reefs prevented ships from approaching the city except at high tide. The new city was also easy to defend as a massive wall surrounded it. In 2003 this area was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site. The area is half-crumbling and half high end as dilapidated, crumbling buildings, modest homes and ruins line the cobbled streets in this area. The government has stepped in and is encouraging the developers owning the buildings to restore them rather than leaving them empty for investment purposes. The government is willing to assist in this process. It is strange to have your bags searched in some areas of this site, as the President´s office is in this area of Colonial past grandeur.
new Panama City
