March 2002

ihana.com - big trip - diary - panama - march 2002

 

The modern city viewed from the old part

A quiet square near the main shopping street

Legs and nice buildings

Friday 8 - Tuesday 12 March

Panama City sits in a wide bay and seems like one of the most advanced cities in central america with its towering sky scrapers and large shopping areas. A suitable hotel was found and we got in a cheap taxi to Casco Viejo to look at the old part of the city. Here there is a long pedestrianised street lined with all sorts of shops and filled with people. There are a lot of nice dorises walking about, and what was really funny was to see some of them stepping out while still wearing rollers, as their hair dried out in the sun.

Shoes hanging from the power lines

Run down buildings

Don't go down this street

Leaving the beaten track, we wandered down some residential streets with old run down buildings. A girl and her boyfriend approached us and she implored us not to continue down a nearby street where a largish gang of youths were hanging out. We took her advice, mainly because she seemed very serious about our chances of getting mugged and we had the digi camera and $150 each freshly extracted from the cash machine in our pockets. Despite walking the other way a couple of the teenagers ran after us and started hassling us. One of them put his hand in Ts pocket (which contained about 20 cents) and got a bit of pain for his troubles so fortunately they left us alone. We rounded off our tour of the old town by a few games of pool in a suitably seedy bar where there was a back room with some dodgy looking craps game going on.

Two impressive ships in...

...Gatun Locks...

...well wicked

We headed up to Gatun locks, near the Atlantic side of Panama. Most of the canal area is fenced off with tight security and we couldn't find anywhere to camp. We asked a policeman and he took us to their car park beside the station house. They were a big contrast to our past Panamanian police experiences and made us tea, let us watch their TV and even brought us breakfast the next morning. The locks were a spectacular sight with a huge cruise liner and a tanker going through together. The 80 km long canal was completed in 1914 and over 20,000 people died during its construction. The USA used to own a 10 mile wide strip of land around the length of the canal until it was handed over to Panamanian sovereignty in 1979 and finally officially belonging to Panama at the end of 1999. The locks can 'only' take ships of 294m long and 32m wide with a 12m draft, the average toll for each passage being $45,000 so this makes for a tasty profit. The locks are filled by gravity flow of fresh water from Gatun lake, 200 million litres of water is used for each lockage.

Camping by the police station

Trans isthmus train

After the awe inspiring sight of the canal we went to Colon to arrange shipping of the landy to Colombia. After searching around a bit and visiting the very dodgy looking Coco Wharf, we found a building in town which had a few shipping companies inside. We eventually settled on one which gave the best impression of knowledge and also was one of the cheapest. Colon is renowned for street crime and we were the only white boys around but the people were friendly enough, especially the schoolgirls... The Zona Libre of Colon is also fairly well known as a place to get anything very cheap. Its a large area of shops walled off from the rest of Colon and only foreigners or those with businesses in the area can enter although the guards are very lax. The stuff you buy is sent directly to the airport and hence is tax free. We had a look around for a MD changer or a new head unit to replace ours which has been dead for a month now, forcing us to listen to the radio. Fortunately the radio in Panama isn't bad but the ones in Costa Rica were terrible with one exception. We couldn't find what we wanted at the price we thought was right so we left empty handed.

We spent the weekend in Panama City, taking in a few night spots and checking out the local talent which was very impressive. On Monday night we managed finally to meet up with the legendary Ted Simon of www.jupitalia.com who is riding his motorbike around the world despite being a fair bit older than we are. He regaled us with his stories and, having just been in Colombia, assured us that its a fantastic place. Disaster struck as we returned to the landy in a taxi, B left the digital camera inside, never to be seen again. The same morning T read an email to say that 9 rolls of 35mm film had got lost in the post in England. Two photographic disasters in one day...we were utterly devastated.

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