Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Panama: a retrospective

1 August 2012

So I realize I never properly gave Panama its due, and I'd like to do so now before it gets too late and I forget everything. I stopped over in Panama for three days on my way from the U.S. to Chile.

Panama is a truly bizarre place. I should really say Panama City, as I only spent a few hours out of my three days away from the capital. Many might counter that the country is quite small, the capital is huge, and if you include the canal there isn't a whole lot more in the country. You can take it up with them.

I'm going to just use photos to recap my experience, along with extensive captions. I figure people like pictures and I don't have to write as much.

The trip began with the requisite visit to the Panama Canal. The tourist access point is the Miraflores Locks, which need to open and close to allow boats to pass from the different elevations of the separate bodies of water. Here we are all enthralled to watch a gigantic container ship squeeze barely past. It was enormous.

There are many ways to experience the canal, including actually commissioning a boat and traveling from one ocean to the next. I bypassed this, for time and money reasons, and mostly because I was thrilled that a different option existed - a train that followed alongside the canal.

A shot from the train. In theory, this train route was built to connect the capital of Panama on the Pacific to the second largest city on the Atlantic side. But it runs only twice a day, and the handful of folks riding the glass-ceiling train appeared to be tourists like me (though I doubt they were urban planning geeks too).

A lovely, typical structure in Casco Viejo, the old part of Panama City where I stayed. This is a decently preserved shell of an ancient building from colonial times, still standing and surrounded by more recent old buildings.

Casco Viejo was full of random and charming artistic touches, whether graffiti, tiny graphic work, or gigantic figures like these.

Lovely, isn't it? That sky, however, meant rain, for several hours as I ran around in frustration for a couple hours looking for the bus to take me to old, OLD panama.

Where I stayed, a hostel where I splurged for my own room since I had all my possessions with me and wanted to actually sleep at night. Of course, my single room was essentially inside the courtyard of the building where everyone hung out late into the night, so sleep did not come easy.

A portion of the highly modernized Panama City skyline, taken from Old Panama when the tide was out.

Finally, I made it via public transit to Old Panama. Somewhat disconcertingly, these ruins from early colonial times were unguarded and just sitting out as though parts of a public park, and it was tempting to clamber all over them. Kids were playing soccer next to ruins nearby. I am told this area is on the verge of loosing its UNESCO status too.

The center of Old Panama, with better signage, an entrance with attendants, and more than one visitor.

I just love the vertigo this photo creates. The remains of an old spiral staircase on the tower of Old Panama.

I am in Old Panama. Old Panama is engulfed by New Panama, as seen in the distance (which is a whole different high rise development than the main downtown I visited later).

Trump's edifice defining the skyline in downtown Panama's traditional core. As much as I hated to indulge the megalomaniac, I had to go to the upper deck and have a drink just to experience this monstrosity and see the views.

Next to Trump's Panama palace, another resort is building islands out in the Pacific off the mainland. According to locals, if you have enough money, you can do whatever you want in Panama, environment and social good be damned. There were plenty of examples, from the dumping of waste into the water to the paving over of beach to double the width of the coastal highway.

Sunset in Panama City. I took about a thousand photos of the skyscraper on the left, a corkscrew design that I dreamed up as a kid and planned to construct one day when I had the means. Thankfully, I can now move on to other things as someone beat me to it.

My last night was lovely, spent on with a friend from MIT and his girlfriend on a peninsula looking back towards the city. Indulged in the typical cuisine - delicious fish in garlic sauce, cheap local beer, and ice cream.

As always, these photos are just a smattering of the many I took. If you'd like to see more, I can link you to an online album I have posted.

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