Panama City, Panama

The Canal at the End of the Continent

December 6, 2007

- Ben Harper

Being situated like it is, at the narrowing tail end of North America and on the cusp of South America, Panama is endowed with some unique qualities. Among them is the proximity to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is entirely possible to wake up and see the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean, casually make your way west across the country, have a late leisurely lunch, and then watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. If you haven’t just recently driven several thousand miles to get from coast to coast in the United States then maybe this won’t resonate nearly as much. And I suppose that having lived for half a decade in the distinct dialect of American culture that the Pacific Ocean fosters, it struck me as rather amazing to have the two coastal extremes so close to one another. Or maybe it is the unavoidable romantic notions that sunrises and sunsets inspire that had moved me. Either way, as my plane approached the country from the Atlantic side I could see hillsides covered by seemingly impenetrable jungle canopy with streams slicing in between. On the far side of these mountains I could glimpse the Pacific Ocean. This exotic jungle wilderness slowly gave way to houses dotting the hills in increasing density until the rough hewn edges of Panama City finally came into view.

As the plane descended the airport came into view. Like most new airports, Tocumen international airport is located outside of the city center, about 15 miles away. Passing through immigration I received the first of many passport stamps. It seemed like the small country of Panama had decided to make its mark in the world, not only by hosting arguably the most important shipping channel in the world but also by doling out abnormally large passport stamps. Typical of your arrival in most foreign countries, especially these days with the existence of modern airports designed to be as sterile, impersonal, and culturally distant as possible, the country’s true character doesn’t impress upon you until you navigate to the airport’s taxi stand. At this moment you are bombarded with people that are trained to sense your lack of cultural awareness and ignorance of the local pricing schemes, not to mention your relative affluence and the likely presence of large cash reserves. As danger spots go, this is one of those where you are at your most vulnerable. Without knowing the area you are at the mercy of the taxi driver and their morality and honesty. Until you are able to adjust to the local culture and learn its subtleties it makes for a rather stressful time. For my virgin taxi ride in Latin America I was lucky enough to meet a forty year-old American in the taxi lines who happened to be going in the same general direction, and as a bonus he spoke Spanish. The two of us shared the long 20-30 minute cab ride to the city center that sketched the rocky Pacific coastline. As we talked, the taxi sped by some ruins of the old city visible inland off a small bay alcove. My fellow passenger had recently bought some property near Panama City. Apparently the Panamanian government was attempting to woo foreign capital by essentially selling citizenship. If you had enough money to purchase real estate of a certain value then they would be gracious enough to throw in citizenship so that you could actually stick around and enjoy your high dollar purchase. The low cost of living and warm weather would certainly be a draw and the strategic location between the Americas would suit most people as well. At least some combination of the above had brought my fellow cab mate to Panama on this trip and as quickly as we had met he was out the door and on his way, and I on my own.

After he departed, I abruptly realized just how inadequate my Spanish was. Those “Learn Spanish While You Drive” CDs that I had tried to cram in before leaving the country had only done so much. I guess you can’t expect miracles in language comprehension while you’re weaving in and out of Southern California traffic at high speeds. I had learned enough to phrase some basic questions and requests but any responses I received were incomprehensible. Nonetheless, suddenly orphaned from the comforts of English culture, I managed to direct the taxi driver to the hostel I had booked. One of the benefits for American travelers to Panama is that the local currency is the essentially the US dollar. Technically it is the balboa and there are some Panamanian coins that are intermixed with US coins but the paper bills are all US dollars. This means there is no need to exchange money and deal with any confusing conversions to figure out how much you are actually being charged. I paid the taxi driver and struggled with my over laden backpack in the afternoon heat and, already sweating, I found my way inside the hostel, in what would become a familiar ordeal over the next several months.

I took some time to settle into my $7 a night small bed, one of four, in a small non-air conditioned room, and it didn’t take long for the immediate feelings of openness to take hold. In hostels you are always sharing space, and with total strangers at that. For a lot of people that is a rather alien concept coming from a culture that praises private space and separation over communal living. In fact, a popular trend of western society is based on migration from populated areas to less populated ones, from the city to the suburbs, as monetary means allow. Many people move to cities soon after college because the core of social life and activity is located therein. As they age they tend to be enticed by the promise of open space and the lack of congestion that suburbia offers and the opportunity of owning their own property. But whichever extreme you are used to, the ever-presence of others that hostels impose on you takes a substantial adjustment under the best of conditions. Couple that with the intense and often overpowering tropical heat and equally intense foreign culture and it makes for a very disparate environment.

Without the respite of air conditioning the hot temperatures and suffocating humidity were draining. But, at this point, after a long plane ride and a somewhat stressful arrival in a foreign environment, I was beginning to get hungry so I had to venture out to start exploring. So far from what I had seen the city itself seemed less than impressive, unless your version of impressive would be loud and traffic clogged with lots of incessant honking and buses spewing bad air. Via España the main road a block from where I was staying was a busy street choked with traffic featuring loads of colorfully painted old, and by old I mean ancient, US style school buses (the city bus force) swerving in and out of lanes. It was difficult to tell which buses go where but at 25 cents a ride who can argue with that bargain. Either side of the street was lined with stores. The treacherous part was getting from one side to the other. The word yield simply does not seem to play into the driving vocabulary here. There are crosswalks and policemen occasionally help people to cross by stopping traffic, but most of the time you just begin to walk and see if the cars will stop for you. Sometimes they do, other times they just honk and speed up. It seems to be best to cross in groups.

The main exploring effort would have to wait for tomorrow as I was hoping to ease into my new environment. So for the first night I started with a trip to the grocery store to buy some food and see what delicacies were on offer. I was amazed at how cheap things were and I settled on a roasted chicken and a plastic container of ceviche with a handwritten label, I figured that with the country bordering two oceans it had to be fresh; either that or I would get food poisoning. I ate my dinner in the still sweltering late day heat on the hostel porch to the less than relaxing sound of street traffic. The chicken turned out to be a good choice and ceviche proved to be safe. After watching a little Panamanian TV, the less than riveting knock-off of Dancing with Stars, Bailar por un Sueno, and I was ready to go to sleep. The country’s namesake was waiting for me tomorrow – the Panama Canal.

I woke up rather early as the rising heat began to send the thermometer higher and higher and discouraged any lingering in my small stuffy room. I loaded up my daypack and headed out to see the Panama Canal. As it cuts right through the country there are many places to “see” the canal and one of the more popular, perhaps due to its proximity to Panama City, is at the Miraflores locks, a short bus ride from the city center. Of course being a main tourist attraction there was already a sizeable line outside the entrance. The main feature, other than the extensive historical and technical exhibits, at the visitor center was the outdoor observation deck. The history of the canal is readily available and entire books have been written about it but briefly it was one of the most demanding feats ever undertaken, resulting in the deaths of over 27,000 people before the canal finally opened in 1914. Its impact was nothing short of world-shattering. Providing a shortcut that saved ships from traveling thousands of miles around an entire continent and allowed them to avoid the treacherous seas south of Cape Horn (more on that later) the Panama Canal revolutionized the entire shipping industry and changed the economics of trans-oceanic transport. For further evidence of this look no further than the design and construction of PanaMax ships, ships built to the exact maximum specifications able to fit through the canal.

That all sounds very impressive and perhaps fascinating, if you are so inclined, and honestly, I had not thought of what to expect. From an engineering standpoint it was exactly that. Moving those massive container ships 50 feet up to meet the water level in the interior was amazing, especially considering that there is only 2 feet of room on either side of the ship between the edges of the canal. It takes about 15 minutes for each of the lock stages to fill with water and raise the ship part of the way. The filling and releasing of water is performed entirely through the wonders of gravity, a truly ingenious design. To move the ships through the canal they are attached by chains to trains that run on either side of the canal. The trains run on tracks the length of the locks and part ways with the ship when it enters into the man-made lake formed by the canal construction on the other side. This gradual step-wise process was probably best viewed in time-lapse photography, unfortunately only a luxury that non-real time photos can provide. Luckily I have provided you those photos. I suppose when you are moving something that large it isn’t going to happen quickly. Still, I left feeling somewhat disappointed but nonetheless impressed.

Meandering through the dense city streets I was overcome by the combination of the heat, the noise, and the crowds. With temperatures over 90°F and 85% humidity it seems like you are walking around in a hot, wet blanket. This gives most people a strange type of radiant glow from the sheen of the ever present thin layer of sweat that forms on all exposed skin. In the case of my maladjusted body it was more like a thick fluid layer. The city congestion was enhanced by the numerous stores stretching out all the way from their doors to edge of the sidewalk bordering the road, thereby forcing everyone to walk through their aisles of trinkets and creating large bottlenecks on the sidewalks as pedestrians and shoppers collided. The other striking aspect was that whenever there was a woman walking on the sidewalk the passing motorists would honk their horns and sometimes even yell things out the window. To be clear these weren’t supermodels walking down the street either. This whole macho display seemed to be a pervasive and commonplace problem because the women ignored these advances as if they were buzzing insects. That constant barrage and the encroaching lunch hour led me to take shelter in the vague familiarity provided by an amply air-conditioned Burger King.

Eating at Burger King allowed me to check off eating American fast food in yet another foreign country – now 13 to date – demonstrating the widening spread and multiplication of franchise businesses. It isn’t entirely unabashed Americana, sometimes there are different local items and it is an interesting experience, other times, like this, it is not. What it does provide is a somewhat tangible correlation to the price scale of the local economy in the form of the cost of a Big Mac extra value meal. Comparing the local cost to the cost back in the United States will give you a rough idea of how depressed or inflated the prices are. For that reason I aim for McDonald’s. Hopefully that is the only context where I will ever use those words. The cost of the Whopper combo meal I ordered was about $4, at least 25% cheaper than in the US. Just for a further economic comparison a 600ml or 20oz Coca-Cola is $0.55, a gallon of gasoline is $3.30, and bottles of good rum cost about $6. Despite the familiar memories that Burger King was bringing back, I knew that I would have to emerge into the heat and commotion of Panama City. Since I was not looking forward to that I decided that it was time to flee the suffocating confines of the city. I had never planned to stay long in Panama and in fact did not even have a guide book or any type of information on the country, other than a few notes I had made before leaving home. It was always intended merely as a gateway to South America, although in reality it is not a very straightforward gateway.

Returning to the hostel I enquired about sailboats that might be leaving for Colombia. Beginning in northern Alaska there are continuous roadways comprising parts or extensions of the Pan-American Highway that runs through Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica before finally running out in southern Panama. The roadway ends in the dense impenetrable jungle that is referred to as the Darien Gap. This largely ungoverned border region between Panama and Colombia has long been a hotbed of drug smuggling and guerrilla activity and is one of the more dangerous regions in the world. As I heard one tour operator describe it: they may just rob you or they may rob you and kill you, but maybe not in that order. Due to this the land route to Colombia was not an option. In keeping with the overland journey, that left the water option. So I enquired at the hostel about sailboats that might be leaving for Colombia.

At times there is a fairly steady traffic of sailboats that ferry tourists between the two countries. At other times, such as these, the holidays and weather limit the number of trips that are scheduled. The usual trip lasts about five days and includes a day or two stop-over in the picturesque San Blas Islands. In the end the cost is roughly the same as flying, and what sailing lacks in quickness and convenience it more than rewards with the experience, especially in my case. As luck would have it there was a boat set to leave the next evening with four people from my hostel already going. The boat was leaving from Portobello on the Atlantic coast about three hours away by bus. Looking forward to getting out of the city I quickly paid a deposit to reserve a spot on the boat. But before leaving, it was Friday and it was a holiday weekend, with Mother’s Day tomorrow, so a rendezvous with the nightlife of Panama City was in order.

After several drinks at the hostel with the assorted group that had assembled, we headed out for the evening. Those in the group included Juan, a Panamanian guy on vacation, a Costa Rican named Mike and his friend, both in Panama City on business, two Swiss girls, and an Australian girl. The three girls were part of the group I would be joining on the sailboat to Colombia the next day. Mike had been making frequent trips to Panama City and knew the area pretty well so he recommended a bar for us to start the evening at. Heading out the door we managed to find a taxi that would neglect the law and take all seven of us in his aging beat up sedan for a small extra fee, somewhat of a recurring theme that the favorable exchange rates and lax law enforcement seemed to promote. Maybe this wasn’t the best decision on the driver’s part as the added weight caused the rear of his car to sag and scrape the ground in many places, but I doubted that this was the first time something like this had happened.

At the bar I ended up talking with Mike about what he does for business. He described it as an import/export type of arrangement where he would buy things in Panama and then re-sells them in Costa Rica. On each trip back to Panama City he would bring some Costa Rican goods that had higher values in Panama. When I pressed him on the specifics of how this arrangement works he was a little bit vague but eventually disclosed that what he was essentially doing was smuggling, illegally transferring duty free goods acquired in Panama’s tax free ports then re-selling them in Costa Rica. He had been doing this for some time and had the connections to make it work. I guess that is one line of work where you would stay in a hostel on a business trip.