Sights and Stories of Panama - Old Panama

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 7 Feb 2008 22:29
08:54.785N 79:31.288W

We spent about a week on the Pacific side of Panama at the Flamenco Island
Marina, which was not too far from the canal exit and within sight of
Panama City. Flamenco Island and its neighboring Perico and Naos Islands
are all connected to each other and to the mainland by a causeway and the
whole strip is a resort area with many restaurants and some hotels. The
Flamenco Island Marina is still partially under construction, so it was
not easy to shoehorn all of the rally boats into the relatively small
space. Harmonie was tied alongside a long dock and two additional boats
were rafted to us such that the crews of the rafted boats had to climb
over our boat to get to the dock. There were many other boats in the same
situation with one and two boats rafted to them. It made for a week of
fairly cozy living with no electricity hook-up and one water hose shared
by five boats. We signed up for an adventure though, didn't we? So we
really couldn't complain.

As mentioned before, the heat and sun in Panama is brutal, and any attempt
not to constantly drip with sweat during the day was hopeless. My brother
Bill was a good sport about this and was extremely willing to help us take
care of the various boat chores that needed doing regardless of the
uncomfortable heat. This included lugging five gallon cans of diesel fuel
from the fuel dock to our boat. Because we had several boats rafted to
us, a trip to the fuel dock with the boat was out of the question - so 30
gallons of fuel were lugged to the boat by Bill and by the marina dinghy.
Like all things in this part of the world it took the entire morning to
accomplish this task and that does not include the half hour it took to
pay our fuel bill in the marina office (it does include the time it took
the fuel dock guy to make the funnel we needed out of an upside-down two
liter plastic Coke bottle though...).

Boat chores also included a trip to the big supermarket in a nearby mall
to buy supplies to last us until the first of May when we will arrive in
Tahiti. We've been told that good food supplies are tough to find in
Ecuador, slim in the Galapagos and nonexistent in the Marquesas and
Tuamotus islands. So, how do you buy enough nonperishable food to last
two people for three months on a boat? We don't know. So we guessed and
filled two shopping carts with everything from many bags of pasta and rice
to a large selection of chocolate (this is a staple for us and we use
valuable freezer room to store it so it doesn't melt in the incredible
heat) and many cans of fruit, beans, tomato sauce, and of course tonic
(for the vodka), beer and wine. By the time we get to Tahiti, we might be
down to eating saltines and peanut butter and drinking the cheap gin we
bought to spray in the gills of the fish we never seem to bring on board
(to subdue them), but I don't think we will go hungry (especially if Don
masters the counter move to the mahi-mahi triple back flip, double twist
somersault freedom move). My brother didn't seem to mind pushing a
shopping cart around and watching us pull stuff (sometimes in a willy
nilly fashion) off of shelves and into the carts.

With the major boat chores done, Bill and I (and sometimes Don when he
wasn't working on an engine or generator oil change, fuel filter change,
mast light replacement or general rigging safety check among other things)
got down to the business of sight seeing. The first thing the three of us
did was take a taxi to what was billed as 'Old Panama City'. I'm not sure
what Bill and Don pictured, but I was thinking we'd see many blocks of
picturesque old buildings and people out and about (especially given that
it was carnival week and everyone was on holiday) enjoying the various
restaurants and shops. Wrong. As we approached Panama City and then
entered it, the three of us were silent and glued to our windows. The
scenery was dismal. Block after block of misshapen, tumble down tenement
buildings with peeling paint - some with people lolling about and some
looking completely deserted. We didn't look at one another, but we were
all thinking the same thing, 'Oooooh man, I hope the taxi driver isn't
going to drop us off here...way too scary'. The taxi did take us a few
blocks beyond the worst of the squalor, stopped near some official looking
old buildings and a small courtyard and announced that we were in Old Town
and that it was safe to walk a little this way and a little that way. Ok.
We all got out of the taxi and glanced around. The place was deserted
and a bit spooky, but there were some old buildings and a few plaques in
Spanish and English explaining the history of the area. It was a
courtyard and a promenade along the shore built to commemorate the French
contribution to the building of the canal. The French actually started
the canal in the late 1800's, but stopped construction due to bankruptcy
and problems with malaria and other sicknesses. The American's took over
in the early 1900's and finished the canal in 1913. Picture 1 is Don on
the deserted promenade, looking at the shore with downtown Panama City in
the background. Picture 2 is one of the ramshackle buildings, although
this one wasn't as bad as most (we didn't want to walk to the bad
neighborhoods, even for the sake of a picture). Picture 3 are some very
nice buildings, which happen to be right next to the ramshackle building
in picture 2. Consistency was not one of Panama City's strengths.

After we walked a bit one way and then the other way, we had seen what
there was to see and started looking for a taxi to take us back. Hmmmm,
not many people around and not many taxis. Two big guys in a van stopped
and asked if we wanted a taxi. Their van wasn't marked taxi and they said
something about being a tourist car. We all wanted to yell 'NO!', but Don
politely declined their offer and they moved on. After ten more minutes
or so a newer taxi with, wow, air conditioning, stopped and we piled in
and headed back to the marina.

That was our first tourist experience in Panama. After that we stuck to
tamer destinations.
Anne

image/pjpeg

image/pjpeg

image/pjpeg