Big ships and lots of water
Trip Start
Jan 21, 2010
1
44
77
Trip End
Apr 24, 2010
Panama City, Panama
Sunday, March 21, 2010
I got to Panama city about 9:30 pm on sat Mar 20th, the only way to get to the hostel I have booked from the airport is by expensive cab; convinced I’m getting screwed on the $35 price but needing a bed what can I do. We do get there eventually, after the cab driver gets lost and I find out that I am miles from anywhere; note to self – spend more time looking at where places are on the map before booking even if you are in a hurry. The place itself, Hostal de Clayton is fine, basic but clean and the wifi permits me to send the emails I have written on the flight here. There is an American girl, Adrienne (sp?) in the lobby also on the internet and I chat to her a little. I successfully manage to suppress the desire to say Adrienne in Sylvester Stallone Rocky style - I will store this as further evidence that I may finally be showing some signs of adulthood. She is here for a couple of days on her way back to Connecticut (Yale) from Costa Rica in order to catch up with people with whom she is working on her PhD on something to do with ecology and/ or trees, I think. She is a nice girl and as it happens is also the only person sharing the dorm I am in tonight.
I get up at what turns out to be 6:30am since my phone has managed to update to the wrong time zone!!!!..... time for several coffees and a bit more t’internet. Adrienne knows a nice place for breakfast that she is heading to and is on the way to the canal where I am heading so I join her…. It being Sunday the place she wanted to go to was closed but we find an alternative nearby for more coffee and a light breakfast. I say goodbye and continue my walk, about 25 mins in total, to Miraflores lock which is the first lock on the pacific side of the Panama Canal.
Miraflores lock also has a canal visitors centre and as well as some viewing areas for the 2 parallel locks that are there. There is a great deal of not much happening when I get there at 10am, too late I think for the early morning ships coming from the pacific and too early for the ones coming from the Atlantic to get there. Although the locks are very impressive in a geeky engineer way, there are only so many photos you can take of 2 big locks from slightly different angles but I loiter around some more wandering how long to give it to see some ship action.
Shortly after 11am the first yachts have arrived from the Atlantic side on their way to the pacific; 4 yachts are all sailed into the far lock and the process of dropping the water level and dropping the boats 16.5 m back to sea level again begins. While this is in progress a large Korean freighter comes into view and goes through the same process but on the nearside lock. The large freighter is also kept steady by 2 'mules’ on each side – these mules are in fact electric locomotives not pulling the ship through but keeping the ropes on each side under tension so the ship stays straight.
I am ship and locked and canalled out before the freighter has finished its journey through the locks so leave the Miraflores locks visitors complex and get a taxi to Plaza di Catedral in San Felipe, the old part of Panama city.
My 1st priority is lunch and the Gourmet café listed in the rough guide is just round the corner so there I go and enjoy the soup and sandwich special, lentil soup and beef sandwich in case you just couldn’t take the tension of not knowing anymore.
After lunch I head back to the Plaza di Catedral and visit the Museo del Canal Interoceanico (or the canal museum to you and me). I pay my entry and head upstairs to the beginning of the exhibits, everything is 100% in Spanish!!.... luckily I overhear 3 American girls talking about getting an English speaking guide and cheekily ask if I can join them. The guide is pretty good as far as his script is concerned but struggles with any questions that take him away from the well rehearsed and memorised tour information; still it is better than looking at lots of words in Spanish that I don’t understand. Their most prized artefact is the actual canal treaty signed by US president Jimmy Carter and his Panamanian equivalent permitting the handing over ownership of the Canal Zone back to Panama from the US on 31st Dec 1999…..5 miles either side of the canal was US sovereign territory before then.
Whilst we are in the museum we hear some very heavy rain falling; it has fortunately stopped by the time I leave but it is still very dark and grey outside and there are tremendous roars of thunder at frequent intervals…. and they are getting louder and heading this way. I wander round as much of San Felipe as I can, taking in the architecture and trying to get some decent photos of the various buildings. Then the heavens absolutely open, I seek some limited shelter in the large recessed window of a building on Paseoes las Bovedas, a short pedestrianised street in San Felipe. As the rain starts to clear I take some photos across the Bay of Panama toward the more modern parts of the city and also of the birds that are flying and I assume feeding in and on the water. There is also a good, if a little misty, view of the Bridge of the Americas; originally named after the British (I think) woman who designed it but name changed by the Panamanians because it bridges the continental divide between North and South America.
After all this activity I treat myself to a well deserved beer, a local Panamanian brew called Balboa – typically non descript in taste but cold and refreshing none the less. I’m soooo tempted to have at least another couple but I want to walk out of San Felipe and all along Avenida Central all the way to Plaza Cinco de Mayo. As you leave San Felipe the Avenida Central becomes a pedestrianised commercial street, full of loud and gaudy shops with random music blaring…… I hardly see any tourists in this street, until I get to the obligatory MacDonald’s but even here it probably 50/ 50 with the locals.
My advice to others is don’t bother with this walk, having reached Plaza Cinco de Mayo I turn round and head back with the intention of grabbing a bite to eat. I get some food at restaurant Coca Cola, the self proclaimed oldest restaurant in Panama according to the rough guide. The food is basic but fine and tasty with the addition of some salsa picante.
My only remaining tasks now are to get back to the hostel, pick up my bags and get ready for my taxi to the airport 7pm. As with most apparently simply and straightforward tasks other people have to screw them up…. To begin with I can’t get a taxi driver to go out to Clayton, but once this has been solved my taxi to the airport doesn’t arrive since hadn’t been booked despite a very clear conversation this morning.
I eventually get to the airport just before 8pm for an 8:42 pm departure; luckily there are no queues (lines) at check in and almost no queue at security…. And even at this late time I mange to get an exit row seat – don’t other people ask for this extra legroom?... On board, settled in, quick check of in flight magazine and free booze again on a flight – I think I will take some vino tinto – just to help me sleep you understand, and oh yes its good for my heart as well isn’t it?
