After many days of travel in small beach towns and the mountain town of Boquete, we headed for the very cosmopolitan Panama City. There is an interesting mix of the old and the new around the city, new construction is everywhere. Arriving at a bus station that was much like an airline terminal we over paid for a taxi to our hostel (we later found out the ride should have been seven dollars instead of fifteen). Our first day in this overwhelmingly large city was spent dealing with the shipping issue (see Shipping Saga post).

On day two we took a city tour, led by Miguel, it included Casco Viejo (the old town), the Panama Canal Miraflores Locks, the causeway and the fish market. Casco Viejo is the historic district of Panama City. It was completed and settled in 1673, after the near-total destruction of the original Panama city by pirates. They built it on a hill with a lookout to watch for Pirates. The original construction is colonial style but the area is being gentrified so there are new buildings in with the old. Many of the long time residents are protesting because they are being priced out of their neighborhood.

The Panama Canal was, “wow”. Between the history and politics of the America’s Panama Canal Zone, the business aspects and the sheer number of ships that make their way through the canal each day we could not get enough. The Panama Canal works twenty-four hours a day and processes about 30 ships each day. We saw tankers, container ships, a cruise ship and a small sail boat pass through the canal.

We enjoyed our tour with Miguel so much we did a second day of touring with him that included the City of Colon, duty-free zona, Gatun locks and Fort San Lorenzo. The tour included a train ride from Colon back to the Canal Zone where Miguel picked us up and returned us to our hostel. The Colón Free Trade Zone is a large re-exporting area with a wide variety of merchandise sold duty-free. There are 600 acres of stores and warehouses that are packed with merchandise and only accessible to non-Panamanians. It is like a city within the town and was designed to be a tourist draw.

Because of the Spaniards success in extracting gold from Central America, they were always under threat from pirates trying to take the gold. Fort San Lorenzo was built to protect the chief Atlantic port on the isthmus of Panama. The fort ruins are all that are left of the original village.

Panama City was very hot and humid. It is also a very large, modern city with several big malls. We found them all because we were constantly looking for a place to sit down and cool off. What better place for that than the mall. At one of the malls we found a theater with a movie in English so we whiled away an afternoon watching Tom Hank’s Bridge of Spies. The movie was very good but expensive. It cost us thirty dollars… the same as a night at our hostel.

We spent a week (longer than any other place) in Panama City but then looked forward to getting to a cooler climate in Columbia.