Chapter 8: Panama, Panama

WARNING: This post has way too many pictures! Why? Because it is my blog and I can do anything I want to because you're not the boss of me!

11.08.2013

• Woke up at 6 to catch a water taxi which didn't actually leave till 7am. Saw Gary, the owner of Gringo's, with his son and was glad for a chance to say goodbye. He said I was his favourite. I bet he says that to all the patrons; I felt special anyway. 
• Ride across the water was brilliant with pastel skies over the cascading hills with cool morning wind in my face and the sound of the boat cutting through the water singing me awake. Whisked away by a taxi on the other side to the bus station where I finally had a chance to eat something before our coach arrived, loaded, and took off for the 10 hour ride to Panama. 
• The ride was fast with intermittent naps and stops every two hours. Breaks were long enough to stretch ones limbs and grab a bite of food. Beautiful mountains. 
• Crossed the Bridge of the Americas as the sun began to set and arrived in Panama, a very cosmopolitan city which was beginning to light up against the twilight. Arrived at the National Bus Terminal and hailed a cab to Casco Viejo (old town) and my "Luxury Hostel," the incredible Magnolia Inn. Our host for the evening, Maria, helped me get settled into my room where I dropped my bags and took a few moments to enjoy the warm, humid evening air from my balcony. The old Spanish colonial neighborhood with narrow brick streets that has been refurbished over the past years with restored buildings standing next to hollowed out facades with broken railings and decades of pain layers worn to the wood. The dissonance is only as striking as the similarity in gentrification over the course of 200 years. 
• I stopped at a store around the corner for supplies and went for dinner at a restaurant called Tantalo. The lighting drew me in (as the ambiance of a place always does) with a web of dangling Edison bulbs dimly lighting the modern, lounge-esque space. A female voice carried over the tables with a jazzy cover of a Michael Jackson song. It was a calming place to enjoy a Caesar salad and a bowl of pad thai, a strange but satisfying combination.
• The sky must have also found some relief from a long day, I thought as I walked home in the rain. Snuggled on my bed with Skype open and my nephew in California telling me to smell his stinky feet. My sister, Kelly, talked about trying to meet me with her family in Japan on my way home next year. It was a fun idea that I will now hound her about. I will at least make it to see them in Hawaii where they will be moving when he is home from his tour in Kuwait. 
• Chat with Kevin and some research on what to do tomorrow. I only have 3 full days here and feel the need to make the most of them. Then again, I already feel that this is a city I will come back to. Realizing tonight how much I really do like a city. It's fun to get away to the beach for a while but I love museums and symphonies and hoards of people and a million food choices and the torrent of sound. Sleep. 

12.08.2013

• Woke up early and decided to write while my roommates, two folk from Holland who arrived around 5am, continued to catch up on sleep. Sadly, the awoke to the news that Prince Friso of Holland died this morning one year after an accident and subsequent coma. All opinions about royal hierarchies aside, thoughts of peace and healing for anyone who loses a loved one and today, the royal family of Holland. 
• Dropped of laundry!!! $3 for someone else to wash and dry basically everything I am carrying this year in a matter of two hours! Two hours till clean! I am way too excited about this. 
• Caught a cab in the late morning downpour bound for Miraflores Locks, the Pacific side of the Panama Canal crossing - driver and I managed some conversation despite our dissimilar language skills. Good to find another driver who I can agree with on music tastes though - asked him to turn up the volume and I hummed along to the melody of Spanish language songs I didn't know. 
• Arrived to the visitor center on the south side of the canal and ascended the escalator toward the visitor center. Ship navigating through the locks as I arrived so I went straight for the stairs and to the fifth floor observation deck where folks could be found clinging to the railing and peering out over the slow moving tanker. It reminded me of my best friend growing up, Keith, whose father was an Exxon ship captain and who is now running ships himself. When I was in middle school I was invited to a Mother's Day party on the tanker while it was docked in the San Francisco Bay near my home town of Benicia, California. It was fun to play on the deck among the pipes, hang out in the gym playing ping-pong, pretend to steer the ship, and we even We ended up staying the night in the Captain's quarters. Better to have these experiences before you grow up to have issues with the fossil fuel industry. 
• I did think about how many times Keith's dad must have traversed this very canal but also learned in the five floors of canal museum that this is the only ship transit site that requires that a specialist canal navigator actually take control of the ship to complete the journey. i could tell you a lot more about what I learned at the canal museum but wikipedia had probably done most of it (and probably a better job of it) and reciting history is not the purpose of this blog. If that was not clear before then perhaps it's only because I am only feeling really clear about that now myself. I'll let you know when I do figure out exactly what this blog is about. In the meantime I can tell you that the museum was light on history; had some fun visual displays; glossed over the politics of the canal and the stories of the people who physically built the canal; showed great enthusiasm for the expansion canal that will increase the size and number of ships able to pass; does not discuss the impact of the planned canal to be constructed in Nicaragua; and briefly discussed the environmental impact of the expansion but not the social or environmental impact of global supply chain systems. The 10 minute, 3D film about the canal also played a bit more like an infomercial about the canal than a visual history of the structures; a missed opportunity, I think. Clearly, Panamanians are excited about their role as gatekeepers to the world with something like 77% of voters approving the expansion referendum in 2006. All-in-all, it was an OK experience. I was perhaps less overwhelmed with the engineering marvel of the canal than I might have been had Seattle not its own locks which are also a bit more interactive, allowing folks to walk across the gates or view the salmon ladder under sea level. All of that said, it was still an amazing thing to be standing at the divide between two hemispheres of a landmass that is the Americas. It is on this scale that I often find my greatest astonishment and satisfaction. For current news about the role that Panama plays in global systems given their unique position you can read about drugs or weapons transportation. 
• (I can't believe I just wrote all of that. Wait, yes I can.)

• A cab ride home to snack and grab my map of Cosco Viejo, my neighborhood de jour. There is a walking tour lined out that conveniently begins and ends very near my hotel. It took me (and my camera) along the narrow brick streets and waterfront promenades to visit the following popular destinations: 1) Heron Palace: residence of the President of Panama; 2) Bolivar Palace: of Simon Bolivar, El Libertador, instrumental in the fight for freedom from the Spanish Empire and for whom Bolivia was named; 3) The National Theater: similar in size and design to the theater in Costa Rica but this one was closed today and I am biased by experience in San Jose; 4) Paseo Esteban Huertas: a covered path along the water built to honor a Colombian General and today lined with arts and crafts salespersons; 5) The Plaza of France: dedicated to the 22,000 French workers who died in the construction of the canal, mostly of yellow fever and malaria and flanked by dungeons built by the Spaniards, with a large obelisk with a rooster on top; 6) Ruins of the Convent of Santo Domingo: with an impressive "flat arch;" 7) Metropolitan Cathedral: also closed but lovely from the outside; 8) The Church of San Jose: replete with a gilded alter; 9) Church of the Lady of Merced: undergoing renovations and has pillars stripped to the beams and all four bells resting beside the pews. Along the way I enjoyed views of the city, the waterways, the Bridge of the Americas (which spans the divide between the Americas), and more, fine graffiti art. Photos will not be captioned or number according to this list. 
• Picked up laundry and came home to unpack as if it were Christmas morning. I rearranged all of my gear and I am fairly certain that it all ended up right back where it started. Content with clean clothes, I made my way out for more errands (batteries, toothbrush, and other sundry items) and then stopped for dinner at Tequila's which filled me with a tasty chicken taco salad. On the way home I bought gummy bears and took photos of the city at night. Have I mentioned what a beautiful city it is? 
• Quick chat with a sleepy Kevin and a brief messaging thread with social worker extraordinaire, all-around rock star, inspirational peer, and deep friend, Gina Mendoza (who admitted to reading this blog so I know she will get the reminder of how great she is)! Time to rest.  

13.08.2013

• Today it's time to adventure out of my neighborhood. I started with a walk along the water on the Cinta Costera to El Mercado de Maricos (Seafood Market) where you can find every size and color of fish you can desire along with other sea creatures. Panama, as I would later learn, literally means "many fish" and you can get an eye-full at the market and a mouth-full at any of the small restaurant spaces throughout. 
• I cut across through town, under the viaduct, up a footbridge over the Pan-American Highway, and into the park to find the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo (Museum of Contemporary Art) which features is the nation's only art space of its kind and dedicated to Panamanian artists. I met Santiago Cherigo, the guide for the museum, who joked that Seattle must be a nice city but requires a glass of whiskey. It's like he knows me. He let me wander alone for a while but later toured me through the space giving me details about artists (which was the oldest, who is still living, where they take residence now, which are friends with each other or with Santiago). I was surprised to hear how many of the artists are now living abroad and also intrigued that only a few of the pieces had obvious sociopolitical themes while outside one could still find activist imagery sprawled on concrete. He also showed me plans for new museum building in Casco Viejo with a $10,000,000 price tag for which they hope to break ground in another four to five years. Upstairs was a special exhibition of Fabiola Buritica called El placer del color y de la linia (The pleasure of the color and the line). From what I could I could make out in the artist's introduction with my paltry Spanish vocabulary he is self taught and a spiritualist. His website opens the description of the show with the words: "Art, as I like, / because now I paint and sing to God / you used to with my hands in the wild." Lots of white space, and birds, and fish, and pregnant women. It has a vibrancy but ultimately feels like a tranquil swirl of universal love.  
• I made my way back over the highway and through town on my way to, well, being lost. When one does not speak the local language, asking for directions is something of a cross between a scavenger hunt and a game of charades with lots of pointing and counting on fingers and gesturing. This effort usually results in a look of concern from my new guide and a lot of nodding and smiling on my part to indicate, "I have a general idea of what you are trying to tell me but clearly have no idea what I am doing and will ask someone else in 10 minutes when I believe I am closer to my destination based on the directions you have mimed to me; gracias." What I did find was a rumbling hunger and, having told myself that I would stop at the next interesting restaurant I passed, I soon found myself and my hunger sitting at a street stand on the next block. I ate a delicious casado plate with abandon, complete with roast chicken and mashed potatoes that my grandmother would be proud of (hi Grandma! I love and miss you!). The very kind gentleman in the stand asked if I liked my choice and I replied with some hyperbole to the effect of it being the best thing I had ever eaten in my life (hunger speaks in extremes . He laughed at me over a curious but proud look and relayed the joke to his business companion in Spanish who laughed along with him. Finally replenishing calories, lost in a new city, sitting next to people on their lunch breaks, with a new friend to laugh with I also found myself at the edge of tears - tears of joy and relief. I felt nourished in every sphere of my being and I was drunk with emotion as I took my last bite and promised to make it back if I found myself in the area. 
• It seems I asked enough of the right people for directions and found myself at El Museo Afroantillano de Panama (West Indian Museum of Panama). Opened in 1980 by the Government of Panama's National Institute of Culture, this museum explains a bit more about the history, culture, community, and work of the West Indian immigrants who came to Panama to help with construction of the canal. It was a wonderful compliment to the Miraflores visitor center which better describes the people who engineered or funded the project than the thousands upon thousands of people who actually built it. Most of these people were from the West Indies, a region of islands in the the Caribbean sea which were colonized by the British, Dutch, French, Spaniards, and Danes. In fact, of the men contracted for the canal between 1904 and 1914, 11,873 were from European countries; 2,163 were from neighboring countries; and 31,071 came from these Caribbean islands. That is 68% of the labour force! (Also, I'll mention that only 357 people from Panama were contracted during that 10 year period, just 0.0079% of the work force - remember that fact the next time a large corporation promises to create jobs by constructing a mega-store or an LNG port in your home town) What's more, black workers were paid on the "Silver Roll" while white workers were paid on the "Gold Roll" with more than twice the wages and additional job benefits. Prison labour is, of course, the cheapest and was used in various parts of the construction including the building of roads. Another part of the museum featured information about Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), a Jamaican born activist, leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and progenitor of the Negro World. Sadly, the materials relating to Mr. Garvey are obstructed by a set of official posters regarding the canal expansion project. I had to wonder how intentional that might have been.
• I continued my walk by returning to the waterfront and wandered through the park along Avenida Balboa. My only goal now was to get a good photo of the Revolution Tower which looks a bit like a slowly rotated Jenga tower made of glass. Towering among the other skyscrapers it was a much easier target to aim for. Along the way I found a roadside stand selling natural foods; a mini Bellingham Co-Op spread out under a tent next to the fresh juice truck. I bought a pineapple and mango smoothie and some dry roasted edemame for flight day on Thursday. Refreshed, I found the tower, snapped some photos, and walked onward taking note of the group chanting and chained to the front of another building. I am a pacifist in spirit but and activist at heart and it always makes me smile to see people expressing their discontent and working to make people see what injustices the world tries to hide. The best thing about getting lost in a city (rather than a forest) is being able to decide when the adventure is over and simply raising your hand for the next yellow car with the checkered stripe and paying someone to navigate the way home for you. When I travel I have the opportunity to remember just how resourceful I can be. When I think of how resourceful I am, I am forced to think about how resourced I am as well. Being able to buy your way out of most jams with some sort of capital is a privilege that I enjoy in abundance. 
• Rest at home. Went out and tried on Panamanian hats which actually come from Ecuador, became known as the Panama because it was the primary trade post for the item, are being threatened as as a small business production item by Chinese hat manufacturers, and are sold online from UK. Ended up at dinner at Cedros, a bar/restaurant where I enjoyed a large plate of salad and a basket of mini empanadas. For dessert, a stop to get gummy bears on the way home which I ate while writing and listening to my favourite singer/songwriter, Sara Bareilles. She will be playing at the Edgefield Hotel in Oregon, one of my favourite places in the world and my first getaway spot with Kevin. Sad to miss it. 

14.08.2013

• Ambition, meet Realist. Realist will be taking over itinerary planning for your last day in Panama to help you both complete any last minute tasks and enjoy the city before a long day of travel. We are sure you will both get along fine. 
• Gave up on a couple of bigger tourist items which involved cab rides and extensive walking in the blistering heat for some more immediately accessible attractions including the Church of San Jose. The noteworthy feature of this church is the towering alter made of pure gold (Catholics do have a flare for aesthetic). When Captain Henry Morgan (yes, your bottle of rum has a real life namesake) came to sack and burn the city, a clever monk covered the alter in a substance which made the gold appear black and the Captain's marauders left the seemingly innocuous structure as it was.   
• Shopping at a large grocery store for packing supplies and snacks for the road. Wandered into an arts and crafts store called Pana-art where I learned about Panamanian, Cuban, and Dominican cigars. A large portion of Panamanian tobacco comes from seeds from Nicaragua, as it does in other countries as well. Cuban cigars are made counterfeit by employees who organize to steal supplies from the manufacturer and assemble the product for illegal sale. Dominican cigars are not as often counterfeited in this way because they are legal to sell in the US while Cuban cigars are not. I also learned that some artists need to be licensed to make replica pre-Columbian Panamanian pottery to avoid sale of the authentic, ancient pieces and to protect the integrity of the art form. 
• Dropped stuff at hostel and spoke with the owners for a while. They recommended a few places for lunch so I decided to try a few of them. First stop, Cafe Per Due, an Italian run pizzeria, for a salad with pear and Roquefort cheese washed down with an orange San Pellegrino. Stopped into an art gallery called Esquina Photo which features photography. I will be Googling a few of the artists soon (or Binging them! Who knows, it could happen!). Went back to artisan markets on the way to the monument dedicated to the French builders of the canal. Took pictures of the old Spanish prison cells that now serve as art galleries and a french restaurant. It was a beautiful, sunny day worth a slow pace. 

• Bought metro tickets for the bus to the airport tomorrow. Time for second lunch recommendation: The Fish Market, a food truck tucked behind the gates to another empty building's ruined shell. Ate a bowl of Massaman fish curry made with cinnamon and anise. One of the best meals I have had on this trip. Stopped at the last recommended spot, the Super Gourmet, the sister store to my favourite grocery/deli in Bocas del Toro. Here is a simple recipe worth trying: take a glass of iced coffee and add a small container of Baileys ice cream. Enjoy!
• Back home to rest during the heat of the day. Writing and packing and reading Panamanian news and researching activities in Sao Paulo. Then, time to eat again! I thought I would go to the Capital Bistro for a night view of the skyline, but really just wanted another Ensalada Tijuana from Tequila. Perfect. 
• Stop at Grancelment for a taste of the basil and the lavender gelato. It reminds me of Mallard Ice Cream back home where one might find flavours like avocado, black pepper, turmeric, yam, rose, basil, lavender, ghost pepper, and so on, and so on, and so full. Popped into La Casona at Calle 5ta, a bar which doubles as a photography gallery. Had I the inclination I would have stayed a while but I was eager to get home to pack. 
• Good work Realist. You gave us a great, productive, relaxing day. Tomorrow, you will be escorting Haggard Traveler to the airport; get some rest!

 

15.08.2013

• Wake up, eat papaya and peanut butter, took final pictures of hostel, left to buy salad to save money at the airport. The next part goes like this: walk to bus; ask if it is the correct bus stop - it is not; man is kind enough to walk me many blocks to the correct bus stop; ride bus for an hour; ask someone how long till the airport to which they respond, another hour; get off the bus and hail a cab; arrive at airport 20 minutes later; must wait two hours before I could check in; wait another 30 minutes while my visa to Brazil is checked; finally at gate, five hours after leaving hotel. 
• While waiting to check in I met Carlos and his mother. Carlos works for a French company that makes food additives (maybe the universe is telling me something). He was in Panama on business and his mother came to visit him there so they could celebrate her birthday a bit early with a trip together. We talked about the love of a worried mother and her traveling son, something that spans cultures. He told me what he loves about Columbia and invited me to visit suggesting a change to my plane ticket might not be that difficult. Email address noted - new friend in Columbia. 
• Patiently waiting at the gate and feeling like Bonderman is starting all over again. It also feels "real" in a new way. I have gone on a trip to Central America and now I am leaving Central America but not going home but going on another trip. Then I realize that I still have another year of doing this and that I have to start all over again in a new country. The thought is a little overwhelming and I still cannot make sense of what I am doing. Trying to coyly explain my fellowship to Carlos I remember that this adventure really makes sense to nobody. 
• Talked with Kevin for a moment through G-chat. He is not thrilled about me traveling alone and seems more nervous about Brazil than Central America. I am too for some reason. I have decided to invent an imaginary friend named Ernest (Ernie for short) so that Kevin will know that I always have a friend. 
• Ernie and I boarded what was easily the nicest plane I have been on in a long time. Ze (Ernie is gender queer and prefers gender neutral pronouns) and I ended up with a row to ourselves so we made ourselves comfortable and took the obligatory plane-window pictures of the sun setting on the airstrip and the golden light on the hills as we take off over the sea toward my layover in Bogota, Columbia.
• Arrive in Bogota to find out that mine is the only international connection that is delayed. I joked with Kevin last night that maybe I would get lucky and have a flight delay so that I would arrive a bit later in the morning in Sao Paulo (originally slated for 5:30am). Ask and you shall receive. I am pushed back 2 hours so I have time to write blog posts and will hopefully miss rush hour on the Sao Paulo Meto system. So here I sit in another airport which might as well be a shopping mall, in limbo, with time to burn and Ernie yapping in my ear about the relationship between homophobia and sexism - what a geek. Unless something else big happens here I am going to call this the end of my blog post for the day, for my time in Panama, for my visit to Central America. Hasta luego.