I guess I’ve always had a traveling jones. Satisfying it in my younger years, without the means and knowledge, was often not possible. I did my best, though. My earliest forays on the road were by hitchhiking. I wish I had a better memory of those trips, some of which lasted for days. Alas, I didn’t keep a journal and take photos until later in life.
Between those early trips and today’s there has been a lifetime of travel. Many were work trips and could be fun. The best were qualified adventures, far-flung but not too dangerous or scary. Once married to Kay, I had a companion. Even during our busiest working years we never skipped a vacation. Now, in retirement and with unlimited time and comfortable resources, the world, as they say, is our oyster.
This context leads me to the subject of this travelogue: my recent four-month journey through Latin America, one that some might characterize as rash. It was that in the sense of being unplanned. If I hadn’t been alone and willing to chance the uncertainty of just winging it, I might have wanted more of a plan. Frankly, the idea of researching and planning such a long a trip through Central and South America was daunting. I figured that once in a country, even an unfamiliar one, I could find a way to explore it. And so, off I went.
I eased into my extended adventure by a visit to old friends who had relocated from New York City to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico years before. I had heard good things about San Miguel and had no concern about making it my first destination. Bill and Pam are a discriminating couple of artists and entrepreneurs, civilized people who know and enjoy the good things in life.
In their company, I got an overview of their city, a look at some of its art galleries,
delicious meals both at home and in their favorite restaurants,
and the chance to meet a few of their interesting friends and acquaintances.
Staying in a home they had designed and built themselves gave us a chance to reminisce about our shared past in New York and some of the people we had known there. It was a lovely way to spend my first week on the road.
No plan, though I did have a direction. I would go south with my first stop Guatemala. I had spent several hours in Querétaro Airport, peacefully reading a novel when, shortly before I was to board my Aero Mexico to Guatemala City, I was shocked to learn that I couldn’t without having filled out an on-line form that declared not only the exact date of my departure from Guatemala but also proof that I had purchased an exit ticket. By the time I was able to connect to airport Wi-Fi, it was too late, and my plane left without me. I wasn’t alone; others were in the same pickle. Perhaps because of my age and cluelessness, a gate agent took pity on me and after promising I would not tell the others, gave me hotel and meal vouchers that would see me through until I could fly the next day.
Without having a plan for Guatemala, I didn’t know how long I wanted to stay and so arbitrarily chose a date when I would fly to Costa Rica. If I had given myself a bit more time, I could have visited the extensive Mayan ruins of Tikal National Park in the north of the country. As it was, I had to pass on going there.
I had been told that the go-to city in Guatemala was Antigua, a bumpy hour’s shuttle ride from the airport. My first impressions of Antigua were of cobblestone streets and narrow sidewalks. A glance at the map showed that its numbered streets formed a grid. Being informed of the location of the tourist office, I walked out of my hotel, forgetting to take the map. After gathering some info at the tourist office, I was directed to a nearby bookstore whereby speaking to an educated American customer, I was able to find and buy a copy of the Lonely Planet Guide to Central America. What luck! I spent some time walking around the large Plaza Meyor that was full of people and interesting sights.
Heading back to the hotel, I lost my way. Not having noted the address or taking the map, I felt like a rube. Finally, I stopped a man on the street to ask if he knew the San Pedro Hotel. He didn’t but spent five minutes with his phone to locate it and give me directions. Kindness extraordinary!
The following day, I set out to explore. Distances between the city’s ruins and monuments are not great, but walking was not always simple. Streets are paved with cobblestones and the sidewalks are narrow with pedestrians passing in both directions.
On my way to sit in the Parque Central I went into the adjacent ruins of what had once been a large cathedral. The Cathedral de Santiago was begun in 1545 and wrecked by an earthquake in 1773. Its ruins are grandiose.
In the Parque Central I sat on a shady bench next to a young couple of westerners from Greece. While we sat, we were approached by several locals hawking stuff. A woman with a pile of at least twenty hats on her head and a bundle of scarves and other products sat next to us trying to make a sale. Then a man, complaining that he was ill and in pain came by wanting something. I was learning that, as a gringo, sitting in that park it was impossible to left alone.
The Arco de Santa Catilina is a wide yellow arc spanning buildings on the two sides of an avenue. It is the iconic monument of the town. It was constructed as a passageway for nuns from the adjacent convent to cross the street without being seen. It seems that all the special sites of interest stem from the period in the 17th century when the Catholic Church dominated the population.
Not far from the Arco stands the Iglesia Merced a striking yellow church elaborately decorated with white plaster filigree. The guidebook claims it to be the most beautiful in Guatemala.
For dinner, I chose a recommended restaurant from the guidebook called Frida’s, and yes, it is named in honor of Frida Kahlo, although the three large silk screened images of the artist aren’t exactly accurate. It was a lively place with a busy, friendly staff. As I walked to it, I passed a little man in checked pants shaking a rattle in one hand and playing an instrument like a pan pipe with the other. I dropped some coins into his hat.
I was seated at a table in the dining room and soon had a party of three American women at the table beside me. Two of them were enormous. Speaking to one nearest to me, I learned that she and her partner were from Texas, living and working in Antigua. The third woman seemed to be a guest and did most of the talking in a very loud braying voice. I ate a small order of cheese quesadillas and drank a Corona.
The next day, I walked across town to experience the church and convent of Santo Domingo, once the town’s richest and most important monastery. Three 18th-century earthquakes destroyed the complex, after which it was pillaged for building materials. I entered through the Santo Domingo Hotel lobby and walked past ruined forms interpreted by museum signs. Special features were five or six connected museums entered with a single ticket. One is a silver museum, and another is called the Colonial and houses many religious paintings and carvings. I concentrated on the ones containing contemporary art.
One painter whose work struck me as very interesting is named Marco Augusto Quiroa.
After the museums, I was tired and very hungry. Fortunately, there was a restaurant that turned out to be more upscale than any I had seen in town. It is called The Refectory and is large and filled with white table clothes. The staff was first rate. I probably shouldn’t have ordered the starter of grilled asparagus with a balsamic pink sauce, topped with tiny greens and slivered almonds. It was served cold and was particularly delicious. While I was eating it and drinking limonada, my waiter deposited a covered plate containing a small loaf of house-made bread that I cut with a bread knife the size of ours at home.
My waiter asked my nationality and placed a tiny American flag on the table in front of me.
My main dish that I couldn’t finish was a plate with a medium-rare steak three times the thickness of the ones I cook at home. It was surrounded with refried black beans, refried plantains, guacamole, and some kind of cheese. It was all too much and cost the equivalent of fifty dollars, a real blowout meal.
On the morning of my departure from Guatemala, I was picked up at 4 in the morning. The silent shuttle driver took the curves of the empty highway quickly and delivered me to the crowded Guatemala City Airport in good time. I found it strange that there were so many local men and women, who didn’t seem to be travelers, crowded around the entrance. Inside, I quickly checked my case at the Avianca counter.
I went to the food court and ate a McDonald’s big breakfast, sitting with a man from Iowa and his two sons who were returning home after spending a week building shelters for some desperately poor Guatemalans in the north-west of the country. It’s an ongoing project organized by a church.
At the gate, as I tried to read a New Yorker, I was paged and informed that I couldn’t board the plane unless I had a date and ticket to depart from Costa Rica. Again! Arguments wouldn’t work, and I had no time to figure out how to go online and buy a ticket from a Panamanian Airline since Avianca doesn’t fly from Guatemala to Panama. A young woman solved the problem at the last minute by routing me on Avianca to El Salvador and from there to Panama City, I’m happy that I was able to keep my cool during those fraught minutes.
In Costa Rica I had chosen accommodations at a hotel named Colours, outside the center of San Jose. Although the guidebook informed me that it was LGBTIQ friendly, I hadn’t realized how friendly until I had been there for a couple of hours. As I sat at the bar, writing an email to Michigan friend Toni about the recent death of our dear friend Dolores, a man suddenly appeared in the chair next to mine and introduced himself as Ted.
His first words told me that he was American from the Deep South. Indeed, he lives south of Memphis in Tunica County of northwestern Mississippi. I would talk with Ted for several hours during the afternoon and evening and become fascinated with what I heard.
It wasn’t long into our conversation that Ted said he was gay and that he had come to Colours before to have sex. The place had just changed ownership, and what had long been known as a gay resort would now, according to Andreas the manager, be promoted as a principal welcoming LBGTIQ presence in the country. As a straight man, I was definitely in the minority.
Ted seemed to have difficulty speaking at times, and his memory was worse than mine. He told me about his life, though not sequentially. I got pieces of it almost at random so I’m not sure how it all fit together. Maybe he wasn’t either.
Selecting Colours was one of those odd choices I’ve made in my life, an unusual experience that I was enjoying.
The following day, I went into the city. Andreas called an Uber that took me to the Museo Nacional. All I had to pay the driver with was a 20,000 Colón note that he couldn’t break. I would pay him later through the resort.
My first impression of San Jose is that it is a clean city. I saw no trash or graffiti. The large museum is located within what had been the Bellavista Fortress, the army headquarters that had seen fierce fighting during the 1948 civil war. Much of what I looked at, photos and information panels mostly, had to do with that war and a coup d’état that followed. There are examples of the weapons used during the fighting that look quaint today. I looked into several tiny prison cells that had mostly held soldiers. They contained nothing except the words scratched on the walls by the prisoners. I learned that after the civil war, Costa Rica disbanded its army and has had none since.
I went to another museum located under the Plaza de la Cultura in the downtown center. From the Museo Nacional to the Plaza, I walked along a very busy urban avenue lined with fast-food restaurants and shops selling all kinds of ordinary products. Even though it was Sunday, nearly everything seemed to be open except banks and government offices. The sidewalks were thronged with locals. There was loud music and many children running around.
Underneath the concrete Plaza were several museums. I spent some time in one titled Museo de Oro Precolombino y Numismática that contained many pieces of pre-Colombian gold and examples of currency. A temporary exhibition entitled From Real to Colón showed the evolution of Costa Rican money from when there were gold coins called escudosand ones of silver called reals. The colón arrived at the end of the 19th century and is named after Christopher Columbus.
A taxi took me back to Colours. The driver had no idea where it was and couldn’t figure out the address from my guide book. It wasn’t until I said the name of district Rohrmoser that he knew where I wanted to go. Still when we arrived in the area, we couldn’t find the resort immediately. Finally, I spotted it by accident. The taxi cost almost twice as much as did the Uber.
On my last day at Colours I spent much of the morning with Andreas in his office planning my next steps. We talked about Tontuguero, a village on the northern Caribbean Coast where I had tentatively chosen to spend the rest of my days in the country. Andreas encouraged me in my choice and set me up with an outfit called Exploradores who would pick me up at 5:30 the next morning and drive me north.
That afternoon, I returned to the center of the city and to the Parque National, a large expanse of trees and paths with many benches. In its center is a large, sculptured monument depicting the Central American nations driving out the North American filibuster William Walker who had planned to conquer all of Central America and turn it into a slave state. Other busts in the park honor Latin American historical figures like Jose Marti.
A taxi took me to the Teatro National that my guidebook says is San Jose’s most revered building. Constructed in 1897 in a Neo-classical style, it looked like nothing else I’d seen in the city.
Its facade holds full-length statues of Beethoven and Spanish dramatist Calderón de la Barca.
The theatre was open and, in its café, decorated by large black-and-white photographs of classical sculptures, I ordered a limonada to go with a crepe filled with mushrooms and topped with a layer of melted cheese. It was absolutely delicious. I finished my meal with a piece of apple pie, consisting of large pieces of apple mixed with raisins, and a cup of coffee.
Another taxi took me to the Plaza Mayor in Rohrmoser where I found a Libreria International that had an odd selection of English-language books. I bought a novel called The Secret History by Donna Tartt, an author I had known only by name.
Next morning, a large passenger van picked me up shortly after 5:30, and I was surprised to find another couple within. The driver and a young guide picked up another couple and a single young woman before heading north.
We drove for a long time on good roads to a spot where there were many others waiting under a large shed. Eventually, we served ourselves a breakfast of scrambled eggs and rice with black beans and a piece of toast. The coffee tasted good. Many of the others were there to go rafting on the nearby Pacuare River that looked too shallow to be much fun.
In a larger bus, a large black woman with a large personality named Clara accompanied us further northeast to another staging area near another river. While the bus rattled over rough stone roads, our guide explained in detail how the bananas we were passing are cut and harvested on the backs of workers ten hours a day, six days a week. Only young, strong men can do the work. Women worked categorizing and labeling the bananas.
At one point, the driver stopped the bus and we exited to look at a sloth feeding upside down in a tree.
I sat next to a man named Jeff who was traveling with his long-term partner and, like me, going to Tortuguero. He was very open and friendly, fun to talk to. He comes from California and lives in the San Francisco area. As a boy, he was passionate about snakes and spent his free time searching for them. He showed me a recent photo of a rattlesnake he spotted during a mountain hike. Jeff is retired after forty years as a licensed electrician. He has a grown daughter whom he described as a dumpster fire. He had put her through five years of university in Boulder, Colorado without her graduating. We talked about our various health issues and the challenges of growing older.
Tortuguero cannot be reached by road so at the final staging area, our group loaded our stuff into one of many boats and, with Carla as our guide, spent nearly two hours on the water. We stopped once to look at a crocodile. On the water, because we were traveling fast, I was not too hot, but by the time I debarked at Tortuguero, I was dripping with sweat.
Andreas had told me not to book a hotel in advance, and I hadn’t; however, it might have been better if I had. Anyway, I’ve ended up at one called La Casona next to a soccer field. I ate a poor meal in the hotel restaurant and went into the shallow swimming pool.
Each day, alongside the pool I watched a large iguana that lived in a tree.
It was dark by 6 o’clock, and kids on the soccer field went home. I ordered a signature cocktail in the dining room and waited, hoping to see Jeff again. Finally, I went to the room, which is very simple but with an air conditioner and, lo and behold, a bright ceiling light. I sat up in bed reading about Panama until I got sleepy.
The following day, January 24th, I explored my surroundings. Tortuguero is a tiny village on the Caribbean Coast. It can be reached only by water or air. There are no cars there. The village has one main street lined with restaurants, tour companies, and a few shops selling meat, produce, and groceries. I had chosen it, expecting to find fewer tourists than at the popular watering holes on the Pacific Coast. In that, I didn’t know if I had succeeded as there seemed to be plenty around.
I was surprised by how much I liked Donna Tartt’s novel. I was lucky to have it because there really was nothing much to do there beyond the tours arranged by the hotels. I signed up for the most popular, a three-hour guided ride through the canals of the adjacent national park in a boat powered by a small, electric outboard motor.
Most tourists who come to Tortuguero come for a tour and stay only one night. Jeff Camp and his partner left this morning. I was sorry to see then go. I had a nice talk with another couple of Canadians who left also. Not having anyone to talk to, it was great having the novel for company.
That evening, when I went to find the spot where I would meet for tomorrow’s tour, I met a short, intelligent woman named Andria who helps run the company, Roots. As we conversed, I asked her what opportunities young people had in this isolated village. She said there weren’t many. The education system was poor, and no one seemed to care. To get a job, a young person had to relocate to another, larger town. It’s a familiar story.
At 5:30 the next morning, I gathered with others for the canoe tour. We were divided into two groups according to whether our tour would be in Spanish or English. We were given a cup of coffee, encouraged to use the toilet, and given life jackets to wear in the boats. My group numbered seven. We were German, Italian, and Belgian couples and me. I stepped in the fiberglass boat with its blue painted bottom and sat closest to the stern in front of the guide whom I could hear well.
The tour lasted three hours. I had been warned that it would possibly rain, and it did so on and off. During the heaviest shower, our guide protected us under a canopy of foliage to keep us dry.
The point of the tour was to navigate some of the canals of the national park and spot birds and other creatures. Each of us was issued a pair of binoculars. Our guide was experienced and able to spot creatures that we would have missed. Our first sightings were of indigenous birds whose names I didn’t recognize and can’t remember. Twice, we spotted orange male iguanas on tree branches.
To our right and left in the narrow canals, there was jungle, a great variety of plants surrounded some large trees. One of these was called Sangaria because its sap is the color of blood. Another was a tall almond tree.
I had expected to be assaulted by mosquitoes and had brought insect repellent with me; however, I didn’t see a single one.
Costa Rica is known for its howler monkeys, and we did see one hanging upside down by its prehensile tail.
In the shallow water, we did spot a couple of caimans, related to the crocodile. They were small and tan colored.
I had been moved to another room at the hotel. It was larger than the first, with an extra bed and a rack to hold my suitcase and backpack. Otherwise, it was just as simple with no television and only top and bottom sheets on the bed. I had no sooner settled in than it began to rain heavily and kept up showering until mid- afternoon. It was perfect weather for a nap.
I enjoyed calling Kay, hearing her voice and getting the news from home.
I was hungry when I finally went upstairs for a quesadilla and ginger ale. Until it got too dark to write, I brought my journal up to date.
A nice thing about Tortuguero was that it was fairly easy to meet and talk to people. A couple named David and Judy lived in Alaska and had come down to Latin America quite often over the years. I spoke mostly with David who told me the story of his youth when he dropped out of high school for a while and later went on to college and became a lawyer. He was retired now but spent years defending the poor against the State of Alaska.
Both he and his wife seemed widely traveled. We spoke about New York where he lived as a young man in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a great time to be there. He spoke of Max’s Kansas City and seeing Andy Warhol and other legendary characters.
I met Carol, who was traveling with them and her husband Carlos, a retired Economics professor who had taught widely in Central and South America. These were interesting people to spend time with.
At an early lunch on Main Street, in an eatery called The Coffee House, I sat overlooking the water traffic on the broad canal and enjoyed a whole fish, described as some kind of bass, that had been fried. Its skin was crusty and the meat under it, delicious. It was one of the best meals I had had so far.
On my penultimate morning in Tortuguero, an email from Samsa Airlines informed me that my flight back to San Jose was cancelled. I had been counting on it to spare me the difficulty of retracing my steps by water and land, and I was seriously pissed off at the airline.
I walked to the beach and watched the heavy surf roll in. It was more powerful here than at any other place I’ve ever been on the Caribbean.
Then, I walked to what is locally called the Museo. It was a bit of hike from La Casona on a dirt path parallel to the sea. If I had gone there earlier, I would have had a revised notion of Tortuguero, which means “place of turtles.”
For as long as anyone knows, the beach here has been a nesting ground for green sea turtles, whose females come every two years and by night dig a nest with their flippers and deposit as many as one hundred eggs. They cover the nest with sand and leave. Sixty days later, the eggs hatch and the tiny turtles break out of their shells and climb out of the nest, making for the sea immediately to swim away. That amazes me. The museum is part of a big conservation effort to protect and save the sea turtle population that had been decimated in the past by commercial interests. The museum showed an excellent video and had many information panels.
Researching Panama on the internet, I learned that like Costa Rica I would need to have an exit date and a ticket to leave before I arrive. I booked a hotel in Panama City and read more of my novel.
To leave Tortuguero, I dragged my case to the main dock to take the public boat to the transit point of La Pavona. The leg by boat lasted an hour and I was annoyed by two obnoxious women directly behind me who spoke French loudly and non-stop. It rained most of the way. The boat’s captain did a good job of navigating the obstacles, mostly downed trees, in the narrow canals.
Under the metal roof of a large shed called Rancho La Pavona, I waited for two hours until the bus for the city of Cariari arrived. I used some of the time to have breakfast. Dozens of small birds roosted on the trusses under the roof and created a non-stop racket.
The bus to Cariari was old and a real rattletrap until it finally hit some smooth pavement. The bus stopped many times to take on passengers. These were country people going to Cariari. What had been an almost empty bus became so full that a couple of people had to stand in the aisle. I spoke to Kay on the way using a portable Wi-Fi modem I carried with me.
I had another wait in Cariari for at least an hour before boarding another and better bus for the final ride into San Jose. Even though that leg lasted less than two hours, it seemed longer because we had to cross one of the mountains that surround the capital. Heavy trucks had to climb in low gear which caused pile ups of vehicles behind it. At the top of the mountain, we passed through dense fog.
At last, we arrived at the main San Jose bus terminal where I found a taxi to take me to the Fairfield Hotel not far from the airport. I had to direct the taxi driver and point out the hotel to him. It was a huge relief to check in to that nice business-class hotel with all the usual amenities. I ate a late lunch of Caesar Salad with chicken and a couple glasses of wine before relaxing in my room.
On Monday, January 29th, what should have been a pleasant day, turned out to be awful. At the San Jose airport I learned that my flight to El Salvador’s airport was delayed. I sat and read my guidebook about Panama and each time I checked, the delay was extended until it became obvious that I would miss my connection to Panama.
The Avianca flight took off after noon. I was in a seat at the rear of the plane surrounded by families with children. Although it was short flight lasting a little over an hour, the kids couldn’t sit still or stop making noise.
The worst part of the day was still to come. I and three others had to wait at a quiet end of the airport almost two hours for an agent to show up and handle our situation. Outside it was 95 degrees while inside it was about 60. I became very cold and uncomfortable. My fleece and sweater were in my suitcase. What kind of an airline does this to passengers who have already been seriously inconvenienced? It was a case of adding insult to injury. Finally, when a man did arrive, he moved so slowly it was excruciating. The afternoon was almost over when I finally received a boarding pass for the next day’s flight and a hotel, meal, and transportation vouchers. I passed through immigration, retrieved my suitcase, and took a taxi to the nearby Quality Hotel, a low building surrounded by royal palms
The flight to Panama was crowded, and I had a window seat this time near the rear. I’m glad I did because approaching Panama City, I had a wonderful view of its layout between the Caribbean and the Pacific. Its center is filled with high-rise buildings, very different from the other Central American countries, I think.
Going through the formalities, I finally got to Customs where passengers had to fill out a long form and then put our bags through a scanner. It took nearly half an hour and $30.00 for a taxi to take me to the Ojos del Rio Hotel in the district of Belle Vista. It doesn’t cost much to stay there, but the man at reception spoke almost no English, and we used a translation app to communicate.
Once settled in, I exchanged WhatsApp messages with an outfit called Yenni and booked a six-hour tour of Panama City highlights for the next day. Going out on the street, I realized that what I thought was flat terrain was actually quite hilly.
On the last day of January, I had a lot to write about. First, I was caught unaware that from Costa Rica to Panama there was a time change and that it was one hour later than I had thought. I had to skip breakfast to be ready for my tour.
When I opened the door of the hotel shortly before 8 o’clock, I saw an old Kia sedan driven by a grizzled, elderly-looking man who introduced himself as Isaac. He had long dirty fingernails and was wearing a pair of blue jeans that had not been hemmed and were ragged at the bottom. He would be my guide, and we would spend the next few hours together. Isaac spoke English but not terribly well so that when he was making a point that I really wanted to understand, I asked him to repeat and speak more clearly.
Isaac drove us first through the modern sections of the city of skyscrapers, some of which are architecturally significant. Many are office buildings while others contain apartments and condos for the wealthier Panamanians. Like everywhere, the poorer population lives on the periphery and commutes into the center. Isaac says there are one million cars for a population of four million, meaning that there is congestion and frequent traffic jams.
The historic section known as Old Panama is a large plain containing the ruins of what had once been religious orders.
This place on the Pacific side of the isthmus had been the original Spanish settlement dating back to 1515. Its downfall came at the hand of privateer Henry Morgan, authorized by the King of England to attack Spanish settlements while England was at war with Spain in the 17th century. In 1671, Morgan led a force of 1,200 pirates who crossed the isthmus from the Caribbean side and, overwhelming the Spanish garrison, took the town by force. Morgan was savage. He and his men looted everything of value, torturing and killing half the population and completely destroying the town.
The only structure standing from that time is the tower of the cathedral on what is called the Plaza Mayor.
From where Isaac parked, we walked at least a kilometer to that Plaza where we entered what is the nicely designed Museum de Sitio which describes and illustrates the life and history of Panama Viejo.
It was good that we made Old Panama our first stop while the weather was still relatively cool.
Next, we went to what is known as Casco Viejo, an interesting neighborhood located at the end of a peninsula surrounded on three sides by what were that day mud flats while the tide was out. It was where the survivors of Morgan’s attack went to build a new, compact town. I found this to be the most interesting part of the city.
Many of its historic buildings, one in serious disrepair and occupied by the poorest Panamanians, have been gentrified, restored and are now quite beautiful. There are shops and restaurants galore. The streets are quite narrow and there is nowhere to park.
Isaac drove around while I got out of the car and explored the Plaza Independencia that is anchored by a cathedral whose facade is made partly of volcanic stone.
Inside, everything was in good condition and been well cared for.
Back in the car, I asked Isaac to drive by the National Theatre. As we drove, we came upon a small park dedicated to the French who were the ones that failed to build the Panama Canal.
Elsewhere, we stopped to see a large statue of Balboa, the Spaniard who first saw the Pacific. It’s appropriate that the figure faces the ocean he discovered not far away.
Isaac drove us out along a two-kilometer-long causeway that connects four small islands. It’s a pretty drive with flower beds and benches along both sides. It’s a favorite for walkers, runners, and cyclists that use the paths next to the roadway. We saw none of that activity since, by the time we arrived, it was too hot to exercise. The views of the city from the causeway are splendid.
I tried to get dollars from ATMs. There are banks galore in Panama City and the currency there is the U.S. dollar, so I thought it would be easy. Not so. The first bank accepted my Visa card but had no cash. Isaac said that it was payday, which might have drained the machine. Two other bank ATMs said they could not read my card, and a fourth read it but said that my transaction could not be made.
Lunch was on me, and Isaac took us to a Chinese buffet restaurant he likes that is inexpensive. It is a place where we paid first before serving ourselves. Price depended on how many “meats” (1, 2, or 3) we wanted. I chose two and Isaac three. “Meats” meant chicken, pork, beef, or fish. I chose a plate with fried rice, sweet-and -sour pork and some kind of beef in gravy. At each station, I had to say, “no mas,” meaning enough. At the end of the line, I took some cole slaw. My plate looked reasonable but no more. I could hardly believe Isaac’s. It was so overloaded there seemed to be enough for three people. We both drank Canada Dry ginger ale.
Finishing lunch, it was time for the big moment of the day, our visit to the Pacific end of the Panama Canal. The fascinating story of the building of the canal is one of failure and then success. The failure was on the part of the French who began it. The engineer was he who had directed the building the Suez Canal in Egypt and attempted the same approach in Panama in 1904. He failed due to the climate, disease, a turbulent river, and his attempt to remove millions of tons of rock in order to connect the canal directly to the oceans on either end, eighty kilometers apart. It was during the French attempt that 20,000 workers died of malaria and Yellow Fever. The French attempt ended in bankruptcy.
Teddy Roosevelt saw building the canal as an important political goal. The engineer in charge took a different approach from the French. Instead of fighting the river, he dammed it, creating a lake whose water supplies the canal to this day. The lake meant that there would have to be less canal to dig since the ships would float across it. Also, the canal would exist above the oceans it connected.
A series of locks at each end would raise and lower the ships from the sea to the canal whose water came from the lake above by gravity. It was a successful approach, and the canal opened in 1914, the day World War I began. Since then, a million ships have passed through. The U.S. owned the canal and swatches of land eight kilometers wide on each side known as the Canal Zone. It was President Jimmy Carter who gave the canal to the Panamanians.
To see the canal for myself meant going to the Miraflores Visitor Center where our tickets allowed us to climb stairs to viewing platforms. Where we stood halfway up, I had a good view of the canal where two ships were in the second of two locks. The first was a tourist boat dwarfed by a large tanker.
We saw the ships sink as the water was let out of the lock until it was level with the sea outside. The giant lock gates opened, and the ships passed through. Ships at each end of canal are steered by special “locomotives” on rails with cables attached to the ship on both sides. Their purpose is to keep the ships centered in the canal. They don’t pull the ships, which move under their own power. On the stairs and platform above us, it was a mob scene. So many people were paying to watch the activity.
The next day, February 1st, I had practical things to do. I’ve been using Isaac as my driver; he’s less expensive than multiple taxi rides and can locate things that I need. My problems charging my camera batteries are on-going, and I went to a store name Panavideo for a special adaptor/charger. I went to an ATM and a bookstore.
All this running around was incidental to the highlight of the day, which was a visit to the BioMuseo, a splendid museum whose building in many colors was designed by Frank Gehry. It occupies a wonderful site surrounded by water away from the central city. Its purpose is to show and explain how Panama was formed over the eons by volcanic activity and to showcase the isthmus’ extraordinary biodiversity, including plants, animals, birds, fish, etc.
I saw examples of how animals evolved from prehistoric times when saber tooth tigers, giant sloths, and other large animals and predatory birds existed. There was also lot about the early humans that lived in what is today Panama. The extraordinary thing about the museum is its use of technology to bring it all to life.
I paid for Isaac to join me in the museum where we spent a good amount of time. In the museum cafe where we relaxed at the end of our visit, we had an extraordinary view of the water leading to the canal and of the hills on the other side. It was as a near perfect scene as I could imagine. While we sipped our drinks, a container ship moved through on its way to the canal. I loved it.
Tomorrow will be my last day, and I was thinking I would take the train across Panama from the city to Colon on the Caribbean Side at the other end of the canal. It’s supposed to be a pleasant thing to do. Isaac explained that the train would not run on this Friday because the government had declared a holiday as a memorial for something or someone. This explains the fireworks that occurred last evening while I was having my margarita on the hotel restaurant’s balcony. Instead, he and I will visit the lake above the city whose water fills the canal. There is a spot called monkey island that we will visit.
Isaac picked me up at 8 o’clock. I knew where we were going but I wasn’t clear what it would entail. I also didn’t know that we would have a third companion. He is the same Sikh whom I had met yesterday. It turns out that this man is what we might call a secular Sikh, in that today he wasn’t wearing his turban, and his hair was cut short.
An hour’s drive brought us to a place named Gamboa on the large artificial lake whose water fills the Panama Canal. There we climbed into a fiberglass boat powered by a powerful Suzuki outboard motor that sped us along the lake past a large container ship that was either entering or leaving the canal. Our goal was a spot on an island colonized by white-faced Capuchin monkeys.
We were one of three boats wedged at the island’s shore. Men in the other boats held out food, mainly a mix of banana and grapes to attract the monkeys that eventually came and claimed it.
I was able to get a couple of good shots of the monkeys in the trees ahead of us.
Back on shore, Isaac drove us to the very upscale Gamboa Rainforest Hotel set on high ground above the lake. We used the toilets, and each ate a large bowl of chicken soup filled with vegetables.
Next, Isaac drove us very slowly on a stony road into the Parque National Soberania and to a spot called the Panama Rainforest Discovery Center. We parked and Isaac and I walked ten or fifteen minutes to a spot where containers with sugared water attract fifteen different species of hummingbirds. These are tiny, smaller than the ones I’m familiar with in California; nevertheless, they were fun to watch.
Back in the city, it was time to say goodbye to Isaac. I was hot and tired and because I had not had a proper lunch, I walked around my neighborhood until I found a Subway where I ate a sandwich and drank ginger ale. I’m happy to learn that ginger ale is a favorite in Panama.