Miami of the South's, Panama Canal

July 6th 2008

Today I am finally feeling better after my little bout of illness. I was happy to meet 4 people in my hostel last night that just finished the trek to The Lost City the day before me but were in worse shape. Not only did some people get a fever in the group but also a weird eye infection kind of like "Pink Eye" was passed around.

I woke up early to get to the airport for my flight, farewell Colombia and more significantly, farewell South America.

Afterwarding off annoying cab drivers trying to harge way too much, I was finally picked up by a Catholic driver named Omar who was quite relaxed and thanked the sky quite often. I negotiated with him to get a private tour of Panama City for 4 hours and to get dropped off at the bus station for $52 USD. This involved driving around Panama to see: The Old City, Casca Viejo district, underneath the bridge, the causeway, and The Panama Canal (one of Central America's wonders).

Strangely, I have this overwhelming feeling that just by crossing from Colombia to Panama I warped from 3rd world to 2nd world. My only explanation is the closer proximity to the USA. The most obvious example I can give to explain what I mean is the selection in stores of chocolate bars, chips, gatorade, etc. Don't get me wrong, a lot of stuff is pretty run down still but Panama City isn't dubbed Miami of the South for no reason.

I drove by the early stages of Donald Trump's monstrosity of a building under construction. This is only a small part of the story; sky scrapers fill the entire horizon of the downtown and many more are underway. A lot of US retirees and other wealth seems to filter into Panama.

The city is quite nice with old ruins spread throughout the city parks. It is really hard to imagine but is best described as new houses, roads, and buildings being built on what was once a large fortress spanning many, many blocks. The result is a normal looking city with parks but old ruins and old church remains spread throughout.

I never really grasped what the Panama Canal was all about until I visited it. I knew it connected the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean side but I didn't realize they dammed up half the country and cut through the earth to create a fake lake for large vessels to line up between the 3 stages of "locks".

The locks pretty much work like elevators for boats strategically filling up and emptying to bring the boats up 26 feet above see level (the level of the fake lake) and then back down when they have crossed to the other side. I also didn't realize that the average cost for these large freighters to pass is $30,000 USD per ship. On the day, I was lucky to see the Miraflores Lock in action as 5 "small" yachts were lowered to the Pacific side.

Satisfied with my crash course of Panama City, I headed for my 8 hour bus ride to the Costa Rican border. I arrived at 11PM and wasn't able to pass. I crashed at a local hotel for $15 USD.