Photo Tour: Panama City and Canal
Copa Airlines' hub is in Panama City.
I've wanted to see the Panama Canal since I was a kid,
and I'd never been to Panama, so I decided to spend a few days here.
I hear that Panama City is to Panama as New York City is to the US:
it's plenty different than the rest of the country.
It also doesn't have that much to see or do.
Still, it's an interesting mixture of some glitz and wealth
(thanks to the Canal, I think) with a feeling of being deep in
Latin America, far from the US.
So Panama City was a great way to start my trip.
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On my first day,
I headed for what my guidebook said was one of the highlights of Panama City:
Casco Antiguo, the colonial part
of the city, on a
little peninsula that juts out into the Pacific.
Most of the buildings here didn't tickle my eye enough to take pictures
of them, but a fishing pier near the entrance to the district
did.
The pier (reasonably enough) extends into the harbor, with great
views of the old city on one side and the new city on the other.
So, although it looked a little dangerous, there actually was lots of
room for me to stand, see and be seen -- and eventually the workers there
ignored me.
I spent an hour or so watching the goings-on around and out to sea.
Here's the view from a road crossing near the harbor -- and from near
the start of the pier, before I decided to try walking out to the end:
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To one side, Punta Paitilla
with its high-rise buildings -- and, in the foreground,
bits of boats covered with bunches of birds.
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The views off the end of
the pier, and off the other side, were
very different -- and always-changing:
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There was also a lot
happening on the pier itself.
This man was mending a fishing net.
Along the "old city" side, boats were docking, loading and unloading:
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This worker
spent a long time gazing out
toward the tall towers of Punta Paitilla.
I wondered what he could be thinking... maybe dreaming of working or living
in glitz-ville?
Speaking of glitz, the name of this shop probably summed up
its clientele... who, I think, wouldn't include any of the guys down
at the dock.
The Snob Shop is in El Cangrejo, a well-to-do part of the city:
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Along one end of the
Casco Antiguo opens the Pacific end of the Panama Canal.
Here, and at several viewpoints at locks along the canal, you can see the
ships passing through.
(By the way, the Canal is so important to world commerce that ships
are built to the exact dimensions needed to fit through its locks.)
You can take an expensive boat tour through part or all of the canal.
But -- other than an airplane ride or a slog up the hills alongside
the canal -- you can't see much of the canal itself unless you cross
it on the Puente de Las Americas, a bridge that climbs far above the waterway.
Most people ride over the bridge in a car, a bus, or a truck.
But there's a walkway along one side, and I decided to take it.
After asking directions from a few locals, I found a way onto the
bridge.
I guess almost no one does this: people honked their horns and stared
at me.
But the view from the top was worth the climb (and the stares):
off one side, nearby, the Pacific Ocean;
from the other side, the Canal made its way into Panama's interior;
behind me, Panama City stretched to the horizon.
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Until the United States
gave control of the Canal to Panama at the end
of the last century, U.S. personnel lived on U.S. territory along the
canal: the Panama Canal Zone.
On my way to and from the bridge, I walked through a neighborhood
(La Boca, I think) that's now part of Panama.
Walking in here is like coming from Latin America into North America --
well, almost, anyway.
The place has taken on a bit of a "Latin look": some trash lying on
the streets, formerly-neatly-painted homes needing some touch-up here
and there, and an easy-going neighborly feel to the streets that you
wouldn't find some places in the North.
The streets have some fairly un-Panamanian names:
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The Sacred Valley: Around Urubamba]
[Tour start: Panama, Peru and Bolivia]
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(These photographs are Copyright © 2004 by Jerry Peek.
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