Casco Viejo - What Panama Wants You to See
Dear Reader, as I write this I am being serenaded in my left ear by the sounds of a rainforest, including it seems a howler monkey (insanely loud), and in my right ear by the sounds of a relatively sedate hotel bar (Nights in White Satin for some reason). Tiger Mom, TBJ and I decamped from Panama City today to Gamboa Rainforest Resort – a resort that, as its name suggests, is in the rainforest more or less halfway between the two ends of the Panama Canal at Colon and Panama City. To say that we are pleased to be here (Moody Blues aside) doesn’t really do justice to the phrase.
Casco Viejo - What You Actually See (thanks www.vagabondjourney.com)
Today was a pretty active day since we were moving from the city out in to the jungle. After loading up our car and learning that our driver had been pistol-whipped, beaten and robbed on his way home the night before, we headed to Casco Viejo the Old Quarter of Panama City. Casco Viejo is a UNESCO World Heritage Site filled with now-dilapidated turn-of-the-19th-century colonial architecture and home to the Panamanian congress, presidential palace, and a hotel in which Simon Bolivar held his 1826 congress to discuss the unification of Columbia, Mexico and Central America. Back in the day, this place was kind of a big deal. Unfortunately, we’re not back in the day anymore, and while the faded glory is evident, if you want beautiful colonial architecture you’re probably better off going to New Orleans.
After wandering around Casco Viejo for a bit, we hit the car again and headed up to the Miraflores Locks – one of three set of locks on the Panama Canal that allow massive ships to be raised and lowered as the elevation of the canal changes. The Miraflores Visitors Center is built hard by the locks and dam and has the best Canal-related exhibit that we’ve seen in Panama (actually its probably the best museum of any kind that we’ve seen). Bottom line is that this place is about as cool as anywhere I’ve ever been. Ships that carry enough cargo to fill 3700 tractor trailer trucks are raised and lowered 100 feet or so – these things are up to 1050 feet long and 110 feet wide – about 1/3 again the size of a football field – and you can watch as they go up or down. The museum focuses on the construction of the canal, starting with the initial failed French attempt through the opening of the canal by the American team in 1914. Obviously this was an engineering feat that rivals anything ever accomplished, but the thing that really jumps out is how many machines and devices were invented specifically to accomplish the canal-building task. To my American eyes, the number of things spawned by the project was impressive, but the fact of invention didn’t really jump out until Tiger Mom the Macedonian pointed said something like “that whole ship and device was invented just to dredge out the canal. Only Americans would do something like that – just think ‘We need to dig a ditch across a continent. OK, no problem, let’s see what we need to come up with to be able to do it.’ and then be able to follow through and actually get it done.” I hadn’t really thought about this before, but it really is interesting that the old American “can do” attitude is still alive enough for someone in the current day to see the building of the Panama Canal as typical of us. I hope to God that as a society we don’t get complacent and lose that attitude, and as a new parent I’m now wondering exactly how to instill it in young TBJ.
Let's Hope These Guys Have a Better Life than Speak
Gamboa Rainforest Resort offers quite a number of tours, and this evening we availed ourselves of a night time “wildlife” tour in which we wandered around the sizable grounds in one of those trucks with benches in the back looking for nocturnal life. We found several capybaras, which was awesome, and were able to get quite close to one of the families. These little guys are about as cute as it gets, especially since there were a couple of babies in the group just adding to the cuteness. It was definitely awesome to get out and see some wildlife, albeit in a pretty tame way. The other people on the night tour were a mother and daughter in Panama for the daughter’s second round of stem cell treatment for something called PV, which acts like cerebral palsy. The daughter, Holly, is less than 2 years old. Holly’s family is from the U.S., but because this treatment has not yet been FDA-approved for use in cerebral palsy, she has to travel to Panama for the treatment. I cannot express how absurd it is to me that a combination of politics and over-regulation cause viable treatments backed by good science to be unavailable in the U.S., but sometimes that’s the way it goes. Click here to read Holly’s story and for instructions on how to assist her.
