Argh, foreign airports always stress me out! All that palaver – packing and unpacking your hand-luggage to go through security, instructions that you don't quite understand being barked at you in a language you haven't quite mastered, queuing for hours that go to the ladies and then sitting on one of those horrible impatient airport loos that won’t let you finish peeing before flushing itself and giving you the fright of your life… Anyway, I’m on my flight to Bogota now, so it’s all OK (at least for the meantime!).
To tell you the truth, I’m not sorry to be leaving Panama City, having found it a trifle dodgy and pretty exhausting. It probably didn’t help that I arrived there yesterday at 5.00am and only got about 2 ½ hours sleep in a hammock in the porch of ‘Hostel Mamallena’ before setting out to explore (this was the place where I had booked to stay but, as they weren’t expecting me so early, they weren’t quite ready for me). It didn’t really matter much at the time, as I awoke feeling quite energised and ready to take on the city (knowing that I had a lot to pack into my only day there). However, in the punishing and humid heat, my sense of ‘get-up-and-go’ soon faded like the battery on my ailing i-Pod (which I think is on its last legs and destined to end its days somewhere in South America).
Panama City was a strange place. In some senses it seems very modern, and the skyscrapers and luxury apartments in the new part of the city (the financial district) give it an imposing façade rather like Hong Kong or Shanghai (from what I’ve read, though, ‘banking secrecy’ in the district means that lots of the apartments lie empty, their fictitious occupants a guise for money laundering). The older part (San Felipe or ‘Casco Viejo’) is prettier, albeit in a crumbling sort of way, with ornate churches, museums and cobbled streets. In between these two worlds, however, lies a scruffy, dusty hinterland of vacant parking lots, depressingly faded Panamanian ‘pound stores’ (or dollar stores to be precise – filled with absolute tat), peopled by an array of colourful characters who could at best be described as mischievous, but perhaps menacing is more appropriate.
Anyway, I set off to walk to the old part of town yesterday morning, stopping in a few shoe shops to see if I could find anything to replace the poor pair of plain black flats that died a death on the roadside in Rivas. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite find the right thing – most of the womens’ shoes on offer being festooned with plastic golden buckles, or decorated with fake Chanel logos. Oh Top Shop, how I miss you and those simple little black ballet pumps that saw me so faithfully through the summer!
Shoe-shopping mission aborted, I found my way to the old part of town and took some photos around its attractive alleyways and plazas. I also decided to go to the ‘Museo del Canal Interoceanico’ there, feeling I ought to gen up a bit on the defining historical, political, geographical and economical feature of the country I was in – the Panama Canal. The museum was commendably detailed, but a little heavy going and challenging for me, as all the exhibits were in Spanish, and my vocabulary, as far as engineering and international diplomacy goes, wasn’t really up to scratch. Still, I could get the general gist of things, and it was interesting to find out more about the inception of the trade route that changed the physical and economic features of the Americas so drastically. It was also sad and somewhat shocking to learn how many Caribbean and Chinese immigrant workers suffered, and even died, during the building of the canal, due to an apartheid system that granted them vastly unfavourable living conditions and pay in comparison to white workers.
The workforce behind the building of the canal left its mark on the demographic of Panama, and the country has rich mix of citizens – many of them black or Chinese, which leads me neatly onto my next adventure… Suddenly starving and in need of some lunch after the museum, I ventured into a Chinese eatery in the old town that seemed to be popular with the locals. The menu was a strange mix of Chinese fare with a Panamanian twist so I did the adventurous thing and ordered ‘pollo con patacones’, having read in my guide book that ‘patacones’ are a Panamanian staple. What they are, in fact, are little discs of plantain, squashed and fried, and probably fried again, judging by the oily and bright yellow pile of them that arrived on my plate with a vaguely oriental tasting chicken leg. Uh-oh, once again my coronary arteries won’t be thanking me! However, the food served a purpose and quietened my grumbling stomach at least.
What was just as interesting as the food, though, was the company in which I ate it. No sooner had I sat down in the restaurant than a wizened old Panamanian man plonked himself in front of me and said grace before chomping his way through a mountainous portion of egg-fried rice. Then, before I knew what was what, a ropey looking older woman with what looked disconcertingly like a bullet-wound in her cheek, was sat down beside me asking me for money. Hmm, oh dear… I did as good a job as I could of finishing my ‘pollo y patacones’ before beating a hasty retreat. I couldn’t help but notice a couple of Panamanian ‘working girls’ queuing up for their lunch as I left, though, and, on closer inspection, it became clear that they were ‘working girls who used to be guys’ (the 5 o’clock shadow and square jaw always gives it away). Ah, what a delightful part of town I had evidently found myself in?! Honestly, when I look back to what I wrote in October about finding Mexico City the dodgiest place I’d ever been to, I smile at how quaint it seems. With San Salvador and Panama City under my belt now, Mexico City suddenly seems about as edgy as going to tea at your Nan’s!
I planned to spend the afternoon at the Miraflores Locks, slightly out of the city centre, just so I could say that I’d seen part of the canal and watched some ships passing through it. I tried valiantly to make it there on local buses but, when I asked for directions and several people looked at me as if I was crazy for trying to bus it, I admitted defeat and hopped into a taxi. The locks were pretty impressive, and the visitor centre there brought to life a lot of what I’d learned earlier that day in the other museum. At 4 o’clock from the observation deck, we were able to actually watch a ship (and it was a British one – a massive cruise liner) passing through, with many of its passengers waving out at us from their cabins. A lot of the time it is huge cargo ships (mainly full of grain and petroleum products) that use the canal, though, from all over the world, to all sorts of destinations.
Now that the canal is back under Panama’s control (the U.S. had power over the ‘Canal Zone’ until the end of 1999), Panamanians seem to feel rightfully proud and relations with the States have eased, although they are still complex (George Bush Sr’s 1989 invasion of Panama in response to the then president, Manuel Noriega’s, proven involvement in drug trafficking was seen by many as heavy handed). Panama City was yet another place in Central America where I felt my visual appearance as a ‘gringa’ invited suspicion that, at times, crossed into barely concealed contempt (once again, I can kind of understand it as the U.S. did carve up the country and cream most of the profit from the canal – however, such things are never black and white, and should all tourists have to bear the sins of their forefathers?).
The taxi driver who took me and a couple of other visitors back into the city at the end of the day perhaps had this kind of chip on his shoulder. After manically and precariously driving us back to the centre, and vastly overcharging us, he dumped us far from where any of us actually wanted or needed to be. I jumped on another bus which, again, didn’t seem to help me get back to the hostel and, when the conductor advised me to get off in a rather deserted area, giving me instructions that I didn’t quite understand, I began to feel a little uneasy. This was compounded when a slightly scruffy looking older man hobbled along and insisted he could take me where I wanted to go. “I’m a policeman, not a bad person”, he proudly repeated many times in Spanish, getting a little golden badge out of his wallet and a rather battered looking ID card. I’m afraid to say, I wasn’t too sure if he was telling the truth, and I wondered if the card and badge were part of some shifty scheme that would see him leading me off somewhere to rob me. However, there was a twinkly and kind look in his eyes and, with no-one else around to advise me, I decided to trust him (luckily we were in an area with some hotels and shops, although they looked pretty desolate and the streets were kind of deserted).
We chatted a bit and I asked him if he was off-duty (he was) and I began to feel a bit more confident. However, I couldn’t help thinking that he would have fitted in much more on the other side of the counter in any police station (perhaps with a can of Tennants in his hand) than behind the desk in uniform, or out on the beat! Much to my relief, though, within a few blocks, ‘Mr Policeman’ and I were back at the hostel and I thanked him profusely, shaking his hand. I then felt a bit bad for my cynicism. Questioning people’s motives and thinking the worst has become part of ‘modus operandi’ out here and, although it has a survival instinct aspect to it, I really don’t like the way it makes me feel so rotten inside – especially when I’m proven wrong. So sorry Mr Policeman for doubting you – I hope you didn’t notice it too much, and that, if you did, you will forgive me.
So that was yesterday. Once I got to Mamallena last night I decided to just stay there, getting a very early night to replenish my sleep deficit from the night before. Now I’m feeling less tired, but I have dark circles under my eyes and look a bit sallow and wrung out. I think I had better try to eat some vegetables in Colombia and get some of the vitamins back in my system that don’t seem to feature in Panamanian patacone fare.
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