Panama

Dateline – Panamá – 29 Junio – 2 Julio

After a quiet (sea-wise) but busy (work and activity wise) crossing, we arrived in Balboa, Panamá on Friday the 29th. Due to various practical issues (size of our ship, availability and price of berths) we had to anchor out in the harbor and then use the life-boats to tender back and forth to shore. It was by turns a tedious and hair-raising practice. The first morning was especially tough as rough water would slam the boat into the gangway or the ship, or perhaps lift the gangway up and smash it down on top of the ship. We all had to wait a few hours for things to quiet down that day, and eventually over the course of our stay, thanks to the tireless and careful work of the crew, the tendering became rather routine (much to my lament… I liked the fun of jumping from the moving boat to the moving gangway). A view from inside one of the tenders….

On our first day we had an excellent tour of Panamá city, thanks to a great guide, Gustavo. He took us through the poorest and wealthiest neighborhoods, pointing out the income and wealth inequality that might someday soon rival that of Brazil.

In the poorest area, we drove by the locale where Noriega had one of his strongholds. During the US invasion, we heavily bombed this building and the surroundings killing several hundred of the local civilians.

We also saw the ruins of the original site of the Spanish colonial city Panamá Viejo which was sacked and destroyed by Captain Henry Morgan the Pirate.

The city was moved to a more defensible peninsula (in the late 16th-early 17th century) and the old heart of this new city, Casco Antiguo, is in the process of being restored and redeveloped. There is some lovely colonial architecture here.

But despite the presence of the Presidential Palace the area is described as “unsafe at night.” The residents of this area _are_ still poor (which is probably what scares the writers of tour books and American diplomats the most).

While in the plaza of Casco Antiguo I chatted with Germain Perez, a member of the Kuna, whose partially autonomous kingdom lies on the southern Caribbean coast. He works in a hostel in Panamá City by night, and also operates a tour business to the San Blas islands in the Kuna Yala.

These three gentlemen, city workers on a break, were also kind enough to let me take their picture.

On Saturday the 30th we journeyed north from Panamá City to the center of the isthmus (more or less) to the village of Tusipono on the Rio Chagres to meet the Emberá. The Emberá are originally (?) from Colombia, and many now live in the Darién. They’ve been successively displaced by the warfare in Colombia, drug traffickers, and governmental directives. The village of Tusipono has existed for a couple of generations, and in addition to their subsistence food production, they largely depend on tourist trade. The extended contact with tourists and the rest of Panamanian society (the children do go off to larger towns for school, sometimes for extended stays) has changed them of course. According to fellow voyager, Jeff Blick, an anthropologist from Georgia who visited the same village some seven years ago, they’ve adjusted some outward aspects of their culture since then. The beaded kilts now worn by men and the beaded halters worn by younger women are new, and may be the adoption of “civilized” body modesty, or may be simply a reaction to being gawked at by tourists hoping for pictures of “naked Indians.”

Of course, the “native dress” itself might no longer be daily wear, so much as wardrobe for the tourist show … we saw “western” style clothes hanging to dry in several of their homes. But quite apart from these questions of cultural “authenticity” (our desire for a glimpse back into a more “traditional” or static culture is bogus because all cultures are constantly shifting and adjusting anyway…) the people themselves were authentic, open, interested in engagement…. I chatted with Roquildo, one of the village headman, a young woman (whose name I’ve forgotten), and a number of children (see below).

On Sunday, July 1, Dawn had Dean Duty again and stayed close to the ship, while I went off with a group of faculty and staff friends to the Caribbean shore of Panamá, northeast of Portobelo. While the bus-ride was a lot longer than any of us (including the driver) expected, it was nice to see the more rural and agricultural parts of the country. Our day was largely decadent… hanging out on a beach, and then lunch at the house of some acquaintances of one of the voyage faculty. The little shore-side towns were sleepy, and not heavily developed, with most locals operating just a bit above subsistence living.

On our final day, Monday July 2, we took a nature-oriented tour of one of the huge human-made lakes, Lago Gatún that make up portions of the canal. We had a boat tour of the rain-forested hills-cum-islands that make up the little micro-niches of this area. We saw howler monkeys, a crocodile, snail-kites, tamarind monkeys, white-faced capuchins (which are habituated to hand-feeding, and they ran amok on our boats), and…. huge Panamax ships, and car-carriers! It was fairly surreal to be gliding through these quiet, jungle-y, back-channels and then round a corner opening out on to the main channel of the canal and finding ourselves face-to-face with these monoliths.

We ended the day on the guide’s houseboat for lunch, and then took side-excursions to swimming holes including this great (but chilly) waterfall feeding one of the Gatún tributaries. It was a peaceful way to end our stay here.

Next stop? Ecuador!