Day 3 - Dec 4, 2017 Panama City

Panama sits at the junction of North America and South America, neighboring Costa Rica and Columbia. It has the narrowest isthmus in Central America hugging both Pacific and Atlantic oceans. As a result, it has always served as a meeting place and melting pot for wild life as well as humans. Eric and I have yet to see the wild life but we had seen the tremendous mix of different races and cultures in our first 24 hours in Panama City.

There are first the Spanish descendants from colonial days, the blacks descendants from African slave trades, the indigenous peoples (at least 8-10 major tribes like Guna), the Chinese descendents from imported laborers for the canal, the East Indians...  We meet all the above during our stroll down Avenida Central today. This is a long pedestrian only commerical street jam-packed with all kinds of shops selling clothes, appliances, furniture, toys, gold jewelries, and cell phone accessories. Although the guidebooks all say Panamanians don't wear shorts except on beach (because they are conservative), what we saw is quite different. Women, especially the younger generation, all dress very provocatively. This is consistent with what I observe in other Latin American countries as well.

The whole old town seems to be a giant renovation project. Everywhere we went, we saw construction and renovation. Despite the best intention, some buildings are simply beyond restoration and only their empty shells left. However, those restored buildings are just beautiful, returning them to their former glory.  We did a complete walking tour loop this morning as suggested in the guidebook. To my surprise, we finished in less than 2 hours.  Notice the building with the white wall and blue awnings?  It's the Instituto Nacional de Cultura at the seawall. It was spruced up as a Bolivian hotel in Jame's Bond's film "Quantum of Solace"!

The restored "Flat Arch" (Arco Chato), part of the collapsed Iglesia de Santo Domingo, tells another story: the Americans were so impressed by it that they decided to proceed to build the Panama Canal thinking that the existence of this arch proved Panama is seismically stable! Ironically, it collapsed in 2003 without reason and had since been restored.

The "Gold Altar" (Altar de Oro) residing in Iglesia de San Jose next to our hotel is famous for its survival from the pirate Henry Morgan's plunder. Henry Morgan was infamous for razing the original Panama fort to the ground during his ransack. Legend has it that the priest not only hid the altar successfully but he was bold enough (and actually succeeded) in persuading Henry to donate to the church!

The serious thunder storm started at noon. We waited it out in our hotel and then went for lunch. It got even worse during our meal and didn't completely stop till late afternoon. As a result, we all got wet as we explored beyond the old city.

We first checked out the Mercado de Mariscos (Fish Market). Very disappointing! It's just a pier where fishing boats meet buyers and no outsiders other than peoples with admission privilege can enter. Considering the abundant seafood in Panama, I was expecting to see a vibrant fish market like Tsujiki in Tokyo.

During our wandering, we bumped into a Chinatown style gate on a random street. Hard to know why it was built there since there is no Chinese shop or restaurant in sight!

It seems Panamanians believe in simplicity when building houses. During heavy thunderstorms, the only thing they use to drain the water from the roof is a simple pipe!  As a result, we saw mini-waterfalls all over the street operating like free car wash!