Panama: Day 1: The canal, of course.

We had no intention of going to the Panama Canal. We proud, jaded New Yorkers wouldn't be caught dead at places like the Eiffel Tower, the Tower of Pisa, the Space Needle, or the Long Island Duck. But two things changed our mind: 1) Unlike the aforementioned tourist traps, the Panama Canal actually serves a purpose. It doesn't need to make money off of stupid Americans with fanny packs in order to exist; it makes money off of stupid countries that don't know how to ship things by plane. And, 2) There's not a whole lot to do in Panama City.

I suppose I had a different idea of what Panama City would be like. I booked the Panama trip on a whim, or more accurately, out of panic: I saw a deal for shockingly low airfare and flashing words bordered by flashing lights said the deal wouldn't last. What's an impulse shopper to do?

After clicking submit, I sat back and fantasized about what the trip would be like. Surely, Panama City would be a clean, sun-bleached metropolis peopled by tall men in white suits and thin mustaches, speaking English in a classy accent, punctuating tales of coffee bean prices with long puffs on hand-rolled cigars, while women in yellow flower-print dresses giggled or brought the men lemonade. Of course, everyone would be wearing hats. Panama hats (Ecuadorian-made, actually), fedoras, stetsons, pork pies, maybe the odd bucket cap.

The men would all be named Roberto or Manuel and they'd show me their yachts that once fought back both the Spanish armada and British pirates. Later at the hacienda, the sugarcane workers would come in from the fields to break for dinner. There would be some class tension at first, but then an old worker with gnarled hands would pull out a guitar from behind a tree and begin strumming, singing in a throaty, passionate voice, the guitar and vocals creating a magical sheen of calm surreality to the hazy evening. Soon, an upbeat song would begin, the women would joyfully dance in their yellow dresses, and we'd all be swept up in rum-fueled egalitarian revelry.

In actuality, Panama City is "the armpit of Panama" as one Panamanian put it. It reminded me of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad - a dingy, trafficky, noisy city that somehow encompasses a lot of sprawl within a small space. It's one of the least pedestrian-friendly cities I've been to, and that includes Salta, Argentina, where cars are driven with the intent to maim. Panama City has a number of areas bereft of sidewalks, crosswalks, stop lights and anything else that might help someone strolling around not get flattened into a tortilla. But it makes sense - with Panama's stifling humidity, no one just "walks around" unless you're looking to open a Turkish steam bath inside your boxers.

So cars, cabs, and buses rule the road, giving the searingly hot air a nice, greasy diesel quality. Cabs are embarrassingly cheap - rides around town can be a paltry $3. What's odd though is that the price of gas is comparable to the US. How Panamanian cab drivers make money is a mystery of the universe that still keeps me up at night.

(Another oddity of Panama City is that no one speaks English. Now, I don't go to a foreign country expecting people to know English, and in fact I try to speak/mangle the native tongue of wherever I am, but we're talking about a country that has had a huge U.S. presence for most of the 20th century. And Panama uses U.S. dollars, for crying out loud!)

Anyway, back to the Canal. So we arrived in the afternoon, and set out to see the city by walking around, which was like starring in a live-action adaptation of Frogger. Abandoning that, we cabbed to a couple of destinations that disappointed (I don't even remember what they were). Not knowing how to kill a couple of hours until dinner, we gave in and took a 15-minute, $3 cab ride to the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal.

The Canal is really something. I'm not going to be cliched and call it an engineering marvel. The way I see it, once 27,500 people die constructing something, it ceases to become a marvel and resembles more like grotesque trial and error.

But it is pretty neat. I won't get into the technical aspects of it, but water gets drained or pumped into various sections via artificial lakes, which raises or lowers the water level for one reason or another. Honestly, I don't quite get it and think a heavy-duty conveyer belt would work just as fine. But it's cool watching the water levels flip around, and there's even something oddly transfixing about watching giant cargo boats inch their way through the system. It takes small eternities for each boat to make it through, and it is the absolute perfect way to kill time before dinner.

(Dinner, by the way, was great and in a very cool part of town that warmed me up to Panama City. I'll post about it next time!)

Ship incoming from the Atlantic.



Ship outgoing to the Pacific.



Locks!