This was OK with me, I didn't have much to do anyway, except work on salvaging bits of my journal which unfortunately got soaked-through the day before in a freak rainstorm on the beaches of southern Costa Rica. (I'm still working on salvaging it incidentally, but it's coming along). As it happened however, the crack one-woman team showed up to count us first thing in the morning, and the whole process was over in no more than maybe five minutes.
Anyway, once I was free to go, I grabbed a direct bus into Panama City, arriving late, and after crisscrossing a bit on some local buses, managed to find and take a bed in a big old youth hostel in a beautiful if disheveled part of town called called San Felipe, or Casco Viejo - Old Town - where I've been ever since. It's a bit expensive, but quite lovely, with high ceilings, free internet, a big communal kitchen, pancake breakfast and all the rest. It's also full of travelers from all over, making for a good atmosphere and facilitating the swapping of stories and information. A fine spot to flop while I saw about boats to Colombia.
As it happens, there are plenty - if you're willing to pay, that is. Full-service 4-6 day packages on foreign-yachts running through the various islands along Panama's Caribbean coast, complete with stops to snorkel, all you can eat, etc. sound very nice, but you're looking at something like $100 a day, not to mention putting up with a boat-load of other tourists. Good to know there's a Plan B if it comes down to it, but I thought I might like to see about crewing on a private yacht first, like I did back in Mexico. I had heard that kind of thing was also possible around here, if perhaps a bit more difficult to arrange, but I was confident there would be loads of boats heading down looking for crew, and was excited for the challenge. In the meantime, I thought I might as well take a moment to enjoy the sights and sounds of Panama City.
Day One I just wandered around the Casco Viejo, soaking up the crazy scene and familiarizing myself with the crumbling colonial neighborhood. The streets were lined with innumerable and beautifully ornamented old buildings, but virtually every third one was, behind its lovely facade, little more than a rotten old shell overtaken inside either by vegetation or full up with garbage and other human waste. Despite an abundance of street people and obvious poverty, however, Old Town remains quite lovely by day, if you can handle the heat (I could not, and around noon I had to dash into a cheapish bistro for lunch and a cold beer). But you get the feeling it's a kind of artificial loveliness. I took a few wrong turns on one of my short wanders, for example, and quickly found myself in nastier territory. It wasn't long however, before I was spotted by one of the many over-polite and shockingly well-armed young policemen patrolling the place and pointed back toward the safer part of town. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Day Two I made for the famed Panama Canal. Two quick bus rides saw me over to the entrance way to the Miraflores Locks, from whence I wandered into the compound, and up to the gates, to pay my $8 entrance fee. Happily, there was a sizable boat passing through just then, and I was able to observe the workings of the canal in action. Before my visit, I had absolutely no idea how the canal operated - I suppose I had thought, naively, that it was just a straight-up trench that had been dug across the country of Panama to link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and that boats just sailed clean through. In reality, however, it's much more complicated, and much more impressive than that.
The kind of trench I was imagining, in which boats could just sail straight through ocean to ocean, would have to be dug to a depth far below sea-level, obviously. This would be conceivable perhaps, if the land separating the two oceans had been very minimal, but the country of Panama, however small it may appear on the map, is actually a sizable tract of land, consisting largely of mountains of solid rock, and rising high above sea level. Removing enough material to allow for the straight passage of ocean vessels at sea-level would have been virtually impossible.
In fact, the canal - or canals; there are three of them - functions more like a kind of huge staircase for boats, transporting them up through a series of independent chambers called locks, into a freshwater lake through which they pass - high above sea-level - and then down again, on the other side, to the ocean. Very cool. 
And very huge. I had a good time wandering through the museum-type exhibit on site at the Miraflores Locks, and learning about all the huge gears and cogs, and valves and things that make the whole sucker work, and absorbing all the dazzling statistics from poundage of concrete, and lives lost in its construction, to the many thousands of litres of freshwater used each day when the last set of locks are opened releasing vessels back into the salty seas. Fortunately, Panama gets a whack of rain every year, so freshwater resources like Lake Gatun which runs between the locks, are continually replenished. Indeed, Panama is apparently famous for having some of the best drinking water in the world, and it's been a pleasure to be able to drink straight from the tap this past week or so.Another stat that stood out in my mind was the cost of passage: many of the bigger cargo ships apparently pay well over US$200,000 for a single pass! And of course many thousands of such ships pass through each year. No wonder then, that the canal has long been one of the Panama's largest sources of income - and plans are actually underway to expand it. At this very moment, two new sets of locks are being constructed, one on either side, which will greatly expand the Canal's capacity, and hopefully re-invigorate the country's economy, which has reportedly been in decline the past few years. You'd never know that looking out at the city's impressive downtown skyline, however.
My first night in town, after I'd stowed my things, I wandered out to the second story balcony and was struck by the hundreds of huge sky-scrapers running all along the waterfront. They made for quite a sight all lit up against the swollen black of the Pacific and the dark clouds overhead. Surely Panama was a wealthy country in some ways? I'd have to make a point of going down there to explore that part of town eventually. Day Three - yesterday - was my chance to do so. I was beginning to think I ought to start looking for boats, especially if I was going to make it to Colombia by the end of the month, and so I set out early to make the rounds of the various yacht clubs here in town, and see what was up. I had heard that there was a little yacht club down there somewhere along the scenic walkway that winds along the water between my hostel and the downtown core, so that's where I started, setting out on foot.
It was a gray morning, and hot, and the smell of the fish market was thick and inescapable as I walked by. The pescadors and salespeople hustled about in the filthy streets shouting all kinds of important sounding things to no one in particular, and skinny cats slinked along in the sidelanes looking for little bits of anything fishy. I asked a cabbie for directions, and he pointed me onward to the club, but when I finally found the place, the chap at the gates told me it was a private facility, and that they didn't allow folks to just come in off the street and petition for rides and the like. For that kind of thing I might try these two other places, further up the coast, the names of which he wrote down for me on a scrap of paper.
I was already more than half-way into town, however, so I kept wandering toward the looming sky-scrapers. I was sure I could catch a bus back up the coast from there. As I drew closer, I realized that what had appeared to be so many impressive buildings from across the way, were actually no more than skeletons of buildings, either abandoned in the midst of construction or ruined remnants of a more luxurious age.
It was a gray morning, and hot, and the smell of the fish market was thick and inescapable as I walked by. The pescadors and salespeople hustled about in the filthy streets shouting all kinds of important sounding things to no one in particular, and skinny cats slinked along in the sidelanes looking for little bits of anything fishy. I asked a cabbie for directions, and he pointed me onward to the club, but when I finally found the place, the chap at the gates told me it was a private facility, and that they didn't allow folks to just come in off the street and petition for rides and the like. For that kind of thing I might try these two other places, further up the coast, the names of which he wrote down for me on a scrap of paper.
I was already more than half-way into town, however, so I kept wandering toward the looming sky-scrapers. I was sure I could catch a bus back up the coast from there. As I drew closer, I realized that what had appeared to be so many impressive buildings from across the way, were actually no more than skeletons of buildings, either abandoned in the midst of construction or ruined remnants of a more luxurious age.
Probably 60% of the big buildings, I'd say (OK, maybe more like 40% - anyway, lots of them) were hollow - just empty concrete forms, only the bottoms of which were home to a few restaurants, shops or offices. Even those buildings that were complete looked pretty dead - no lights, no people bustling about inside, at least as far as I could tell. There were lots of folks about in the streets, mind you, and plenty of traffic and what not, but the empty shells of the big buildings cast a strange ghostly shadow over the place - perhaps Panama was in worse shape than I thought.
Anyway, after I'd wandered around gawking for some time, I did manage to find a bus up toward the other yacht clubs, and grabbed it. On the way I met a young Swedish couple making the trip down from Alaska who had also been looking for boats recently, and we chatted a bit about their search. They informed me that they'd in fact spent the past three weeks or so making their way back and forth across the canal, working as line-handlers on various boats in search of folks headed down to South America, and had only just now found a fellow willing to take them along on his way to Ecuador.
It's not the season, they told me, for sailing South; far more people, it seems, are heading West across the Pacific at the moment. But they were a pleasant pair, and wished me the best of luck as they pointed me toward the first yacht club. I walked in and surveyed the place, which regrettably, looked about as dead as downtown, and dutifully posted my sign on the modest little noticeboard. Maybe more would be happening at the fancier club up the road? This, I found, was untrue, but again, I posted my little sign on the noticeboard and sat for a beer in the little restaurant and tried to suss things out a bit with the few locals hanging around. No leads though, and so I returned home, by now a bit discouraged.
When I got back I took to reading a bit about things on the Caribbean side of the country - perhaps the going would be better over there? - and found a mixture of good and bad news. First off, Colon, the city I'd hoped to make my home base on that side while I searched for boats, turned out to be something of an infamously nasty place. Indeed every guidebook I picked up seemed to say more about how to avoid it than anything else. Poverty and crime, apparently, are among the more serious of Colon's problems and muggings are quite common, even in broad daylight. Anyway, that's the bad news.
Anyway, after I'd wandered around gawking for some time, I did manage to find a bus up toward the other yacht clubs, and grabbed it. On the way I met a young Swedish couple making the trip down from Alaska who had also been looking for boats recently, and we chatted a bit about their search. They informed me that they'd in fact spent the past three weeks or so making their way back and forth across the canal, working as line-handlers on various boats in search of folks headed down to South America, and had only just now found a fellow willing to take them along on his way to Ecuador.
It's not the season, they told me, for sailing South; far more people, it seems, are heading West across the Pacific at the moment. But they were a pleasant pair, and wished me the best of luck as they pointed me toward the first yacht club. I walked in and surveyed the place, which regrettably, looked about as dead as downtown, and dutifully posted my sign on the modest little noticeboard. Maybe more would be happening at the fancier club up the road? This, I found, was untrue, but again, I posted my little sign on the noticeboard and sat for a beer in the little restaurant and tried to suss things out a bit with the few locals hanging around. No leads though, and so I returned home, by now a bit discouraged.
When I got back I took to reading a bit about things on the Caribbean side of the country - perhaps the going would be better over there? - and found a mixture of good and bad news. First off, Colon, the city I'd hoped to make my home base on that side while I searched for boats, turned out to be something of an infamously nasty place. Indeed every guidebook I picked up seemed to say more about how to avoid it than anything else. Poverty and crime, apparently, are among the more serious of Colon's problems and muggings are quite common, even in broad daylight. Anyway, that's the bad news.
The good news is, there are a few other places to stay close-by that sound much nicer and far safer. I need to be close though, because the fact of the matter is that Colon and the surrounding ares are home to several big and important ports. I was also encouraged by the fact that despite their strong warnings, all of the guidebooks admit that it is possible to find boats headed to Colombia from this area. Foreign yachts, merchant ships, tribal canoes and all the rest do routinely pass this way, and indeed, all along the Caribbean coast of Panama and into South America. So long as you're careful and keep your wits about you, they say, you should be able to find passage somehow. (Just for the record, however sketchy all this may sound, boat travel on the Caribbean side is actually far safer than on the Pacific - one sees way fewer foreign yachts cruising along that side, for example.)
So the plan at the moment, is as follows: tomorrow I will rise early and break fast before making the short two hour bus journey over to the Caribbean coast. I intend to use the better part of the morning to make a few visits to some of the bigger ports in and around Colon and hopefully shake a few hands, and leave a few signs. Then, I'll skip town and head up to Portobelo, or some other sleepy little fishing town, to spend the night. That way, if things don't pan out at the bigger ports, I'll still be able to poke around some kind of wharf and ask some questions, and maybe find something else up there.
If pickings are looking better further East on smaller boats, there is also the possibility of dividing my journey into several smaller trips between these little fishing cities all along the Caribbean coast. If I make it far enough that way, I'll eventually come to an old US military base situated just this side of the border, and I can walk into Colombia from there. Once you're across the going gets easier I hear, and there are plenty of boats and buses that run deeper into the country. And of course, if the crew thing looks like a bad call, I can always jump on one of those luxury tourist cruises, or even fly, I guess, which would actually be cheaper and faster, but we'll see.
Either way, unless something crazy happens, tonight will be my fifth and final night in Panama City, and with a little luck, I'll be able to hold to my plan of making it to Colombia before the end of the month.
Hopefully I'll be posting again soon with some good news! Wish me luck! Miss you all.
So the plan at the moment, is as follows: tomorrow I will rise early and break fast before making the short two hour bus journey over to the Caribbean coast. I intend to use the better part of the morning to make a few visits to some of the bigger ports in and around Colon and hopefully shake a few hands, and leave a few signs. Then, I'll skip town and head up to Portobelo, or some other sleepy little fishing town, to spend the night. That way, if things don't pan out at the bigger ports, I'll still be able to poke around some kind of wharf and ask some questions, and maybe find something else up there.
If pickings are looking better further East on smaller boats, there is also the possibility of dividing my journey into several smaller trips between these little fishing cities all along the Caribbean coast. If I make it far enough that way, I'll eventually come to an old US military base situated just this side of the border, and I can walk into Colombia from there. Once you're across the going gets easier I hear, and there are plenty of boats and buses that run deeper into the country. And of course, if the crew thing looks like a bad call, I can always jump on one of those luxury tourist cruises, or even fly, I guess, which would actually be cheaper and faster, but we'll see.
Either way, unless something crazy happens, tonight will be my fifth and final night in Panama City, and with a little luck, I'll be able to hold to my plan of making it to Colombia before the end of the month.
Hopefully I'll be posting again soon with some good news! Wish me luck! Miss you all.
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