Port 24 Panama City, Panama

Hola!

Before we transit the Panama Canal again we get to spend a day and night in Panama City!

On Feb 23, 2022, we arrived in the early morning, sliding by a lot of ships waiting for their turn thru the Canal. But this time we weren’t passing them to go to the head of the line. We headed just a little bit south to turn in to Port Amador for a visit to Panama City.

The skyline of Panama City came in to view. The city is sprawling! It has spread quite a bit since we first saw it in 2003.

Looking closer, the architecture is quite stunning! I’ll show you more on this later.

We have tickets for the “Highlights of Panama City” excursion. There are a couple of busloads of folks on this  tour – we get on the last bus, so ours is not full. Nice!

Our tour guide is Marciel, and the driver is Jorge. Really nice guys!

Port Amador is a long way away from the city. Here you can see how far our ship is from the downtown area. There is a long series of bridges to get from the port to the mainland. This is all part of the reason for selecting this site for Panama City – the shallow approach made it nearly impossible for pirates to attack the city by sea.

Looking ahead on the road ahead of our bus, it can be seen winding around the harbor.

On the way we see some interesting sites! At first I thought this buidling was uniquely colorful, but looking at it again I see there are letters shaped by the colors.  Any guess what this says?  By the way, that is Joy’s hat in the picture.
[Mary Applegate provided the answer! See this: https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/mural-project ]

We get closer to downtown. The density of highrises is staggering! One on the right resembled the iconic museum at Port Canaveral.

We pass by the fish market, but the picturesque image I’m choosing to share with you is the dock next to the market with the fishing boats bringing in their daily catches.

Getting closer to downtown we can see the causeway with the mud flats – this is low tide and that kept pirates from being able to easily approach the city by sea. OK, I mentioned this before. But having said that you will find in the history books that the famous pirate, Henry Morgan, succeeded in pillaging and burning Panama City to the ground.

Our first stop is the Central Museum which resides on the grounds of the original Panama City. From this location we had to ride a tram about a half mile to the main museum site.

The museum at the main square (Plaza Mayor) is very contemporary, contrasting significantly with the ruins on the grounds. This is located next to the main plaza of the original city.

The tower on the right is the main bell tower of the church. The smooth ground in front of the tower was the main square, Plaza Mayor, the heart of town.

Inside of the museum is this excellent diorama of the original Panama City as they believe it looked before Henry Morgan burned it to the ground. The main plaza can be seen to the lower right, with the church tower on the right side of the plaza.  From the plaza going to the left you see a road following the waterfront. That is the road we followed from the Museum’s Visitor Center to the main plaza museum.

Opposite from the church on the other side of the square is the site of the nunnery. Although surrounded by water, Panama City has no wells or spring water. The nuns of the church collected rainwater and sold it to the people to raise money for the church.

Leaving the museum we head to Colonial Old Town a few miles away. From the plaza where the bus drops us off we go through this lovely bridge covered with multi-colored bougainvilleas!

On the other side we enter the Colonial Old Town Panama City. We are treated to a feast of architectural styles that have evolved over the years. On the far right is the first bank in Panama, relatively austere. Then the French and Spanish influences appear in the other buildings. The French influence is strong since they were here for many years attemtping to build the first canal across Panama.

We first visited the Iglesia de San Jose (Church of Saint Joseph). I apologize that I did not capture my own photo of the church facade. We approached the church on the sidewalk in front of it, and had a lengthy briefing from our tour guide, Marciel, before we entered.  Once we exited I forgot to cross the street to get a picture. So I am borrowing an image from Famous Historic Buildings of UK. The website is cited in the photo caption below.

The interior was amazingly clean-lined with a stunning altar. Beautiful stained glass is present throughout. The altar table itself is revered as the “gold altar” but is made of solid mahogany with a gold leaf coat. It is the pride of the church.

The real treat for me was in a side room to the right of the altar. There is a diorama depicting the events of Jesus’ birth and childhood. It starts on the left end and meanders to the right, with little numbered plaquards identifying the scene.

This is the beginning with the annunciation to Mary that she is the one who will bear the Savior, and Joseph receiving the dream to know he is to join Mary. The effort it took to build this up and lay out the story in vignettes within the diorama is immense!

Sharing the room with the diorama is a series of wooden statues of the Saints. These were removed from the Companie de Jesus (Society of Jesus) church down the street while it is being refurbished (we think). I briefly heard these statues will be kept protected and new statues will be replicated that can endure the outdoors.

Outside, the Society of Jesus church is just one block away and across the street. It has vacant niches where the Saints were once standing. But it doesn’t look like this church is being renovated, does it?

We next head to the Plaza of General Tomas Herrera, just one block away.

This statue of General Herrera is the only equestrian statue in Panama.  He was a war hero and at one time was also governor of Panama.

The square is surrounded by a beautiful hotel…

… an old school…

… and a hotel converted to restaurants – one on each floor, including the roof! Apparently this is a hopping location at night!

Moving on to the main square, Independence Plaza, we find a nice open space surrounded by nice hotels…

… and an interesting cathedral, with towers that were added and painted white. There is something interesting about the towers I’ll show you in a moment!

This is the Santa Maria la Antigua Basilica, also known as the Panama Metropolitan Cathedral, and is the oldest church in Panama. The Pope was here in 2019, and blessed the altar in this church. There were so many people wanting to see him, he also blessed a silver rose as a momento to the people so they can all say they were here in his presence. (I forgot to find and photograph the rose – rats!) One thing that sets this cathedral apart is the white towes are encrusted with mother of pearl shells that make the towers shimmer in the daylight as you walk by!  Can you see it? Check out the next shot.

The mother of pearl shells can be seen here inset into the exterior and roof. Didn’t I tell you this was interesting?

Inside, this cathedral is a bit larger than the Iglesia de San Jose, and similarly clean in its lines so the focus is on the altar. But the columns are so large they block a lot of pews from being able to see, so now TV monitors can be seen on each column.

We wind our way back to the starting point to catch our bus. We learn that the heavy presence of military police along with the local police is due to a possible protest that is to be held today. We saw no protest activity.

Our bus had a mechanical issue, so we were fortunate this is also the location the ship’s shuttle drops off and picks up people. So we hop on the shuttle to return to the ship.

The remainder of this blog will show you some of the more interesting buildings I captured as we drove.

This one appears to be an office building in the center of apartments. You can work where you live, but not have to take work home!

There is a connecting walkway between two floors of these buildings.

This building flares out and is clad in gold so it shimmers in the sunlight!

This building has a graceful add-on that keeps the building from being a dark box.

The building on the left is the Yacht Club Tower. Hmmm, interesting roof extensions. They don’t appear to be deck extensions, unlike what we can see on the building on the right.

The Children’s Hospital! Colorful!

Zig zag balconies, with colored deck rail panels!

And two buildings I couldn’t capture on the tour, so I had to grab these shots from the ship with my telephoto lens. The air is so thick with humidity and the sun was not cooperating, or rather, the clouds were not letting the sun shine, this photo is rather hazy.  But the buildings on the left have interesting roof lines.  The building on the right is El Tornillo, or The Screw, a Panamanian favorite, so I have to include it, even though I’m not happy with the photo.

Before I close this post, here are a few additional tidbits about Panama I want to pass along:

• The kids go to school from March to December, so the kids have a long holiday break!
• Like Columbia, Panama has no army, and relies solely on its police force
• Finally, Panamanian coffee is so exquisite, its brand, Geisha Coffee, sells for $2,000 per pound, and goes for $10 a cup in the restaurants.

We were supposed to push off at 4:00 AM, but didn’t budge until a little after 5:00 AM. I was awake at 3:30AM and didn’t get back to sleep until about 6:00, only to get up at 7:00 to get ready for the Panama Canal crossing. Is this trip supposed to be relaxing? No, it’s just supposed to be interesting! But we have time to relax (and sleep) later!

The city is still pretty much asleep at 5:30 AM. Very few lights on in the tall buildings.

We say farewell to Panama City! It was nice to pend a little more time here than we did in 2003!

Next post will be a Point of Interest on our sencond Panama Canal crossing! And I promise it won’t be as long as the first post, since you’ve pretty much seen it all!