Here are all the posts for Panama. This is part of the Central America trip. See travelogues for the other countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala.

We arrived in Panama City late at night and stayed at an airport hotel, El Hotel Riande Aeropuerto. In the morning, one of the teachers from the school took us to our home-stay. We are staying in a large apartment in downtown Panama City; it has three bedrooms, two baths, a living room, a dining room and two verandas. Our hostess is an 84-year-old woman from Valencia, Spain. She has lived in Argentine and Peru, as well as Panama. Her Spanish is very good. She is interesting and patient. She volunteers at the Hospital in the Canal Zone.

We are told the neighborhood is very safe, but, like a lower-east-side-Manhattan apartment, we have five keys for the various gates, doors and grates.

We also met the School Director. He is Canadian, well-traveled, born in Newfoundland, speaks very good Spanish and is friendly and helpful.

The biggest attractions of Central America are climate, ability to practice Spanish, multiplicity of countries, natural wonders and interesting cultures. I hope to see a lot.

• the Panama Canal (of course)
• coffee plantations in Chiriqui Highlands
• Bocas del Toro seashore and coral reef
• birds along Pipeline Road

We went by taxi to the Punta Calebra Nature Center associated with the Smithsonian. It is located at the entrance to the Panama Canal. For many years, it was in military use and had not been developed; it is now a refuge for marine life and dry forest. We saw large iguanas, osprey and frigates. We visited the aquarium. From the point, we could see ships waiting for their turn to enter the canal.

Nearby, we saw a panoramic view of the Panama City skyline and large yachts in the harbor.

The Pacific Ocean is to the south and the Caribbean Sea to the north.

My luggage weighed in at 48 pounds with 30 in my backpack and 18 in my knapsack. My knapsack is almost all photographic equipment and there is probably another 5 to 6 pounds in the backpack. So, my weight is about evenly divided between clothing and photos equipment.

I want to get photos of wildlife, specially birds in the wild. This means my 8-inch, 300mm telephoto plus a 1.7x teleconverter. This also means, I nee a tripod and ballhead. The combined magnification will be about 765mm. The ballhead features panoramic capabilities, so I can snap photos like my good friend, Larry.

To say Panama is tropical is redundant, but it is tropical. Luckily, there is a breeze from the Pacific Ocean. It is hot and humid here. But, I at the best pineapple I have ever eaten. The water is good to drink. The city is lively with about 1.5 million people, half the 3 million citizens of the country.

I visited the Mira Flores Locks of the Panama Canal, located about 10 kilometers outside the City. It is indeed impressive to see monster, “PanaMax” size ships entering the locks with roughly a meter of clearance on either side. There are several locks that raise the ships to canal and then lake level. Then they make their way to the Caribbean side and through another series of locks. It takes only minutes for the large basins to fill, “in less time than it takes to fill your bathtub,” and the enormous ship goes up about a meter a minute.

Panama City has two “old towns.” The first, Panama Vieja, was ransacked by the English pirate, Sir Henry Morgan in the sixteenth century. There are some ruins that are being restored.

They also have a gallery of local crafts and a fruit stand. I ate the best pineapple of my life at the fruit stand, a smallish size fruit, skinned and sliced as I watched and placed in a plastic bag.

I went to Panama Rainforest at Pipeline Road, a discovery center and tower that just opened in January. The Audubon Society counted the most species of birds during a 24-hour period here. We arrived in the dark and had some difficulty finding the place and getting past the entrance fence. In the dark, various animals scurried in front of the taxi headlights while a constant din of animals and monkeys filled the air. I kept saying, “Asi es un jungle.” The taxi driver said, “No, es un Congo.”

A guide, Marcelo, helped us, showed us to the tower which rises above the tree tops and canopy. The tower is 32 meters tall and took two years to build. With Marcelo´s assistance and equipment we spotted about 35 species including toucans. At one point, we saw five toucans sitting in a tree. We saw a variety of parrots, woodpeckers, does, cuckoos, humming birds, tanager and other birds in red, yellow, green, brown and purple. We also watched a couple of sloths. One of the sloths was resting in the boughs of a tree like it was his easy chair and casually surveying the landscape.

We spent additional time in the daylight meeting other personnel and reviewing their books. I recommend a visit to www.pipelineroad.org. The center is located about an hour´s drive from Panama City center. The Pipeline Road is 17 miles long, was built by the U.S. Army during World War II to protect an oil pipeline across the isthmus.

I wake up to the sound of the city and morning bird cackles. Breakfast is routinely served at 8 a.m. Eggs scrambled with ham, toast, a plate of fruit and coffee. We sit on the apartment veranda overlooking the city and in between the high rises, we can see the canal towers in the distance near the mountains. We walk about ten minutes down the hill to the school, take class for two hours, take a one hour break for lunch at one of the local restaurants and return for two more hours of class. Usually the first session is difficult with lessons in grammar and verb conjugation. The afternoon drifts into conversation and learning new words.

The school and apartment are both located in El Congrejo. The neighborhood has many restaurants: typical Panamanian, Cuban, Spanish, Venezuelan, Lebanese, Peruvian, Argentinian, Italian and Chinese. After school, we eat lunch, go for a walk or shopping, go home, study or nap, visit with our hostess. Go to dinner. Watch the Wheel of Fortune (La Roulette del Suerte) broadcast from Spain. The days go by, our heads spin with Spanish. Sometimes my brain feels like a ´57 Ford that hasn´t been started for awhile.

I give Spanish Panama high marks. I learned a lot, found the teacher friendly and competent. and the environment suitable for learning. The school administration and staff were uniformly friendly, flexible and helpful. Most students take individual lessons (one-on-one) and that may be the way to go. The first day, I was in a class with other students who had little or no exposure to Spanish study. While I can use almost any review, this was not particularly challenging. The second day, we changed to smaller classes and this significantly improved the situation. I asked for and received homework, so I spent about six hours per day exclusively focused on learning Spanish.

During the last few classes, I was significantly challenged with different tenses of verbs and irregular verbs. If I ever learned them 40 years ago, I forgot them almost immediately. The vocabulary and idioms were also more complex.

In contrast to the school in Santiago, Chile (BellaVista) that I studied at least year, SpanishPanama felt less like a school then a place to get Spanish lessons. BellaVista worked hard to facilitate students and faculty meeting each other by holding Monday morning get-togethers for everyone followed up by common breaks. It was  fun to meet students from all over the world and speak in Spanish. Spanish Panama students seemed to drop in for a lesson and had lives apart from studying. The Spanish Panama demographics seemed more focused on retirees and ex-Pats with a tilt toward North Americans.

Part of learning Spanish is interacting with people outside of school. The immersion program includes living with a family. We stayed with Angeles, an 84 year-old woman. She told us the story of her life “her destiny.” She was born in Valencia, Spain. I calculate in 1923. When she got married, she and her husband wanted to see the “Americas” and took a honeymoon in Buenos Aires. They didn´t go back. After living there for many years, they moved to Peru. After 15 year sin Peru, the political situation changed and they moved to Panama in 1986.

She remembers Spain fondly and talks of it frequently.  I underestimated the diferences between people in Valencia and other ares like Madrid and Barcelona. Angela still speaks with a Spanish accent. “Azucar”  or “sugar” is pronounced with a “th” sound for the “z.” She watches cable television broadcast from Spain. She is proud that the emcee of La Rouletta de la Suerte is not only Mister Spain but also Mister Universe. She is conservative in her politics and abhors communists.

At 84, she is busier than some people half her age. She dressed up in “whites” complete with spongy white shoes to volunteer at the local cancer hospital. She dressed up in a suit and wore jewelry to go to an association meeting of Peruvian ex-pats. She went on an all day excursion (leaving at 6 a.m.) to a beach resort with the Lions and Rotarians. She baked two hundred almond cookies for a bake sale for charity. Most days, she has  a big lunch with her son. Every day, she prepared a full breakfast for us.

She also has strong opinions about restaurants. On Valentine´s Day, we went to a Spanish restaurant and had paella from Valencia. When we came home. we told her about our dinner and expected her to be excited we had taken an interest in her native cuisine. Instead, she almost spit in disgust saying the cook did not know what he was doing and his paella was no good. We were lucky: she said she would cook us a paella and show us how it was really done.

And she did. She invited her two sons for a large lunch. The food was great and her sons were very interesting. One works for the Canal as purchasing manager and has traveled the world, including all over the States. The other is a writer and well-versed in culture. He was had read the literary critical work of two of my college professors, Edward Said and Lionel Trilling.

Also known locally as San Felipe, this is the second “old city.” After Panama Viejo was ransacked by the English, the Spanish movd their settlement here. Much of the neighborhood is still in ruins. The tourist police have set up a protected tourist area. Several restaurants, art galleries and redevlopment projects are underway. Also, the next James Bond movie is being filmed here, so a portion of the neighborhod was reconstructed (to look like Quito??). The Presidential Palance is also here with its characteristic herons.

We took an eight-hour bus ride from Panama City to David. It was a double decker, air-conditioned and comfortable. They played movies, El Perro Bombero and some remake of Dracula Meets Frankenstein (?¡). We stopped in David for the night and took the “school” bus to Boquete. It was packed with people with luggage hanging out the back. I was disappointed there were no chickens.

Riding the bus game me time to observe:

• Panama is about the size and population of West Virginia
• the Panamanian currency is, in fact (like the Bahamas) the U.S. currency. Once I received seven dollars in change. The bills were brand new and sequentially numbered.
• Colombians are rumored to be fueling the high rise building boom with money laundering operations
• there were 40,000 Americans (U.S. personnel) during the Canal days; now there are 19,000 ex-pats
• Canal operations yielded $500 million U.S in profits under US. ownership; the Panamanians segmented the market, raised prices and now yield $1.5 billion

Panama has many significant infrastructure development projects underway:

• $5 billion canal expansion
• $1 billion port expansion
• $300 million road from Panama City to Colon
• $300 million cleaning of Bay of Panama
• $189 million rejuvenate Balboa Avenue
• $405 million reconversion of former U.S. airbase, Fort Howard

Meanwhile, construction workers held a series of protests regarding low wages and high inflation. In Colon, several  protesters were shot by police and one died. At another protest, 150 workers were put in jail.

Boquete is a small town in a picturesque setting. Volcan Baru hovers over the town while Rio Caldera sweeps through it. The coffee tastes great. The large construction projects, gated communities and large tourism industry take away some of the charm.
After baking in the tropical sun of Panama City, Boquete was a genuine relief. Because of its altitude and frequent clouds and mist, Boquete is cool, particularly in the evening.

We toured the Cafe Ruiz coffee operations for half-a-day and became coffee snobs. Folgers is made from the “floaters,” coffee beans that don´t ripen properly and flunk the water test. Starbucks over-roasts their beans creating a burnt taste that masks the true flavor of a premium bean.

Apparently, coffee trees for Arabica beans need plenty of water, higher elevations and volcanic soils (and lots of sun and heat). The stock for many of these beans comes from Ethiopia which has a similar latitude and growing condition. Rather than symmetrical plantation style fields, these coffee trees grow in natural, hilly terrain with a variety of trees mixed among them. This creates shade for the coffee trees and the fruit trees attract insects and birds. The indigenous people pick the coffee beans with a twist of the wrist. Minimum wage here is $6 US per day.

The town of Boquete itself is a haven for retirees, especially North Americans. We met the Mayor and shook his hand. There are numerous gated communities complete with guards and high walls topped with prison-style razor wire. The gap between the haves and have-nots feels uncomfortably pronounced. So called “gringo bars” are filled with English-speaking, fair-complexioned people. I stayed at Hotel Rebequet. The rooms were spacious. It had a courtyard with a garden and a common kitchen.

Above Cerro Punto and Guadalupe is a charming international park. The jungle is dense, dark and exotic. Birds, including the quetzales, live in abundance. The air is cool. It’s called a cloud-forest (rather than a rain-forest).

I liked the coolness of Boquete, but not the widespread tourist development, so I headed to Guadalupe, a small settlement above Cerro Punto on the north side of Volcan Baru. I rented a cabin in the mountains at 7,000 feet in altitude, located inside Parque International La Amistad. The park spans both Panama and Costa Rica, hence its name.

I went to the cabin in a four-wheel drive vehicle. During the day, after 9 a.m., there were some construction workers and bird-watchers, but after 5 p.m., I was left alone in the cloud-forest. From the porch, I watched a multitude of hummingbirds and heard the song of the quetzal. During the day, I hiked through the jungle, stopping by cascades, slogging through mud and gazing at wild orchids, enormous ferns and vine covered trees. In several days, I spotted six quetzales. They are called “resplendent” and indeed they glow. The male, in particular, with its three-foot tail and bluish-green teal color is almost garish in the green jungle. I spotted them, not by shape, but color. When they fly, there is a flash of red. At night, the temperature went down to 55 degrees Fahrenheit. I rented the cabin from Los Quetzales Lodge.

I spent a long day taking buses and water taxis to Bastimentos. On the way, I saw a family of indigenous people moving their household.

I had a long travel day from the cloud-forest cabin to the tree-house hut on the Island. I awoke early and hiked through the jungle and spotted  a pair of quetzales. I saw a total of six in several days. At 10 a.m., I put my luggage in the four-wheel drive and slowly made it down the volcano. I hiked to the bus stop and took a three-hour bus ride to David. From there, I took another bus back over the Highlands to Almirante near Changuinola. In David, I noticed the roof of the bus was piled high with burlap bags. It turned out a family was moving. My guess is they had been picking coffee beans and were returning to their homes. They even had a dog tied to the roof.

In Almirante, I took a 60-minute water taxi to the town of Bocas del Toro on Isla Colon. By this time, it was dark. I got in a dinghy and took a fifteen minute ride to Bastimento on Isla Bastimentos. The sailor used a flashlight as his warning light. He let me off on a wooden dock. I had to hoist our bags over my head and pull myself up. I had to walk carefully because some of the slats were missing. The pier led behind a store with a dirt path to the side.

I went to Bastimentos because Bocas Town has a reputation as being loud and noisy, especially at night. The Island was tropical delight, but evening music followed me.

The Island has a small town of the same name. A sidewalk runs the length of the town. There are no cars. People don’t seem to do much of anything–except party at night. Originally they were banana workers that moved from Jamaica but after the Panamanian banana blight, they were out of work. In any event, there are private parties at night with large loudspeakers broadcasting music across the Island. Unfortunately, it’s not reggae, just bass, techno drums and yelling (regga?). I stayed at Beverly’s Hill in their “premier” accommodation–a two-story hut at the very top of a long hill. It had a hammock on the balcony with a great view.

They speak Guari Guari which is a mixture of English and Spanish. I thought that would be perfect for me because that is what I speak, Spanish mixed with English. But I often could not understand either their English or Spanish.

I hiked several kilometers to the north and east and visited Wizard Beach and Red Frog Beach, which is in Parque NAcional Marina Isla Bastimentos. Both have that Castaways feeling with the jungle creeping up to the white, coral sand. The water is many reflective shades of blue; it is warm but refreshing. There is a dangerous rip-current. I observed numerous coconuts fulfilling their destiny. They roll upon the beach at high tide, get stuck in the mud, sprout a green stalk and begin to grow. Quite amazing, really.