The Panama Canal

My father is a canal aficionado. When you grow up in Michigan this is not as weird as it may seem. Between five Great Lakes, 11,000 inland lakes (that are larger than 5 acres) and all those bitty lakes in between, Michigan is a place that knows its water. 

For reasons beyond my understanding, my parents liked to take visitors to the see the US's northernmost set of locks in Sault St. Marie, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. For scale, the city, population 14,000, is the second largest in the UP. A tourist trip this far north involves a pasty and a visit to the locks and ensuing museum before decamping. To a campsite. 

I'm all about the engineering wonder that is a lock system. It's all very academically cool. But it's hardly exciting to watch a cargo freighter pass through the four-lock system at roughly the speed of fast moving molasses, especially when you're 14. 

This needless digression is merely a long-winded way of expressing how excited I was to see the Panama Canal. But not seeing it wasn't an option. I couldn't handle the shame of saying I'd been to Panama but hadn't seen the canal. 

And so. 

On our penultimate day in the city, we got brave, gave two fingers to the $50 taxi that would take us to the locks and hopped on public transport. If I haven't said it before, let me dispel rumours about my high school level of Spanish. It's shit. And so, after alighting at Albrook Station and into the vast bus station, I asked pointed questions in this bad Spanish and was understood. Or pitied. Hard to know. For the very fair price of $2 you ride with the people straight to Miraflores Lock Visitor Centre. Those people are nice and will let you know if you try to get off the bus too early like we did. It felt like a major victory. 

Once you've arrived, you're welcomed into a Visitor's Centre that's just a little bit spectacular. It's $15 for entry ($3 for Panamanian residents) but a world of history awaits. Most dramatically, there are two viewing platforms, one higher up than another. 

A woman on a speakerphone gives the play-by-play in two languages. I likened her to Hispanic or Italian football commentators--'the boat moves in, the water lowers, the boat lowers, there it goes, getting closer, closer, GOOOOOOOOOOOAL!' I loved her. I hope she gets paid a lot. 

And watching the boats enter the canal is strangely mesmerising. We took different vantage points for the best part of half an hour, marvelling at this feat of modern technology. So yes, it's happened. I've turned into my father. 

Over 14,000 boats pass through the Panama Canal each year. The artificial waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific spans 82km and takes a ship over 11-hour to navigate. Paperwork to cross this body of water is immense, with fees to match. 

We eventually peeled ourselves away and made inside for the history portion of our tour. Here, things got eminently more interesting. We were able to piece together why Panama uses the American Dollar as its main currency, why American infrastructure abounds, how colonialism reached this slender nation. And it's pretty grim. 

Work on the canal began in 1881 and was overseen by the French. High cost and mortality rate cut the project short and the USA decided to take up the project in 1904. Ten years later, the canal opened. The opening was a revelation for shipping, drastically cutting down the time and danger of journeys around Cape Horn. The latter is the good news.

In much grimmer news, according to the Panama Canal Authority, officially, 5,609 people died due to accidents and diseases, including yellow fever and malaria, during the American years of construction. The French numbers are 5 times higher. The ethnic breakdown of workers who died is no surprise either; of the official deaths, 5,609 were of West Indian descent. Compare this to the 530 white Americans and you start to see the disparity of the building project. 

 

The US desire for control of the building project, subsequent profits and 'American stability' of the region resulted in a lot of strife. Panama and Colombia, once one country, declared a split in 1903. Backed by American money and a treaty, the Republic of Panama was formed. This came with a $10 million golden handshake and annual annuities. And despite widespread condemnation and years of unrest, the Panama Canal only passed to Panamanian hands in 1999. 

So as my 14-year-old stood contemplating the locks in Sault St Marie, Panama was not yet autonomous. 

The museum, in the form of exhibits and a very engaging film, covered all of this and more. With our little brains filled to the brim with a clearer understanding of the geopolitical madness and the awareness that the history you learn in school doesn't even scratch the surface, we called it a day. 

This was a tourist site definitely worth a visit. Thanks, dad, for sowing the seeds of canal appreciation.

Grateful thanks to the following sources:

Panama Declares Independence From Colombia: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/panama-declares-independence

The Panama Canal: Riots, Treaties and a Little Military Madness: https://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/panama-canal

Panama Canal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal 

Panama Canal Authority FAQ: https://www.pancanal.com/eng/general/canal-faqs/index.html#:~:text=How%20many%20people%20died%20during,of%20350%20white%20Americans%20died.

Comuna 13, Medellin

We signed up for a tour led by a local through one of the city's best-known barrios. Lying south of the city centre, Comuna 13 is home to 160,000 locals who have turned the once crime-rife drug-controlled neighbourhood into a street art, new music, tourist destination. In the days of FARC and Escobar, organised criminals had a stranglehold of who/what entered and exited the narrow network of stairs and carless streets in the neighbourhood. With a close, careful eye they funnelled drugs and weapons through the neighbourhood, making many innocent civilians the target of ongoing violence. 

In 2002, president Uribe launched Operation Orion, a raid on the community. Using some pretty heavy-handed tactics including 3000 Colombian troops and military helicopters, they began to flush out criminal activity. 18 people died, 34 were wounded and over 250 arrested. But the event also meant relief for people living under constant bombardment. 

The government followed through to develop the area further, investing money to improve housing and infrastructure. A series of outdoor escalators take visitors and locals up, up, up the hill where local artists have memorialised the history of the neighbourhood. 

The addition of tourists here has brought business and a modicum of prosperity to the area. Our tour guide told us the story of many of the Comuna's main murals which often hid the pockmarked bullet holes of the past. 

The afternoon tour was quite an hopeful one, giving us a glimpse of modern Colombia. One accepting its past and moving forward. One with people who genuinely have pride for their city and community. 

Medellin

After two days of navigating jet lag in Panama city, we hopped a cheap local flight to Medellin, Colombia's second city. Geographically, the city lies 1500 metres above sea level; the drive from the airport offers breathtaking views of the the valley below, housing Medellin's 16 comunas. 

An intricate, affordable network of cable cars, dubbed the Metrocable, connect the hillier parts of the city to one another. Between this, the metro and taxis, the city is easy to navigate and we felt quite safe in most parts of town. Given the homicide rate is now lower than Detroit, that's saying something. 

Medellin's reputation precedes itself. In the 80s and early 90s it became the centre of Pablo Escobar's drug trade, taking the unenviable record as the world's most dangerous city. The scars of his legacy remain today but locals are keen to move on and through progressive mayors and local leadership, the city has cleaned its act up. Homicides have decreased by 95%, poverty by 66% and the only touting of Escobar is through tours of his former haunts and residences. Not really our thing. 

We spent the bulk of our three days in Medellin taking various tours before wandering the streets of El Poblado, the city's tourist hub. We ate in lots of cheap, trendy places, wandered the shops and dodged the on-again, off-again rain. Ceviche was the order of the day across Colombia and we tried it in its various iterations.

My pictures are few and far between from this part of town. It appears I saved phone space for our tour of Comuna 13. 

Panama City

People make three general associations when you tell them that you're going on a trip to Panama: ooh tax havens!  And/Or: Will you buy me a hat? And/or: The Panama Canal--greatest architectural wonder of the world! Although all of these realities are true (and possible) on a trip to the u-bend shaped nation, for us the rationale was far more prosaic.

I've been wanting to touch down on the South and Central American landmasses for some time and prices to Panama City happened to be cheap. Equally, local hopper flights out of Panama City were also cheap. And thus, a plan was born.

Our actual trip to Panama, really only involved a short stay in the country with Central America's first metro system (cheap and lovely!). It involved a two-night stay on the way there and a two-night stay on the way back. If you're not into shopping malls, big roads or endless humidity punctuated by brief-yet-powerful thunderstorms, this is probably all the time you'll need in the capital.

The tropes of neo-imperialism are strong in Panama. The local currency, the Balboa, is tied to the US dollar; so much so that we paid for everything in USD. This made Panama surprisingly expensive. The cars are largely American-made and American-sized, as are the roads, despite Panama's interpretation of driving laws. Links to the USA date back to 1903 when the country 'developed diplomatic relations...following its declaration of independence from Colombia.' Don't just take my word for it, click on the link to check out the state department's take on conquest. Enter the Panama Canal in 1914 and America had lots of reasons to be interested in this little nation.

But I digress.

On our first afternoon, post-London arrival, we set off on foot to find sustenance and signs of life. We got lost in the vast backroads between one shopping mall and another which is when the skies decided to open up. In under 10 seconds were were drenched from head to toe. The upside of this is that we then found an excellent local diner to sample some of the local goodness.

My favourite: sancocho, the soupy national dish legendarily rumoured to cure everything from loneliness to a hangover to diabetes. It is most customarily eaten at breakfast but that doesn't stop it from being served at all times of day and night. The Panama City version involves root vegetables, chicken, broth and culantro, a local herb. It sounds a lot like chicken soup but is uniquely Panamanian. Being the bad vegetarian that I am, I drank the chicken broth but did not partake in the chicken itself. All signs point to delicious.

Jet lag and continual rain were good signs that we should end the day.

Day two took us to the quaintly renovated old town, named the Casco Viejo. I say quaint because the town's architecture is undergoing quite a bit of renovation in order to keep its colonial charm.

This part of the city didn't feel particularly lived in. It's mostly a tourist destination where you can buy yourself a hat and see the expanse of the city before you.

But Paul and I did stumble upon a local beach baseball game. And that felt pretty magical. From faraway the players look like dots on the beach. Up close, there was a whole community out cheering for their team. Coolers filled with beer and soft drinks were being passed around and even the local police came to check things out.

We later found some kind of local dance recital in one of the minor town squares. Our favourite dance moved was when the boy fanned the space behind the girl's bum as if she'd done a massive fart. Terribly childish, yes.

Our walk back to our accommodation took us past the more lived in parts of the city. Barbers under the bridge made a particularly swift trade and some cool graffiti popped up from time to time.

We saved the juicy stuff, a trip to the Panama Canal, a bumpy drive, followed by a bumpy boat ride to the stunning San Blas islands, for the end of our trip. More on that to come!