Panama
Well my experience of Panama is strictly limited to 24 hours in Panama City thanks to a Braniff Airways plane having a breakdown whilst I was travelling from Costa Rica to Ecuador. They kept us sitting in the plane without any airconditioning for 4 hours and then decided that they needed to bring in a replacement aircraft and would dump us in a local hotel overnight with just our hand baggage. Except that when I went into the locker for my hand baggage I found that another passenger had stolen a music cassette player that I had bought in duty free. I reported this to the stewards and although they were perfectly able to search the hand baggage when people next boarded they frankly weren`t interested. So I was delighted to later hear that Braniff Airlines had collapsed and gone into administration. Karma`s such a bitch. The hotel we were put in was the Continental which proudly declared that it owned the only Wurlitzer organ in the country and amazingly 40 years on it`s still there as you will see from my pictures. The hotel was also a mini-casino back then and remains so. On the way into town I was surprised to spot a travelling circus with a big top operating from a green open area in the very centre. Not sure where they travelled from as it`s impossible to go south to Colombia because of a dense impenetrable jungle area known as the Darien gap and in any event about 5 years ago Panama adopted the internation ban on the use of animals in circuses so if it still exists it will be very different from what I glimpsed. . In this particular area a colony of Scots set themselves up around 1700 but they reckoned without the difficulties and apparently their debts caused such problems back home that it lead to the union of Engand and Scotland and the first union flag in 1707. The other UK connection was Henry Morgan the pirate who was licenced by the English parliament and who put the original city of Panama to the sword for profit.. There was rich pckings there as the Spanish transported all the silver that they mined in Peru cross country through Panama en route back to Spain. The alternatives - round Cape Horn or eastwards were much too long, dangerous and expensive.
Until the early 1900s Panama was part of Colombia even though it was impossible to get through the Darien gap but then vested interests in the USA /UK got involved and the plans to build a canal through Nicaragua (I`ve seen sketches of the plan/design/route displayed in a Nicaraguan hotel) were abandoned in favour of a US built canal through the newly independant Panama. Many lives were lost to yellow fever, malaria and other tropical diseases - indeed an earlier attempt at building a canal by De Lessops (of Suez fame) failed completely due to the dificulties and the French company went bankrupt. However, as we now know the USA construction , which took 11 years was finally completed and is of course a major source of income for the country. The Panamanian currency is strongly linked to the US dollar to the extent that they actually use US banknotes although they do issue their own coins. As usual a few came home in my pocket and went into the coin drawer (and eventually went onto my large collage of foreign coins mounted on a board. There was a very short period where they did issue their own banknotes but they were withdrawn and now only exist in collections. In recent years Panama has expanded it`s economy away from it `just` being a canal and into finance (plenty of shipping is registered here because of the low tax regime) and also there are many `offshore` company registrations where corporations want to hide who actually owns/controls them or to hide money laudering operations. Also Panama has diversified into tourism very successfully. Like their next door neighbours, Costa Rica, they have significant wildlife and rainforest and a good range of species worth deeing. They have also started to copy CR by setting aside protected areas and national parks so that development is strictly controlled, like, for example, Parque Nacional Marino Isla Bastimentos which was created in the 1980s and consists of an archipelago of about 130 islands, mangroves and wetlands. This has proved a haven for many species including around 30 different reptiles/amphibians
On stepping outside the hotel the first thing that struck me were the buzzing, vibrant street markets and the colourful enamel painted public buses - check out my picture gallery below. Nowadays, with the growth in their tourist industry they also have London-style red double decker tour buses travelling around just like many other places I`ve been like Dubai for example. Even right in the centre of Panama City I was greeted when I woke up by the chirruping of cicadas - although there are now plenty of high-rise buildings wildlife is never far away - nor is heat and humidity. And Panama`s history dates back way, way before the conquest. with artfacts like arrowheads dating back to pre-history. Even the earliest known settlers hereabouts, in the Monagrillo have lepottery fragments dating back 4500 years and in the much more recent pre-conquest era the locals had evolved impressive coloured pottery skills and impressive death ceremonies and burials dating back 1500 years. In more recent years the local indian tribes have been able to maintain their own traditions and customs without major interference and for example the Cuna/Guna have develped a style of embroidered fabric panels used for clothing which are instantly recognisable and unique. These sell well to the tourist industry as souvenirs. I also spotted the patterns being reproduced a little further up the coast in an El Salvador towel producer`s designs and had brought some home before I even went to Panama. You will see examples amongst the phto gallery below.
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Browse through the picture galleries below relating to this page and you will get a much better idea than just reading my words! Each page has it`s own set of relevant images - where possible taken by us.