Flowers on balcony
Still humid and warm, still noisy and busy, and it’s very strange that it starts to seem familiar, at least around the hotel. We took the sightseeing bus out to the Canal Visitor’s Center and enjoyed both seeing more on the history of the canal and it’s construction, and viewing the main locks from land. There were no ships going through until late afternoon, but it was fun to see it all from the perspective of land.
Locks and control house
Looking north, third lock in the distance
Looking south, towards Pacific
Nuns at locks, cooling down with gatorade
The bus ride itself gave a broad view of Panama City as we made our way back to the city. We passed through the old area where the Americans lived when the canal was under US control, including a movie theater and American style houses. Some buildings are in decent shape, but others are abandoned and decrepit, but are also beginning to be restored. Interesting to think of what it was like to live in a little piece of the US so many decades ago and so far from home. Nearing downtown again, we passed through areas with desperate-looking apartment buildings where life looked pretty rough, but these also butted up against nice looking modern high rise apartments. Even walking through the neighborhood around our very nice hotel in the financial district we could see many buildings and streets that were in sore need of maintenance, but also many successful businesses and modern structures under construction.
The local private buses – not a city bus as they look more standard, and not our bus which was a double decker tour bus
Spotted this ship exiting canal – These are specifically built to just fit in the new larger locks and can carry 13,000 containers
Our bus got a little close to a tree on the route and caught a few branches!
The poorer parts of town
Veranda
Mess of wires – infrastructure is still catching up
Since it was Mother’s Day, Mike was determined to find a restaurant to make Tami happy. The main requirement was that it involved meat, preferably grilled. So now Tami will rhapsodize about tonight’s dinner at La Pampa. We started with an Argentinian appetizer plate that included great chunks of grilled sausage, garlic mushrooms, the best tostones we’ve ever had, and mussels cooked with garlic.
Mike followed that with a jalapeño grilled steak for his main, and Tami had the most wonderfully flavorful skirt steak grilled to perfection. Both were served with the usual vegetable combo that we’ve seen everywhere here, which is a great blend of grilled onions, peppers, eggplant, and carrots. It sounds somewhat pedestrian but it is quite delicious. It is amazing the difference in flavor of the beef we have had in both Puerto Rico and Panama. Wish we could get meat like that at home.
Collapsing back in the room, Mike was once again able to find some more soccer for Tami to watch, a great benefit of visiting a Central American country!