From Arizona to Panama Canal

Panama
Our initial plan was to drive to Panama City from Costa Rica, but we decided to fly there and leave the Beast in Costa Rica with Nick’s college roommate, Eric Jackson. This meant that Nick did not have to retrace our steps and drive the car back by himself in order to give Eric the car. Consequently, we cut out a full day’s drive, but missed seeing the western  part of Panama. However, that did not mean that we cut out driving entirely. Instead we rented a car in the airport and on Friday, (our second to last day in Panama) we drove all the way south (actually mostly east to the Darian gap, the end of the Pan American Highway.
Major events and impressions on our stay: The Canal is very impressive. We watched two ships enter the locks coming from the Caribbean side and drop a total of 55 feet after going through two of the six locks and head for the Pacific Ocean. What is so impressive is that both ships had about two inches of clearance between the sides of the ship and the side of the lock. One of the ships was shaped like a V, so initially it had lots of clearance, but after it “sank” 27 feet, there was almost no clearance. (As an aside, the pricing of how much the Canal can charge would make an interesting marketing question, since a ship saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of fuel, time, effort, etc. by going through the canal versus going around the tip of South America. Since there is really no competition, the logical answer would be that the Canal should charge close to the savings. In fact they do charge a lot, we heard that they charge about $250,000 or more per ship, but nowhere close the economic value to the ship owners.)
The second impression is the city itself. It is composed of two parts, the old town and the new section of high rise apartments and office buildings. This latter part is an architect’s delight. The structures are amazing. My favorable was a “green weeny” where it looked like rectangle boxes stacked on top of each other, each at a slightly different angle so that the building resembled a cork screw. We read that the city is about 1.5 million people, yet the traffic was light. Also when we drove in the city at night, many of the buildings had very few lights so perhaps many of the buildings are almost empty. (As an aside, one of the buildings is (was) called Trump Ocean Club. When we climbed a large hill just outside of town on our hike through the rain forest, there was a sign listing many of the buildings. Trump’s name was not only crossed off, it was punched out. This is the only graffiti we saw in the City.) The old town reminds me of New Orleans. The streets are narrow, with lots of church squares and eating places, About ¼ of the buildings are still just shells, but the rest have been renovated. Lots of overhanging balconies, wooden doors and flowers. Walking the streets was a real pleasure.
Our third major excursion was to the Darian Gap. The Pan American highway stops about 13 miles from the border of Columbia. It is not clear to us why it stops, since the terrain is not mountainous. Yes, there are some rivers, but nothing that cannot be crossed. Our theory is that Panama doesn’t want to have a border crossing. As possible evidence we were stopped at least five times going down to the last town on the road by police, who checked passports and driver’s licenses. This last town is really “rough”. We visited on Good Friday, and everyone was just lounging around. When we went into a grocery store to buy some food, the clerk, who was wearing a U of Toronto shirt told us in perfect English to be very careful. (She was of Chinese decent. We suspect her family owned the store. She told us she graduated from Toronto. We have no idea on why she decided to return, since she was right, the town was “rough”.
I have included photos of all three venues. I also included a few from our hike in the rain forest, which believe it or not is within the city limits of Panama City. All in all this is a country (and city) that people should visit.