Independence Day, Panama style.
Streets stuffed with marching bands, majorettes in gleaming white, row upon spotless row of naval ratings, brass and shoes perfectly polished to sparkle in the fierce morning sun. Air laden with humidity causes the ubiquitous palms to bow respectfully.
In the midst of all this a lone figure plods, i-pod strapped to his ears, G&T/ Mojito sweat flooding his vest and staining his shorts. His face is a violent red, his tread weary, impossibly heavy, a lumbering, stumbling wreck of a man. This man is an Englishman. He is trying to excise the spirit-deamons from his gin-soaked, sleep-deprived, travel-tortured soul.
Following eighteen hours (including a two hour break in Newark, New Jersey, where, opposite boarding gate 80, I discovered a taverna selling beautifully chilled pints of treacle-thick Guinness) of doleful travel in the arms of Continental Airlines we hit the El Panama Hotel Salsa Bar like the English front row. Eighteen hours is enough time to have any brand of airplane strapped to one's backside, but the Continental brand takes the biscuit for frugal amenities and fearsome staff. Women of a certain age and disposition prowled the aisles, iron-on make-up inches thick. Those irons can't be hot enough; the mindboggling labyrinth of ancient wrinkles remain under the big hair, around the squinted, beady eyes and the disapproving pucker of the naturally turned-down mouths. The makers of Doctor Who would do well to sign them up as the next big thing.
Weary but well-met, we band of travelling show-folk conspired to see off the night and embrace the dawn, ending as one should with a skinny-dip in the pool followed by an obscenely early breakfast. Local eyebrows were raised yet our spirit would not be denied as we chomped through eggs and toast, a variety of juices and the sweetest water melon known to man.
24 hours later the Devil returned to claim his dues. The hammering in my head had stopped some time in the night, but the beer-sweat had defied the iciest aircon to leave my bedsheets damp and chilled. I squinted at the clock radio; 7:15. Ugh. Only one thing for it - a full day of schlepping freight around the humid halls of hell ahead - I needed a restoratorive run.
Stopping at the concierge to pick up a local map I set off for the coast, seeking the road that runs alongside the Pacific out of the new city and into the old. I chugged down the San Fransiscan undulations towards the ocean, noting with horror the gathering bandsmen and assorted paraders loitering in the shade. All day yesterday we'd been seranaded by the buglers and drummers of a seemingly endless stream of national servicemen and women, the constant thrumming a horrific kind of open-air 'musac'. Surely it can't carry on today? My bleary eyes bore evidence to the contrary as I scurried through the backstreets of the Aquilinode la Guardia and finally, mercifully, onto the wide-open, parade-free pavements of the Avenida de Balboa.
Panama City sits on the underside of the state of Panama, lodged firmly in the twisted digestive tract that is Central America. I was running west-north-west, the gleaming spires of the new business district behind me, the shanty town shacks and colonial turrets of Old Panama - El Casco Antiguo - dead ahead. To my left sat the Pacific, home to an impressive queue of shipping traffic waiting to access the Atlantic via the city's eponynous waterway - the greatest short cut in history - and the Caribbean. To the right, above and behind the hotel district, the dense rainforests of Parque Metropolitano, home to 128 species of exotic birds and 32 mammals. I'll be headed there tomorrow, when the forecast suggests an apocalyptic deluge. For this dear reader is the rainy season, and whern it rains down here it positively pours.
I performed a sort of geriatric sling shot around the decrepid backstreets of the old city. Mangy curs - or Cujos as I prefer to call them - roamed the filthy alleyways, sniffing out their next meal. I like dogs, as is well documented in these hallowed halls, but I studiously avoided eye contact with these ferral man-eaters. Old men sat on plastic crates outside crumbling shacks, sucking on ancient pipes through shrivelled mouths that between the lot of them might have house one complete set of teeth. It occured to me that this was probably not the best place for a slightly chubby, hung-over Gringo to be floundering along with a relatively expensive piece of audio kit slung off his ears.
Once it became obvious that nothing short of free rum rations was going to stir the natives I relaxed enough to enjoy my surroundings. Beyond the wreckage of the roadside shacks architecture from another era loomed, parapets and archways decked in crumbly shades of sun-baked ochre. This is the Panama I came to see and I drank deeply from the rich well of history. Sadly that was all I had to drink, and with the cascade from my sieve-like forehead slowing to a trickle I reluctantly turned for home and badly-needed hydration.
On the way back along Ave. Balboa (I ran an out-and-back circuit, always advisable in a new city) I circumnavigated (several times) the statue of legendary conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa. The last mile, up a series of increasingly steep hills, was a struggle best kept between me, myself and I. Suffice to say I was mightily relieved to hit the 'stop' button on my Garmin with the screen showing 5.49 miles in a tad shy of 54 minutes.
On reaching the safety of my fridge-like room I glugged down a half-litre of mineral water. In a comical homage to those cartoons of our youth the sweat fountain resumed from every pore. Six hours later I'm sweating still, but the pool beckons, alongside a large gin & tonic and a sunlounger. Mind you, the thunderheads are gathering. It could be time for the i-pod and some Riders On The Storm.
Yours, Panama Jack
Thanks for approching us to a so faraway place. I have never imagine this country as it seems to be. Lovely report Sw
Posted by: Meat Loaf | Monday, 05 November 2007 at 11:39 AM