A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!

Sunday morning we awoke at the Fundillo crack of dawn to catch a ride to the airport and head to Panama.  The very nice taxi driver in Panama City stopped being so nice when he couldn't find our 'hotel' in the 'charming' neighborhood of Casco Viejo, then became downright surly when we discovered our 'hotel' was a hovel of crap and had him take us to a few other hovels in the area before bailing on the neighborhood and heading to the other side of town.  In the end we did luck out with a great place which makes up for what it lacks in comfortable beds with awesome showers and a decent kitchen and common area.  Though our first room was bright yellow and gave me chilling reminders of school (my classroom at Wakefield is in the yellow hallway and is painted obnoxiously bright).  First thing we did after unloading our stuff (and being told how boring Panama City is by the Israelis leaving the hostel as we checked in) was head back to Casco Viejo to do a bit of a walking tour.  The neighborhood used to be the classy part of town (and the first one rebuilt after the original settlement was destroyed a few centuries ago) it was allowed to rot for a while and is now in the slow process of being rebuilt.  You can find gorgeously renovated French colonial building next to rotting shells of centuries old brothels (at least that's what I imagine them to be.)  We also hit up an enormous mall (bigger than the court and plaza combined) to replace some of the stuff missing since last week when our little Nica friend stole our bag.  Adina was quite happy to have real shoes again.  

Highlight of the day, however, was without a doubt the delicious al ha'eish place we went to for dinner in the kosher neighborhood right in the center of the city.  In one shopping center we found the Israeli grill, a bakery, two dairy/pseudo Italian restaurants, and a Japanese fish place (which was dinner on Monday night, and was excellent), and all of this is just a couple of blocks from an enormous all kosher super market that puts 7 mile to shame.  It felt good to be full for a change, but we decided that since there was so much kosher food around we couldn't apply vacation rules anymore, so we decided not to have Cinnabon at the mall.  

On Monday we got a bit of a lazy start (Adina had to resort to some pretty forceful poking to get me out of bed) and went biking along the Amador causeway at the edge of town with great views of the city on one side and the entrance to the canal on the other.  In the afternoon we hit up the canal, which is just a little cooler than we'd thought it would be (which was already pretty cool).  The best place to watch ships pass through is at the Miraflores Locks where they built a little museum and visitor's center.  We got there at the perfect time to watch a ship full of cars (we assume.  It was a Hyundai ship) be lowered in the locks from the lake to sea level.  It amazes me that 120 years ago some one said, "let's just lift the ships up on one end, flood the entire region to make the biggest man made lake on the planet, cut through millions of tons of rock and mud (while periodically watching the trench be filled with jungle mudslides), and lower them again at the other end" and wasn't laughed out of the room.  While the canal is certainly a momentous feat of human ingenuity and perseverance and has made world trade far more efficient, it seems a little strange to me that it's pretty much universally accepted that it was worth the tens of thousands of lives that it costs to construct.  I'd like to think that sentiment would still be widely held even if they were mostly white people's lives, but I'm really not so sure.  I also didn't realize that the U.S. still controlled the canal right up until the turn of the century.  Seriously, what business did we have doing that?

This morning we headed out to Soberania National Park in the canal zone for some early birdwatching.  It turns out we don't have the patience for birdwatching.  But we did manage to see some fantastic birds.  Here is a short sample:  Rainbow chested super-parrots, bumble-bee doves, flitterfly hummingbirds, and long beaked helicopter pelicans, so named because it sounds like a helicopter taking off when they fly overhead.  Luckily, we were without a guide so we were free to make up whatever names we wanted, just like the monkey squirrel we saw on San Ramon.  Speaking of San Ramon, our giant blue butterfly friend must have sent his cousins to watch over us, because they kept us company the whole time.  We also saw some unnamed mammals, which we were possibly anteaters or maybe tamirs.  There is a slim chance that they were ROUS's, but we didn't come across any fire swamp, so I'm not too sure.  Of course, there were also monkeys in the trees to watch for a bit, until one got cranky and started throwing branches at us.  We figured that was our cue to keep on walking. 

We're now starting to see that those Israelis had a point - there is a shortage of things to do in this town.  We would like to go the Metropolitan National Park in the morning (a rainforest right in the city!) to see some toucans, and perhaps we will go to Panama Viejo (the long abandoned original settlement) this afternoon.  Other than eat more kosher food and perhaps throw some money away at a casino, there really isn't much left.  Which I suppose is a good thing, because we head home tomorrow night.  Luckily that gives me plenty of time to rest in Thursday before the midnight premiere of Harry Potter.  Not so much luck for Adina, who has to go to work.