Editor’s note: I spent about a week in Panama City back in 2019, and I think I enjoyed the city and found more going on than Sam Spector seems to. But that’s one of the best parts of travel! Two people can have totally different – but still wonderful – experiences in the same place! You can read my guide to the city here, and if you enjoy this piece by Sam, make sure to click here to visit his index page.
There are only a couple places in the world where you can go to ta major metropolitan capital and find yourself at the same time in the jungle. One of those cities in Panama City, Panama. When I flew into Panama City and got my ride into the city itself, I was surprised to see that the dense jungle followed me all the way into the city with exotic birds flying in and out of it. This natural landscape is just one way that mainland North America’s southernmost capital is unique as the city itself is close to straddling two continents with bridges connecting North and South America and various islands.
Panama City itself does not have a whole lot to see, but is a great jumping off point for fantastic day trips. Despite being a Latin American capital, Panama City is pricier than most other cities, yet some neighborhoods are incredibly poor and also dangerous. The place that you want to stay as a tourist is most likely Casco Viejo, the historic colonial part of town. In the Casco Viejo are boutique hotels, colonial-style government buildings, cathedrals, bars, and restaurants. Much of the area is under renovations, so expect see lots of scaffolding. However, while I found Panama City a little rough around the edges, this neighborhood was a gem. There were rooftop restaurants overlooking Panama City’s incredible skyline and also the Pedro Mandinga Rum Bar, one of the best rum bars I have been to, serving their own Panamanian rum (I even had a celebrity sighting there of reggae singer Shaggy!). In Casco Viejo is also a handicraft market on the Paseo de Las Bovedas, where you can have panoramic views of the skyline.
While Panama City’s skyline rivals those of Dubai, Doha and Singapore, there is a dark side, literally, to it. During the day, you will see stunning skyscrapers of luxury buildings and apartments, but once it gets dark at night, those disappear and go dark as well. The reason, as was prominent in the worldwide scandal of the 2016 Panama Papers, is that despite the fancy exterior, the insides of many of these buildings are completely gutted and were built by anonymous shell corporations as a form of money laundering for drug dealers and other criminals. As a result, these buildings are actually abandoned, yet their existence pushes up prices in Panama City and also displaces much of the poorer population. Seeing these buildings and watching them disappear in the dark is a fascinating look at crime taking place in broad daylight.
The other main historic area of Panama City is Panama Viejo, the oldest part of town. It was here, at this UNESCO World Heritage Site, that Panama City was established by the Spanish in 1519. Over the next 150 years, the town would face earthquakes and fires, yet grow to a population of 10,000 inhabitants by 1671. It was then that the pirate Henry Morgan attacked the city, killing thousands and destroying the neighborhood, forcing the survivors to move up to Casco Viejo and reestablish the city there. There is not much to see there today, however, but there is a small museum and also the remnants of the original cathedral tower that you can climb.
Not far outside the capital is the Panama Canal Zone, a strategic canal connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean that was built by the United States under Theodore Rooosevelt’s leadership from 1902-1904. The United States controversially held this zone, where Jim Crow laws were in effect and locals faced displacement, until 1979. The building of the canal led to the establishment of islands on what had previously been mainland and brought the ocean inward. It also caused the indigenous people who remained in the Canal Zone to be non-citizen US Nationals. One such group in the Canal Zone is the members of the Embera Tribe, an indigenous group that has about 200,000 members in Colombia and 50,000 in Panama. The Embera are the only remaining speakers of the Choco language and traditionally live in thatch homes on riverbanks. A popular day trip that you can do from Panama City is going through the Panama Canal Zone, hiking in the jungle and swimming at waterfalls, before arriving at an Embera village. The Embera were very welcoming and showed us their homes and schools, as well as performed traditional dances for us. I did feel a little uncomfortable like a “human zoo” experience seeing how the teenagers were shy and did not want to dance but were prodded to do so by their parents’ generation as it provided a source of income for the village. I also felt badly because, while the Embera wore beautiful garments, it was explained to us that the women were only wearing tops because we were present to accommodate American-tourists’ discomfort with toplessness. The Embera also sold numerous handicrafts they had made, some of which, like a monkey mask, we bought as souvenirs. Despite the discomfort I felt, this experience was highly worthwhile as it gave an insight into the beauty and proud traditions of an indigenous group that continues to live in a jungle, largely as they have for centuries.
Another day trip of course was to the Panama Canal itself and the Miraflores Locks. The Miraflores Locks are one of three locks in the canal system. These locks have a visitor center with an iMax movie about the history of the locks, as well as an observation deck to watch the ships go through. It is an awe-inspiring image to watch massive commercial shipping vessels, naval ships, and cruise ships from around the world wait patiently for their turn as the water rises and drops, guiding them from one ocean to the next and making their journey more efficient and safer than having to travel all the way around South America.
Through the damming of the Chagres River, the Panama Canal is made up of a 51 mile freshwater artificial lake called Lake Gatun. When going to the Panama Canal, couple it with a boat tour of Lake Gatun, where you will see the many large ships up close and personal and the beauty of the jungle around the banks of Lake Gatun, knowing all of this used to be one large jungle. A popular spot for people of all ages on the tour is Monkey Island, a small island teeming with white-faced capuchins, tamarins, and howler monkeys. While you do not go onto the island itself, your boat can get close enough that you can toss some fruit to the monkeys and a couple of them will likely even jump into your boat hoping for more snacks.
I only spent a few days in Panama and I am sure that there is so much more to do that I have not uncovered. Was it my favorite Latin American destination? Not so much. However, am I glad that I went? Absolutely. While I did not find much to fill an entire vacation, the Panama Canal is one of those places that you hear about your entire life and to get to see it up close, speed across Lake Gatun, dance with the Embera, and then end my day with a fantastic rum drink at the Mandinga Bar is about as good of a day as you can get as a traveler.
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