Central America,  Panama,  Travel

Panama (1)

June 12, 2022 /

It took less than five hours to fly directly from New York to Panama. When I got off the plane, a heat wave hit my face. It was super humid and hot. I took a taxi to the city center, chatted with the driver and asked him to recommend local delicious food, but I couldn't tell. He said that big cities are too stressful and generally don't go out to eat. When he arrived at the sofa owner's house, he couldn't say anything about local specialties. Hey, I can only explore slowly by myself. The owner of the sofa is a Costa Rican. He moved to Panama City six years ago for work reasons. He is a system engineer in a large software company and has been to their Silicon Valley company on business trips before. He started working at home two or three years before the epidemic, and there are two large monitors and a laptop on his desk. He said that he left home for too long and wanted to work for another two years before moving back to Costa Rica, because he said that he had missed a lot of precious time with his family over the years.

Going out in the afternoon is scorching sun and extremely hot. When I went to buy a mobile phone card, I went into a store, and the shopkeepers were all Asian. I asked and found that the owner could speak Chinese. Later, I went into a small shop to buy water, and there was a Chinese word "opening auspiciously" and "Fu" hanging on the door. When I entered the door, I heard the boss's child say "goodbye", so I said you can speak Chinese! As a result, the two children and their mother didn't react when they looked at me. It turned out that I had heard it wrong. They all speak Spanish among them, and they can't understand Chinese at all, which is embarrassing. There are also many small shops opened by Chinese in the nearby blocks, and naturally there are also some non-authentic Chinese restaurants.

Opposite the sofa owner’s house is the University of Panama. He said that this year the university students have organized about 10 protest marches. Sometimes the police will set off smoke bombs, which he can smell at home with the windows open. When I came back and passed the gate of the university, I went in for a stroll. I passed a cafeteria. I was curious and went in to have a look. I just ordered food when I was hungry. It was nothing special, and it was incomparable with domestic cafeterias. When I came out, I saw "Confucius Institute at the University of Panama" written in large characters on a building next to the university gate. I walked over curiously and saw a large photo of the unveiling ceremony at the door. Yi (also an alumnus of BISU), and BISU is one of the institutions that supported the establishment of the Confucius Institute, he immediately felt very cordial. Go upstairs and open the door, there is only one staff member inside. After chatting with her, she mentioned that she had just graduated from a Chinese university and was sent to volunteer to teach Chinese for a year. I casually asked, "Which university?" She also graduated from the Second Foreign Language School, so excited. It was later learned that the Confucius Institute in Panama was established in 2017 with the support of SISU. She said that they cooperated with many local primary and secondary schools to promote Chinese and Chinese culture, but since the epidemic, they have all changed to online classes. Halfway through the chat, another volunteer colleague of hers also came back. She is also a school girl from the Second Foreign Language School. Because of the temporary work visa for volunteers, they are not allowed to leave the capital Panama City to visit other cities, let alone leave Panama to travel to neighboring countries. There are too many restrictions. So the two of them recommended some interesting local places to me. They will stay here for half a year, they can't go anywhere and they are almost suffocated, poor elementary school girls.

When it comes to Panama, the first thing that comes to mind is the Panama Canal, which is also known as the eighth wonder of the world. It was the French who initially invested in digging the canal, but due to engineering technical problems and the death of more than 20,000 workers due to disease, the project stalled. It took the Americans 10 years to complete the construction of the canal. As long as all kinds of ships sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through the canal, they must overcome the 26-meter height difference, which depends on three sluice locks.

In order to avoid the crowds of tourists, I went to visit the Panama Canal at 8:30 in the morning. There were not many people. I happened to catch up with two large ships slowly passing through and sailing into the Pacific Ocean. I witnessed the opening and closing of the locks and the rise of the water level. It's pretty spectacular.

Panama is a country that uses US dollars in addition to the United States and Ecuador. It is very convenient not to change the local currency, but there is also a local dollar coin. The bus and subway here can only use the transportation card, and the driver does not accept cash without the transportation card, so the driver confiscated my money and let me get on the bus. After that, we went to Cerro Ancón to climb the mountain to see the panoramic view of the city. Halfway there, it started to rain lightly, and it stopped after a while. When we climbed to the top of the mountain, the sky cleared up again. As the locals said, the rain in the rainy season is completely unpredictable, and it will fall as soon as it is said, and it will stop as soon as it is said. I took a taxi to eat at the seafood market. The driver's mother is from Zhongshan, Guangdong, and my father is half Chinese and half Panamanian. He speaks Cantonese and a little Mandarin. I learned that there are many immigrants from China in Panama, and many of them were laborers who came to repair the railway in the early days. It is said that almost 1/4 of the people in Panama have Chinese descent. Many small supermarkets and small shops I passed by today are all Chinese-owned, but most of them can only speak Spanish.

After lunch, we went to Casco Viejo, the old city of the Spanish colonial period. From a distance, we could see the skyscrapers in the city center. After that, we went to Causeway Amador, a six-kilometer long and narrow road that goes deep into the Pacific Ocean, connecting several small islands.

On the third day, I went to the ancient city of Panama Viejo early in the morning. The ancient city was built in 1519. It was the first European settlement in the Pacific Ocean and became a Spanish colony. After being looted by British pirates in 1671, it was burned down, and only some large masonry buildings of the main church remain. In the ancient city, the skyscrapers of the new city can be seen from a distance, but there are only the ruins of the ancient city in front of you.

The modern center of Panama City is unmatched by other Latin American cities. The iconic F&F Tower in Figure 1, also known as the screw building, has many skyscrapers along the coastline. In the afternoon, I went hiking in the Metropolitan Natural Parque Park, and saw many small animals at close range along the way. I saw a beautiful bird lying motionless in the grass. The closer I walked to it, the louder and more frequent its calls. When I got closer, I realized that there were four small bird eggs next to it, which turned out to be protecting it. What about the baby bird? I took a picture and left quickly.

On the fourth day, I reported a group to the San Blas Islands facing the Caribbean Sea. Starting from Panama City, I took a four-wheel drive and drove for two hours on the road. Then I went to the beach parking lot for an hour, and then took a boat for more than half an hour to the island. There are 365 islands in the San Blas archipelago, governed by native Aboriginal people. It is still relatively primitive and has not been developed by large-scale tourism. There was an Ecuadorian elder sister, a Panamanian couple and three Argentinian younger brothers traveling together in the car and on the boat. Many Latin Americans I met gave birth very early. This Ecuadorian elder sister is less than 50, and her granddaughter is 12 years old. Another Argentine brother is only 25 years old, and he is already the father of two daughters, and the eldest daughter is 8 years old.

The two small islands I went to today are really small, and they circled around in less than a minute. Lying in the shade of coconut trees, I'm really afraid of being hit by coconuts. A small fishing boat slowly approached the shore, and the fishermen held up big lobsters and crabs and yelled at the tourists on the shore for one dollar each. In fact, of course, it was not that cheap. It was just a gimmick to invite tourists to go over. The big lobster is just for taking pictures. After that, we boarded a boat and drove to a natural swimming pool, which is a very shallow circular area in the middle of the ocean. From a distance, we can see that the color of the sea water here is quite different from that of the surrounding water. Saw all kinds of small fish, corals and starfish while snorkeling.

I went to Soberanía National Park on the last morning. When I first entered the park and passed the big sign, the staff on the other side suddenly yelled at me for no reason. I am lazy (perezoso), and then I saw a sloth hanging on the other side of the big sign. It turns out that sloth and lazy are the same word in Spanish. Most sloths have only three fingers, and there are green algae that grow in the crevices of the sloth's coarse fur, which provide a good protective color. After taking the photo, I watched it quietly beside the sloth. After a while, it finally moved and started to turn its head slowly. Because it turned very slowly, I don’t know when it would stop. After turning 180 degrees in an extremely weird way to fully punch, I didn't expect its neck to rotate so freely. After hiking, I saw small tree frogs and some strange plants. I also vaguely saw a few long-tailed monkeys, but because they ran too fast, they disappeared in an instant.

It's the first time I've had close contact with a sloth, it's so cute! This is really a video, nothing more than motionless.

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