Most of the way to Colon, we turned off to the old city of Porto Bello. After calling at Porto Bello, Columbus moved down the coast to Nombre de Dios to establish the original Spanish customs facility for the new world. After various pirate depredations, shipwrecks on the coral reefs, and the realization that it was difficult to defend, in 1597, the Spanish moved the customs site to Porto Bello.
Porto Bello is easily defended, at the head of small narrow bay, with mountains all around as look-out points. Nevertheless, it was attached seven times by pirates, most noteably Francis Drake, who died there and was buried at sea in a lead coffin. Despite the large amounts of treasure retrieved from those waters, his coffin has not been found.
Porto Bello is a dead town. Somewhere along the way, a "black Christ" destined for Cartagena was unloaded there, and it never left. It has since become a major pilgrimage site. The original three forts (on either side of the bay and at the customs house) were reconstructed in the 1700s after Vauban's designs, though never completed since by that time the importance of the Spanish trade had dwindled.
All that's left today is the customs house and the remains of the forts, and the black Christ. It fascinates me that the Spanish didn't leave more behind. Compared to Lima or Rio de Janeiro or Boston or New York, all of the wealth flowed through Porto Bello, and none of it stayed - not for artisans or tradespeople.
The museum has a short video - very good history overview. The church is still accessible. The ruins of the forts are scattered about. Other than that, it is almost the caricature of a dead Caribbean town. There was puppy lying on the cement floor of the artisan's market. Zac fell in love with it and has commented on it several times - "Sooo cute...." I would have liked to spend more time there just getting in to the total slowness of the place, having a soda at the road-side stall, looking through the market, etc. But you really have to get in to the "stopped" nature of the place. There are no beaches to speak of. Pictures to follow.
Then on to the city of Colon itself, a spot apparently visited by Columbus on his last trip to the Americas, though the city was not founded until 1850. Apparently Caravan was the only tour company housing tourists in Colon, and you can kind of see why. Though there are a couple of nice hotels, they are oriented towards the Free Trade Zone business people, casinos, and cruise ships. Even by my relatively relaxed standards, I'm not sure I'd walk around after dark there. There are Tourist Police everywhere.
We ate at a Radisson - a perfectly nice buffet, but I was surprised by the police presence in the lobby. Turns out the head of the Tourist Police was meeting with the owner of the hotel about the security situation.
If you followed the jump to the Wikipedia "Colon" article you have a sense of the situation there. In Colon itself, the public housing apartment blocks are just about as grim as any I've ever seen. But outside Colon, on the way to Porto Bello, we passed through two or three small towns with very neat subdivisions of working-class housing, overall giving the impression of a tidy thriving community. That's sort of the "Costa Rica" part of Panama. Which makes the situation in Colon all the more puzzling.
Caravan seems very concerned to support the local arts scene, and commissioned a Colombian designer to do contemporary fashions based on Kuna Molas. It turns out the hospitality director at the Radisson is the mother of the ex-Miss Panama, who in turn runs a fashion school. So this was an opportunity for the students to practice modelling for an audience - us. It was a little surreal, but I got one or two pictures (it was against the light).
They also did some local dancing featuring last year's winning Carnival costumes. Overall, it was pretty cute.
We went to the Gatun locks, where there does not appear to be a visitor center, which is a pity. I did get some shots of the new construction for the new locks, and we saw a tree sloth on our little walk.
Then finally on to Radisson in the rain forest. Not quite as exotic as it sounds, but very nice and quite new - built around an existing golf-course. I went out for a run around the golf course. The front-desk attendent was very nice, but didn't know about how far it was. She said it usually takes out 45 minutes. I wanted to kid her that she must be a fitness coach, because it took me exactly 45 minutes, with some walking thrown in because it's VERY hilly and VERY VERY humid. I also did see the evening passenger train from Colon to Panama City go by - locomotive at each end and 6 passenger cars.
Zac and my dad and I swam in the eternity pool that the hotel has - I'd never been in one. Kinda cool. Here's the view from our room, including a little peek at the Centennial Bridge:
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