Panama day 2 - Jordan Sr. Sees The Canal

Today was pretty simple: we went to Panama Viejo, and then to the Miraflores locks on the canal.

Panama Viejo was the location of the city from 1516 when it was founded until 1675 or so when the Spanish governor, or Captain James Morgan, depending on which story you believe, ordered it burned. In the case of the governor, the motive was to keep it out of the hands of Morgan; in Morgan's case there is no obvious motive.

The site was deserted for a couple of hundred years, and has only been researched and restored recently. Really, it's a lovely park with a bunch of walls and the outlines of the original cathedral. Most noteworthy is the tower formerly attached to the cathedral and also used (ineffectively, it seems) as a lookout tower.

Dad rather ill-advisedly decided to climb to the top of the tower after telling Zac and me that he wouldn't. But he seems to have survived.




There's a small museum associated with Panama Viejo - worth perhaps a bit more time than we gave it, but only because I'm the kind of person who reads all the exhibits. It did have a small model of Panama Viejo, which I'm hoping Zac got a good picture of.

Lunch was on the third floor of the Miraflores Locks museum, with ships passing literally right off the balacony. It was hard to eat with all the excitement going on. I got a limited number of pictures before the battery on the camera died (both batteries). And some video of ships moving very slowing into the locks.


The locks really are a place some of us could stand around all day watching the ships go by. We have many unanswered questions about the locks, like why are there two chambers on the Miraflores locks? Wouldn't one do? And why are there two doors at each end of each lock?


One would have hoped such questions would have been answered by the museum, which is rather slick, but pretty low on information. The visitor's center does have a nice auditorium in which they play a rather lame movie about the canal. Better they should have bought a Discovery Channel or History Channel show and edited it down.

Still, the museum is fun and does provide some background, like the fact that the French moved about 1/4 of the materiel needed to excavate the canal, the the Americans the other 3/4. And that Walter Reed, of Army Hospital fame, collaborated with the Cuban(?) scientist who figured out that mosquitos carried yellow fever. A massive public health campaign (spraying, eliminating standing water, etc) eliminated the problem in Panama. No mention of Malaria, though.

In the evening we had dinner at the hotel (which is a pretty decent though slightly disorganized buffet), and the Caravan folks had arranged for a group of folk-dancers to do a little display of Panamanian dances. They were enthusiastic, and it was pretty good.


The people with us one the tour are far nicer than they have any right to be. As usual, if I'm willing to let my pre-conceptions go, people are pretty nice. Most are somewhat more outgoing than I would be (particularly the older women - I think there are a certain number of husbands who are being dragged along). But all whom we have encountered are perfectly fine conversationalists, so it's a pleasant group to hang around with.