We are in Panama. As we got off the aeroplane and walked through the bridge to the airport, a fleet of black helicopters roared overhead, a suitable welcome to a very strange country.
We are staying in the historic old town, Casco Viejo, a pleasant old place with coloureful ornamented buildings, though a great many of them are empty facades open to the sky. Presumably hotels and apartments will replace them eventually, presumably, to become a Disneyfied version of itself. There are many, many souvenir/ tat shops around and the Gentleman Friend cannot walk for long without being offered a Panama hat. Across the bay from Casco Viajo is the modern city of densely packed skyscrapers shimmering in the heat. Visions of modernity are strangely persistent. I wonder when we’ll get over this glass and steel fetish as around us fires burn from the Arctic to the Amazon.
We had an excellent lunch, and really felt like we were back in a more sophisticated sort of place. Such a relief for me. Colombian food (and I understand Panamaian food) does not go in for complex flavours and since I as it is find the fetishisation of clean flavours in northern Europe (not too far from the disdain for garlic and spices a generation ago) eye-rolling, was relieved to have some interest to the palate.
We then went for a very expensive so-called ‘geisha’ coffee (10 dollars! We are no long in the land of 5 dollar lunches) and a stroll through the area. The GF is not very well so it was leisurely and not terribly long. What was notable is to the extent to which Panama appears to be, in its national narrative as presented through interpretation of monuments, at least, a canal that is surrounded by a country. There is its origin, of course, peeled off from Colombia so the Americans could build the canal. But we also walked down a sort of esplanade with a tall obelisk crowned by a gallic rooster, commemorating the failed French attempt to build the canal; here was the municipal palace crowned by the gods and goddesses of wisdom, commerce, work and agriculture; there were statues of the founding fathers of Panama who negotiated with the Americans about the canal; and here was the flat arch remaining from one of the oldest churches in the city, which was burned to the ground in a fire. The arch remained standing despite being flat and, the plaque told us, was used as evidence of the region’s seismic stability and thus its suitability for the canal. (In 2003 the arch fell and was hastily rebuilt).
A very curious place. I am finding it more compelling in some ways than Colombia, though the latter is perhaps more conventionally interesting. Maybe it’s just the relief at having some decent food.
We are staying in an Airbnb belonging to a shaman. A rather well-to-do shaman, it seems, judging by the prime location and exposed brickwork.