Christmas at the Panama Canal

Christmas Day, December 25^th

I'm still here.  So that means the Otter must have taken off and landed just fine, which is a good thing.

We arrived in Panama City in the late afternoon, and promptly made our way to the Radisson Decapolis. Turns out, George picked a very South Beach hotel.  I didn't remember what a Decapolis was, so I checked in quickly with the Wikipedia brain.

"A group of ten cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire in Jordan, Israel, and Syria, and The ten cities were not an official league or political unit, but they were grouped together because of their language, culture, location, and political status. The Decapolis cities were centers of Greek and Roman culture in a region that was otherwise Semitic (Nabatean, Aramean, and Jewish). With the exception of Damascus, the "Region of the Decapolis" was located in modern-day well, one of them located west of the Jordan River in Palestine (modern day Israel). Each city had a certain degree of autonomy and self-rule."

So, it has nothing to do with the original Decapolis, which I'm also sure didn't have its own sushi bar for those late night Unagi cravings, nor its own fourth floor pool overlooking the breakfast nook through several circular portholes situated at the bottom of said pool.

I'm expecting Jennifer Lopez and Mark Antony to walk in with their entourage any moment.

After we checked into our swanky accommodations, we headed out for an early evening's walk to get a sense of the city.  Basically, Panama City has lots of tall buildings.  In fact, I heard a tour guide say today, it's the 3^rd most spectacular skyline in all of North America, behind NY and Chicago.  Not sure what happened to San Francisco in that count, but whatever, it's pretty spectacular.

For dinner, we found ourselves at another seafood restaurant.  This time, I had sea bass with black butter and capers.  It was quite good, and George and Leslie also had some nice seafood dishes.  But my favorite part of the meal was watching the Panamanian diners.  It was good people watching.

This morning, we had a shee-shee breakfast at our shee-shee hotel before we embarked on a taxi ride out to the Miraflores Locks, the last set of locks on the Canal before reaching the Pacific ocean.  I was bummed because no big boats were coming through until 2:30, and we got there around 11, so we had to make do watching a small tug boat and a tourist boat make their way through the first set of locks.

The whole thing was very impressive, especially considering the fact that it's been in continuous operation since 1914 (well, I heard we shut the Canal down for a short while during the American invasion and overthrow of Noriega in 1989, but you get the point).  Also, if you've read "The Path Between the Seas" (HIGHLY recommended) by David McCullough, or any other history of the Panama Canal, you know what a huge engineering feat that was, especially for its time.  And let's not forget the 25,000+ folks (most West Indians) who lost their lives building it, through disease, accidents, etc.

So, the Canal did not let me down.  I took a boatload of pictures (Ha!), and will be putting some select ones up on Facebook, and the full set will end up on Picasa.

After the Canal, our taxi driver who was supposed to have waited for us didn't (amigo, we were happy to pay you for the ride out and wonder what happened to you!), so we caught another and stopped by an outdoor mercado to check out some "molas" first, some very cool embroideries made by hand by Kuna Indians who live up near the San Blass islands on the Caribbean side of Panama.

Then, we went for a tour of the Casto Viejo, the "old town" of Panama.  When we pulled up to the stop, the cab driver pointed behind us and then in front of us, and said in so much Spanish I couldn't really understand, but completely got the gist of: "Go that way (backwards), and you're f----ed.  Go forward, and you're fine."  Yeah, thanks dude, Feliz Navidad!

So, we went the way we were supposed to go and saw all the other folks from the estados unidos whose cab and bus drivers probably told them the same thing, and we walked up and down the boardwalk, hotter than Hades out, just dying for something to drink when George finally found the one outdoor café open on Christmas café.  I ordered a Balboa, which I much prefer still over the other Panamanian beers, and later a shee-shee drink, some kind of limonado pina colada drink.  I had to pull out my mini-umbrella from the pina colada in Contadora, so I would have the appropriate ambiance about me while I drank it.

My favorite story from the PM hotter than hell walk?  We're cruising down the boardwalk when a tour guide points out a bombed out building with no roof.  The tour guide basically goes on to explain the building was bombed by the Americans in 1989, and that it has now become a very shee shee place, where they even threw a fashion show recently for Hugo Boss.

Okay, that is just so wrong on so many levels and in so many ways, and even I had to laugh.  He even observed that one of the shells from the bombing still remains and was featured somehow in the fashion show.  And you thought the Victoria's Secret fashion show on TV was on the margins???

Finally, once back at the Decapolis, I was hanging out at the pool and have decided that someone, somewhere, in Panama is making an absolute killing in breast implant surgeries.  The boobies here are absolutely immense and everywhere.  I feel surrounded by boobies.  George even commented that there were huge boobies on the mannequins at the mall.  Panama is obsessed with boobies, I'm just sayin'.

Okay, that's it.  We're off to find a chiruscarria where we manly men are going to eat much manly steak carved by manly men trying to not cut off their hands as they slice through the large chunks of meat while trying to ignore all the fake, somewhat womanly, boobies.  Hasta la vista, baby.