Virtual Colónoscopy

This is a story about our wild ride through a historic Panama town that has some shitty areas.

This adventure started for the same reason the Burnetts had to book it to Panama. Bureaucracy. While in St. Maarten they learned via a webinar that Americans had to apply for a long-stay visa if they wanted to stay in French Polynesia for more than 90 days.  This visa application typically starts with an appointment at the French Embassy in Panama, and afterwards it can take up to 8 weeks for approval – long enough to push a Pacific Crossing into the time of year when the weather is less…cooperative.  Wishing to start the process ASAP, they secured the earliest appointment they could get with the embassy. They then abandoned their plans to cruise Grenada and pointed their bow to Panama, arriving just two days before their appointment.  Before they left SXM, they verified they had all of the paperwork needed for their visa application.  The only remaining piece was updated passport photos.  They could just get those in Panama, right?

That assumption laid the groundwork for their adventure.  Assumptions tend to do that.

Not yet aware of how accessible taxis with delightful English-speaking drivers were at the Shelter Bay Marina, the first glimmerings of the events yet to come came when the Burnetts rented a car. Their trip started well enough, with Mel commenting that the road to Colón was in better shape than basically all of the roads in Omaha.  Once they hit the city, however, it was every car for itself. Huge intersections in which five two-lane roads merged had no traffic lights, no unspoken rules to take turns pulling out in a certain order, no communication via honks alá Colombia, no assumption of personal space around vehicles.  Instead, you just had to quietly push through, completely trusting others not to hit you.  Pedestrians had this same amount of trust, shooting across the un-crosswalked-road without even a glance. Mel’s maternal instincts were on overdrive. “Now, you be careful!” she found herself shouting through the window.

While skillfully managing to drive through all of this, Greg took a tip from Rick Steves in one of his podcasts about Italy: “Embrace the chaos.”  After a brief period of adaptation, Greg began to enjoy himself, unleashing his already minimal restraint on his hot foot to great success. Over time, Mel noted that despite the chaos, most vehicles were impressively not banged up.  This must be a selection effect, she thought, since these are the cars of the survivors.  She began to wonder if Americans are babied too much by their big open roads.

Already feeling her age, Mel’s adrenaline further went up as multiple inaccurate Google Maps addresses for passport photo studios sent them on a wild goose chase through an area of Colón marked with a red exclamation point on Noforeignland: “Do not go here.”  Expat blogs, reviewed only afterwards, all agreed: “Foreigners have no reason to be in this part of Colón.” Seeing a number of businesses in the area, Mel was puzzled by this warning.  Until she got out of the car.

You can tell when you are not welcome somewhere.  People have a way of stopping what they are doing, and staring.  The streets have a way of suddenly quieting down, like in an old Western.  The shopkeepers tell you there are electrical problems and their cameras are not working, all the while sitting in air conditioning with the lights on.  The grocery store stockers look at the business you want to find on your phone and say, “Not here! Not here!”, pointing far, far away. But perhaps that was just Mel’s unseasoned traveler imagination?  Were they wanting us to go away, protecting us from something, or just wondering why we were there?

The entire time they were moving from one run-down building to another, Mel futilely attempted to regulate her emotions with thoughts. “Nothing bad has happened to us yet,” “It is human nature to not trust outsiders”, “The sorry state of the infrastructure likely does not reflect the nature of the people”, “That man is staring at me because I am an anomaly, not because he wants to kidnap me,” and, “After all, aren’t kidnappers people with families, too?” Unfortunately, all of these thoughts did nothing to suppress Mel’s ever-increasingly pounding heart.

Don’t worry, this story ends well.  The Burnetts happened to drive past the mis-addressed photo studio on the way out of town. As soon as they walked in, Mel instantly relaxed. Organized display cases and smiling faces tend to do that.  In high school, the structured order of the Target office supply aisle was her refuge from the turmoil of her youth. 

In her processing of the day, Mel had to address some inevitable facts: 1.) They were not, in fact, kidnapped, pickpocketed, propositioned, or murdered.  Only some mild extortion/bribery at the entrance to the duty-free zone. 2.) The passport photo place they found was clean, organized, and staffed by lovely, unmurdered people who were patient with our poor grasp of Spanish.  3.) The slums of Colón were clean and free of trash piles with dead dogs.  In fact, one may be tempted to describe the aging infrastructure as, “shabby chic”. (I am pretty sure the people who live there would rather have “chic.”)

Safely back aboard, Mel did some internet research and learned that Colón was built up when the Canal was dug at the turn of the century. After a fire in the 1940’s, most of the wealthy moved to Panama City, and subsequently the motivation to maintain the crumbling infrastructure did not match the amount of money and work necessary to shore up plumbing and buildings built on what is essentially a swamp. When hundreds of millions of dollars were set aside in 2014 to renew Old Colón for tourism, the money literally went down the drain, un-sexily refurbishing the sewer system. They apparently gave up restoring a lot of the buildings and instead cleared land elsewhere, taking their time building an low-income housing apartment complex with “anti-violence architecture” over the last ten years. Besides the huge duty-free shopping zone that lures in the occasional cruise ship crowd, it doesn’t look like Colón will be a desirable tourist destination anytime soon.

Especially if they don’t get rid of the car horns that sound like machine-gun fire. Sheesh!

Well-earned passport photos in hand, the next day the Burnetts drove to Panama City for their appointment at the French Embassy. Needing a palate cleanser, Greg and Mel arrived early and wandered the streets of Old Panama, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Listening to the exotic birds chirping as they shat on a statue of some poor soul perched under a tree as the palm trees swayed in the breeze, Mel’s adrenaline finally worked its way out of her body. She started to get excited about experiencing the jungle walks, monkey sightings, San Blas island cruising, Afro-Chinese-Indian-Antillean cuisine sampling, and the other delights Panama had to offer.  And, of course, the upcoming Canal crossing, something she has romanticized about since she was young.  This will hopefully happen in a month. 

As long as she doesn’t get eaten by the crocodiles, of course.

ADDENDUM: Mel knows this was a long post.  If you made it thus far, Bravo!  If you skipped most of this, stop here for the gist. Here is Greg’s much more terse answer to a friend’s WhatsApp inquiry of, “How is Panama?”: