Eat Travel Bird

The Canopy Tower offers several birding, nature, and history/culture packages.  You can also opt for a la carte day trips or even just do your own thing during your stay.  Since this was our first time in Panama, Russ and I wanted a variety of experiences.  We had booked the 7 night Birds & History tour, and today was our first ‘non-birding’ outing.

We were picked up bright and early by Claudio who was to be our guide for the day.  Claudio contracts with the Canopy Tower for many of their history-related day trips.  He’s a really interesting guy.  He was a biologist with the Smithsonian Institution in Panama for several years.  His first love is entomology (the study of insects), but he was also involved in big cat research.  He has seen jaguars, pumas, and ocelots in the wild, which I think is incredibly cool!

He did environmental impact consulting for a while, but grew disillusioned with how some developers would try to get around recommendations against building on land that harbored sensitive plant and animal species.   He already had an interest in Panama’s history and followed that interest to a new career.

He also told us about the Chinese culture in Panama.  Panama has the largest Chinese community in Central America and Claudio himself, is married to a Panamanian woman of Chinese descent (his kids have dual Panamanian/Chinese citizenship).

I realize none of this actually has much to do with how we spent our day, but it’s one of those fascinating side effects of travel; gaining knowledge and understanding of a place through someone else’s perspective.

And now back to the adventure at hand…

Points of interest for the day are shown on the map:

 

Claudio dropped us off at the Panama Canal Railway office around 7:00 a.m. for an hour-long train ride to the City of Colón on the Caribbean side of the country.   The train ride is a popular tourist attraction.  It follows the historic route of the original rail line that linked Panama’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts in 1855.

The trains played a significant role in the California gold rush, providing a shortcut to western-bound prospectors who would otherwise either have to make their way across the vast expanse of the American frontier, or undergo a long steamship journey around the tip of South America.  The demand for this route diminished substantially once the U.S. transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, but the Panama Railway continued to carry large amounts of commercial freight until the Panama Canal was completed in 1914.

The tracks run parallel to the Panama Canal, passing through lush rainforest and offering picturesque views of Gatún Lake.  Along the way, we spotted several Snail Kites flying across the water.

Claudio had driven from Panama City and was waiting for us at the Colón station.  Our next destination was Fort San Lorenzo, located ~8 miles west of Colón.  We took a car ferry across the Panama Canal, watching a couple of large container ships head into the Gatún Locks as we made our passage.

During the drive to the fort we saw several Yellow-headed Caracaras, and a small group of tayras ran across the road ahead of us.  The tayras (members of the weasel family) were particularly exciting because they are not commonly seen.  Claudio was as thrilled as we were to catch a glimpse of them.  He told us that anteaters are also sometimes found in the area, but alas, not by us…

Fort San Lorenzo sits on a promontory overlooking the Chagres River as it flows into the Caribbean Sea.  It was established by the Spaniards in the mid-16^th century to protect the transfer of gold and silver along the Chagres.  Various incarnations of the fortress were attacked by buccaneers and rebuilt over a 200 year span.  In 1670 the infamous pirate Henry Morgan laid waste to the fort before moving on to invade Panama City.  The Spanish rebuilt the structure in the 1680’s, the ruins of which can be visited today.

The setting of the fort is beautiful; or would have been had we not visited in torrential rain! Torrential is maybe a slight exaggeration, but the rainfall was steady and persistent for our entire time there.  Claudio produced a large umbrella from the car trunk so that I could keep my camera dry as we bravely faced the downpour.

We splashed our way through inches-deep standing water and took cover in the fort’s tunnels as much as we could, but it was a sopping wet experience!  We were pretty soaked by the time we got back to the car.

Next up was lunch at a cute little nautically-themed place on the road to Portobelo (a coastal fishing village ~20 miles east of Colón).  Las Anclas Restaurant is part of the Coco Plum Eco-Lodge.  The food was really fresh and delicious.  I had a tasty fish dish served with a humongous fried green plantain on the side.  We also ordered refreshing batidos (fruit smoothies blended with milk and ice).

While our food was being prepared, Russ and I walked down to the dock behind the lodge for some pretty views of the Caribbean coastline.

We did experience one small mishap as lunch wrapped up.  Russ and I headed to the restaurant’s restrooms before getting back in the car.  After using the facilities, the toilet in the ladies’ room didn’t flush.  I even lifted up the lid to see if the chain was stuck.  I couldn’t get it to work so I gave up and turned to the sink to wash my hands.  No water came out of the faucet.  Okay…  I opened the ladies’ room door and Russ was standing there with liquid soap all over his hands.  The men’s room water wasn’t working either.

He managed to flag down someone from the kitchen and they brought water out for him to rinse the soap off his hands.  Claudio asked a server about the water as we were getting ready to leave and she said it had been turned off in part of the building without really expanding on why.  Ah, the quirks of travel!

Our final activity of the day was a visit to nearby Portobelo.  During the Spanish Colonial era, Portobelo was an important, bustling port for the transport of gold and other valuables back to the homeland.  The Spanish built several fortifications to protect the town, but pirates (including the aforementioned Henry Morgan) still managed to invade multiple times during the 17^th century.  The importance of Portobelo’s port gradually diminished as Spain devised new methods for handling its bounty.

We checked out the Customs House (originally built in 1630), which served as a counting and storage facility for the king’s treasure.  Today, the building houses exhibits on the colorful history of Portobelo.  We wandered around two of the ruined fortresses and also visited the San Félipe Catholic church (est. 1814) which celebrates the popular Festival of the Black Christ each October.  We weren’t there at festival time, but we did pay our respects to the Black Christ statue housed inside the chapel.

My final photo of the day captured one of the Diablo Rojo buses; re-purposed school buses that Panama purchased from the U.S. years ago.  Each bus is uniquely decorated in pop art style.  The aging fleet may eventually die out as Panama modernizes its public transportation system, so I was glad to get a picture of one.

Then it was time to head home to the Canopy Tower after a long but very interesting day…