Under the Sun in Panama City
The South American capital has a rich history, and biodiversity to match
Before dawn, Panama’s Soberania National Park is all sound. The bass roars of the howler monkey echo through thick rainforest, cut through by a parrot’s trill and the tinny treble of a green honeycreeper — before a scorching Sun rises and turns it all to steam.
With the light, come the colours. Iridescent purple hummingbirds; the blazing red, blue and orange of the toucan’s beak; and the endless, shifting greens of the forest itself.
Just 30km northwest of the capital Panama City, the park is an easy predawn escape from urban heat and bustle. Rising above it all is the rainforest’s own monument — the four-story Canopy Tower, the country’s most celebrated eco-lodge.
The Canopy Tower started life in 1965 as a US radar installation, and was used for decades to defend the Panama Canal and track aeroplanes smuggling drugs.
Decommissioned in 1995, its radome globe now crowns a unique wildlife observation station. Overnight guests and day-trippers can see eye to eye with palm tanagers, iguanas, Geoffroy’s tamarin and the occasional two- and three-toed sloth from a wide top-floor deck overlooking the treetops, or through windows opening into the forest canopy below.
With more than 10,000 indigenous species of plants, close to 1,000 of birds, and more than 200 mammals, Panama is one of the world’s richest ecosystems.
It’s cut through by one of the world’s most storied waterways: the Panama Canal.
The canal and the rainforest might seem to be opposites, even adversaries: one an ancient, wild preserve of nature, the other a high-tech wonder of human ingenuity cutting through it like a blade. But in fact, the canal and the forest around it depend on each other. Without one, the other would not survive for long. The rainforest’s vital role in the canal has made its preservation a national imperative. Its vast watershed feeds the Chagres River, which in turn supplies the canal’s Lake Gatun, the waters of which fill the canal’s locks.
Built more than 100 years ago, the canal made history by linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, a feat of engineering that changed global trade forever.
About 14,000 ships a year make the 20- to 30-hour journey up and over the isthmus. Two series of three locks lift them a total of 27m from sea level to Gatun Lake, and down again on the other side.
At the first and second set of Pacific locks at Miraflores, visitors can watch up-close from broad balconies as electric locomotives known as mules help colossal ships squeeze through, often with just inches to spare. The visitor centre is located between Soberania National Park and the city, just 20 minutes out of town.
A guide gives a running commentary in English and Spanish through loudspeakers in the stands, with trivia about the ships’ contents peppered with greetings to international visitors. Panama City’s modern era is defined by the canal. But its history goes back much further, to its 16th-century founding by Spanish conquistadores.
The colonists’ first stab at settlement on Panama’s Pacific coast in 1519 stood more than 150 years, until an attack by the pirate Henry Morgan left it in ruins, now the Panama La Vieja historic site.
A second try in 1673 fared better. The colonial quarter known as Casco Viejo has survived to this day, and was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1997.
On a promontory that juts into the Pacific from the city’s southwestern edge, the neighbourhood today is a maze of alleys that meander from plaza to plaza and down to the seawall fortifications.
Multi-storey, candy-coloured colonial facades line cobbled streets, running the full spectrum, from spick-and-span restoration to boarded-up disrepair.
They house some of the city’s top cultural institutions, among them the Panama History Museum, the National Institute of Culture, the National Theatre and the presidential palace, Palacio de las Garzas — the “Palace of the Herons” so named for the great birds that roam its courtyard.
On the Plaza Mayor, the Catedral Metropolitana holds court, its whitewashed towers studded with bands of mother-ofpearl, and its clock tower forever stuck at ten past three. The area’s favourite pastime may be just taking in its sights, a study in history’s glory and decay.
The day ends with a stroll at dusk atop the seawall along Paseo de las Bovedas.
The lights of Casco Viejo spill out over the water, and in the distance, ships wait for morning at the entrance to the Panama Canal. Just offshore, coloured lights dance and flash along the sides of the Cinta Costera 3 causeway.
It’s a view that takes in the best of the city: its storied past, and a dynamic present, all built on land and water.