Panama city

Panama city is a nice change of pace.
I love the beach, but I'm a townie at heart, and it's great to be in a place with some iron and concrete and real energy. Although the city also has an old quwarter, a mini crombling Havana with backaley rum joints and the presidential palac, which has amazing grey African cranes wandering around in the foyer, visible through the bars.

The Panama canal, joining the Atlantic to the Pacific, is the heart of this city: it's the reason for the American influence, te reason for the banks, the sky scrapers, the casinos, the 24 hour supermarkets. In fact, the answer to almost any question about the city seems to be the canal. It made it what it is. The canal was handed over to the Panamanians after years of American control in 1999. I heard about the history before from Paul Theroux, and from talking to Panamanians: entire sections of this city were American suburbs, the canal zone, and the zonians lived as if they were in buttfuck USA, not even larnign spanish, with their own schools, hospitals, and funeral homes.
Now the causeway, an island chain off the bay, joined up like the Florida keys, which used to be for the high up zonians, is full of restaurants and convention centres. From here you get great night views of the bridge of the Americas, supposedly joining central to south America, althougfh I´m not convinced that´s true (the darien gap, surely?).
An ex US army listening post there has become a hotel... we're making the world a better place guys, one mall at a time, sweet Jesus, one mall at a time.

The city feels really safe, I walk around at night coming back fom clubs and stuff with no worries, but I'm beginning to realise there's more to ti that mets the eye: the glass font to the building with our hostel has a small, neat bullet hole in it, and the other day, when I went to get some chow,I saw the aftermath of a shooting. Police had cordoned off the area, around a SUV, where a man lay, covered by a sheet, with one arm and the ends of his legs poking out.
It was outside a jewlers, so the contrasts of this dead man under the flashing neon lights saying 'joyeria' was quite darkside. I considered going back to take a photo, then decided that was too morbid. I'll never make a press photographer, clearly. I´ve asked several ppl what happened, and heard different stories from each: car accident (I don´t see how), attempted robbery of the jewelers (he´d have to have been very thick), and a drive by (more than likely) . The next some tout trying to tempt me to strip bars told me "this area isn´t safe, a Colombian killed a Mexican here the other day." Not safe, really? Do you think the fact that you work here trying to get Gringos into strip bars is a sign of that?


My next stop is Colombia, and despite everyone's recommendations to take a boat through the San Blas islands, I'm going to fly... right now, islands have lost a bit of their appeal and novelty, and I think I'm ready for some more city life. Cartagena, here we come!