9/30 -- Explore Panama City

Another day ALMOST without rain! Got sprinkled on a couple times, but with the heat, it was more relief than annoying. I guess I shouldn't have been so worried, but the forecasts all looked dreadful.

Panama City, it turns out, has more than one old city. The old quarter we are in is the new old quarter after the original one was burned in an attack by the pirate Henry Morgan in 1671. The survivors decided the old location was indefensible and moved the city 8  km away to the Old Quarter where we are now. The new city, with its many skyscrapers and interested architecture came much later.

The Presidential Palace at the edge of the New Old City
where we are staying

We drove through the new city on the way to the original, which is now the site of a museum and stone remnants of the original buildings. When Noriega was in power, he built a palace among the ruins and a horse stable behind the remains of the cathedral. His palace was torn down and replaced with the museum we visited today.

BMW store!

Ruins above and below. Many of the rocks were reused
in other projects.

 

This apparently an ebony-winged damselfly. It landed on Jim,
then me.

Relief map of the original old city. The new city is behind it
and the new old city is further back off the map.

Cathedral bell tower and some walls. There were 3 Catholic
denominations represented in the old town.

The main part of the Cathedral

Next 4 photos: views from each side of the tower.

The climb was 115 steps to the top.

More ruins

Another cathedral

Reservoir for the area

Burial grounds under excavation at the site.

We had a group lunch near the hotel, and afterwards, several of us joined Octavio on a walk to shopping district and Chinatown (which was pretty much of a disappointment among the Chinatowns we have seen) before returning to our hotel for a short break.

Some great architecture here!

The peninsula of the new old town.ahead

Colorful fence guards a playground.

Walking down Central Ave, now partly a
pedestrian shopping mall, we came across
this neglected building being taken over
by greenery.

Above and below: Murals on one of the side streets.

Chinatown gate

Above and below: Chinatown murals

 

View back to the new city and another
interesting looking tower.

Local man with his parrot.

At 4:30, we set out again for a guided walk through the old quarter, some of which Jim and I had explored yesterday, only today we got context.One very interesting stop was an original part of the wall that protected the city, which was right  next to what had been a boat-shaped building that housed over 20 indigent families. It burned to the ground earlier this year and residents were promised help, but it never came through. Right next door, another group was organizing a protest against a government plan to sell a public space that had been promised for social (i.e. supported) housing. About three years ago, this group took over a school that had been abandoned seven years earlier and they have have turned into housing for 28 families by subdividing the classrooms. We were allowed into the school and a peek into one of the small apartments.

Our Lady of Mercy Church next 4 photos.

This was labeled ''Poor Christ'. He is an
articulated statue whose attire is regularly changed.

Where the wall used to be

Ruins of the ship-shaped building that burned this year.

School across the street converted to housing.

The  leader of the housing resistance movement

One of several banners here.

Clothing hung in a central area of the
abandoned school

From there, we walked to the waterfront we had explored yesterday. By then, 14,000 steps  later, I was fading due in large part to the heat and humidity. I know that if I stay active, this will get easier in a few days, but I was close to crash mode, so we left the group to finish the walk home, with the intention of skipping dinner. Fortunately, there is a tiny grocery store across from the hotel, so we stopped and got Jim a snack (I already had snacks because I am wary about many of the breakfasts that we encounter) so that we could go back to our room and collapse.

I forget who the statue was, but the building
behind was rescued by a clever entrepanuer:
It had been a drug house and the park very
dangerous. A rich guy bought the place and
co-opted the bad guys by giving them jobs and
training so that they didn't need violence
to survive. It is a popular restaurant now.

The place was built in 1675.