PANAMA 3 - Panama City Tour, part 3

The highest place in Panama City is Ancon Hill. It is situated between the developed part of the city to the east and the entrance to the Canal to the west. The view is excellent. Ancon Hill can be seen from all over the city since, at 654 feet elevation, it towers over the surrounding area.

On our first try to reach the top we were turned back by the security person who is stationed in a booth about a quarter mile from the top. Our guide, Ricardo, tried to be persuasive but the sentry was having none of his plea. We turned around and continued our tour elsewhere. We returned later and were allowed to go on. The road is one lane for most of the last portion. There are two signs along the way that instruct you, in Spanish, to honk your horn. (I have noted in other guide books that other drivers are expected to hear these honks and to act appropriately, which the writers question as being impossible for tourist drivers since they have no way of knowing what they are suppossed to do.) The reason for the honks is that there is another sentry at the top. He is listening for the honks so he can stop traffic from starting down if a vehicle is coming up. It turned out that our guide wasn't paying attention or the sentry wasn't paying attention because we were confronted by a vehicle coming up as we started down. Our guy wasn't a very good backer. The zig-zag slow motion backing up was painful to watch and exasperating to the guy coming up. He finally passed on the hill side and was on his way.

The first photo is of the Bridge of the Americas. It crosses the entrance to the Canal just seaward of the huge container port adjacent to the Canal entrance.

Panama City's skyline is really interesting if you like tall buildings of the 60 story variety all clustered like on Manhatten Island. The spiral building is just above the left side of the foliage in the middle of the photo.

The next skyline photo is suppossed to show something between the skyline buildings and our vantage poing but I've forgotten what it is.

Casco Viejo is the subject of the next photograph. It is the old Panama City and we would call it a slum. It is, however, safe for tourists partly because the Presidential Palace and the Country's administrative offices are located there and there are soldier looking policeman standing around about everywhere you look. In the next posting I will include photos from this area.

The last photograph is of the "Gold Church" interior. The camera didn't do justice to this chancel of solid gold. It has survived, we were told, only because in the 16th century when Morgan the pirate was coming, it was taken down and sunk in the bay until he had looted and burned the city and gone away. There must be a web site devoted to this church. (Check out flickr.com/photos/striderv/4440153712/ for a better photograph.) Also, the web sites call it an alter but I think it is really the chancel. The walls along both sides of the nave are likewise decorated with statuary and reliefs of gold. The outside of the building, which I will include in the extra photos on Facebook, is as nondescript as any plain building in any city.

JCE