Has the Invasion Begun? No Ships at the South End of the Panama Canal

The view from the Amador Causeway. 

No ships at the south end of the Panama Canal.

Just after midnight today I returned to Panama after two weeks in the US, preceded by two weeks in Chile.  I rode to the Amador Causeway which is parallel to the south end of the Panama Canal.  

There were no ships going into or  coming out of the canal.

None.

I rode to the end of the Causeway, turned around and saw one completely empty container ship headed out into the Pacific Ocean.  

Then I went to a coffee shop across from the rail yards at the Balboa container port.  Some days I watch huge forklifts zooming along the tracks putting 40-foot containers on rail cars in one smooth move, or unloading a train from the Colon port.  

Today, the train sat unattended. Behind the rail yard I saw the huge container cranes of the port. In almost an hour I saw none of the move.   

After a month away, I wondered what I would see as I rode along the port.  

I saw the effects of the uncertainty of  tariffs.  Nothing moving. 

Is this the master plan for the Canal takeover?  Impose tariffs wildly, stop shipping and bankrupt the canal company? 

Not likely.  

It will be fun to watch how the tariffs affect global shipping, since I have a front-row seat.

 

Americans Living in Panama

 

In the coming weeks, I will be writing about some of the Americans I have met during the time I lived in Panama. They are people who decide to live outside of America for various but some of them do not want to return to the craziness that is America recent years.

Around 30,000 Americans live in Panama--less than a tenth of one percent of a country with more than 4 million people.  The figures aren't definite in part because it is currently very easy for Americans to purchase property in Panama and effectively live here, but not actually become residents.  

Panama is a beautiful place with every kind of hot weather recreation, and more diversity in wildlife than almost any place in the world.  Panama is 400 miles long, 50 to 120 miles wide and has mountains more than 11,000 feet high.  The north border of the country is 400 miles of Caribbean/Atlantic sea shore, the south side is 400 miles of Pacific shore.  To the west is Costa Rice. To the east is Columbia.  

Panama rose from the floor of the oceans more than 10,000 years ago.  It is the youngest part of the American continents joining the two big land masses together.  It's recent volcanic activity and position between the continents leads to the wild diversity in plants and animals of all kinds.

Those who can live with heat, humidity and a nine-month rainy season see Panama as paradise.  And some of them left the United States to call Panama their new home. 

Riding, Hiking Mountains in Western Panama

 

Coffee plants growing on a steep hillside above Boquete, Panama

After months of sea-level riding and walking with some small hills, I hiked and rode up and down some very long, very steep hills near Volcan Baru, a volcano last active about 500 years ago. 

The 13-kilometer trail to the peak of Volcan Baru 

The trail above is the beginning of the 13-kilometer hiking trail to the top of Volcan Baru.  I made  it to an overlook two kilometers up the hill. The grade is 23%. The descent was more difficult than the climb on loose gravel and rocks.     

The view from Volcan Baru

From Boquete, I rode past streams and waterfalls toward one of the peaks.  Several times I walked on grades that exceeded 20%.  I turned around at a point when I could not pedal and could see a half kilometer of very steep road. Total climb was 700 meters.  

The descent was slow.  The road was narrow and had delivery vans, minibuses and taxis climbing and descending.  The road was occasionally smooth, but would suddenly be broken and gravel-strewn.  

After a week of hikes and bike rides, I was very tired.  

Here is one grade I rode and walked up:

   

New Friend, New List of Favorite Books

Joseph Brodsky around 1970. 

A new friend here in Panama, a cyclist, Yogi, and round-the-world-sailor named Roger, asked me for a list of books I would recommend. He is an avid reader and looking for new books he has not read.  

Roger has read all the greats of 19th Century Russian literature. Today I found out why.  Roger was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in 1970.  He took a
semester of creative writing with Joseph Brodsky, the Russian emigre poet who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987.  Roger won the Russian lit. professor lottery! 

I have a few books with me in Panama. Two are Blindness, the terrifying dystopian novel by Jose Saramago, and Tribe by the journalist and war correspondent Sebastian Junger. Both are excellent, so I gave them to Roger. 

Now the list. 

1. Kazuo Ishiguro. Remains of the Day and Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro are my favorites. I have read everything Ishiguro has written, most recently Klara and the Sun and seen his movie Living.  His writing is brilliant. These two books are my favorite.

2. Hannah Arendt. Philosopher and historian and one of the most influential political writers of the 20th Century. Born in 1906, a German Jew, she earned a PhD at Heidelberg in 1929 and fled Germany in 1933 just after the Nazi takeover.  She lived in France until WorldWar II began, then escaped to America in 1941. In 1951 She published The Origins of Totalitarianism, her best-known work defining the new tyranny of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.  I have read all of her books. I most admire On Revolution a book that shows why nearly all revolutions devolve into tyranny, but America did not.  I love The Human Condition for explaining living in our world.  I am such a devoted fan, I am in a weekly reading group and go to Hannah Arendt Conferences.

3. George Orwell. I have read and re-read Orwell's novels.  A decade ago I read the 1200-page volume of his collected essays, finding endless entertainment.  His essay on brewing tea shows the utter snob that still lingered inside the Democratic Socialist writer. There is no better book explaining the rise of Stalin than Animal Farm.  A decade ago, I became convinced that 1984 was not prophetic after all, until I read about life in Communist China.     

4. Mark Helprin. I have been a devoted fan of Mark Helprin since read his novel Winters Tale in 1983.  I have since read every one of his novels, most recently The Ocean and the Stars.  His Paris in the Present Tense gave me a new and lovely view of my favorite city.  I plan to read Winters Tale for the third time this year.

5. - 12.  I love big books in which one author writes the entire history of humanity as in Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.  

Or of recorded human history as in Why the West Rules--For Now by Ian Morris or another view Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. 

Or a history of American from the view of those without power, These Truths by Jill Lepore. 

Another delightful view of the past 500 years Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson.  

I recently read Titans of History by Simon Sebag Montifiore. I plan to read his The World: A Family History of Humanity.  But I also want to read his Jerusalem.

An aside on these books is that I believe recent histories are the best. The old histories did not have access to all the new data. That perspective here.

And another aside! If you read books in translation, read the newest translation available.  The latest translation will be clearest and will correct the mistakes of predecessors.  If you read Scriptures in translation, read a translation by one person.  A committee compromises. One person may be wrong, but they won't be tepid. 

Back to the list.  

13. (for the unluckiest author on this list)  The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. Son of a German father and French mother from territory between the countries. Enlists in the German Army at 17 in 1941. Spends the entire war in Russia. Returns home. Home is now in France. He serves in the French Foreign Legion to avoid prison. A soldier under any flag can be a good soldier.  

14. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli I re-read it for the tenth time last year, every Presidential election year since 1980.  I will read it again in 2028. Machiavelli's advice remains brilliant, relevant and chilling 500 years after he wrote it.  

15. Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin.  A 2006 novel that imagines Russia in 2028 as a restored Tsarist empire, complete with Oprichniks, the assassins of Ivan the Terrible. It is a crazy, funny novel, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine showed it has a dark, prophetic side. 

16. A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller Jr. shows us the world after a Soviet-American nuclear exchange kills 95% of the population.  A Catholic monastery in the ruins of Utah preserves books after the survivors of the nuclear war burn books and scientists. The irony in this book is amazing.

17. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.  In a nine-month trip beginning in1830, Tocqueville found the heart of American democracy and wrote a book that became the central description of America for the world--including every political scientist in America.  He said in the 1830s that the 20th Century would be defined by the conflict between Russian and America.

18. C.S. Lewis. I have read all of the 39 books he wrote in his lifetime, plus posthumous collections. His novel Till We Have Faces is so good it is one of the books I read aloud to my daughters. The central characters look at the same thing at the same time and see two entirely different things.  So much of the book looks at perception and reality in ways I have not read anywhere else. His book The Four Loves gave me a frame for seeing the different ways people express love...and reject love. 

19. Vasily Grossman. Since Roger has read about and is very interested in the Battle of Stalingrad, my first recommendation is Life and Fate the novel of the Battle of Stalingrad and it's second volume titled Stalingrad. Grossman was a Soviet war correspondent who arrived the first day of the battle and reported then entire terrible fight.

20. Leo Tolstoy. Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy. No book affected my view of life, death and eternity more than this one. I just re-read War and Peace, but Ivan Ilych is for me the best thing Tolstoy wrote.  

Terrorists as Celebrities

In the remote resort town of Boquete in western Panama is a lovely little open-air Italian restaurant.  On the wall are picture of the owner and employees with celebrities from Panama and other countries.  Two caught my eye.  

The pictures were at least a couple of decades old. One showed Fidel Castro with three members of the kitchen staff. Another showed Yassir Arafat with a guy who may have been the chef.  

Boquete is 200 miles from the capitol of Panama.  It is 35 miles from the nearest airport. It has a large American expat community. Someone visiting Boquete is on holiday.  Looking at Castro and Arafat, I thought immediately of the oppressed millions they locked in poverty. But oppressors and murderers are also celebrities, so they are on wall. 

  

Tattoos are Rare in Panama

 

Sleeve tattoos like the one above are common in Panama City, Florida, not mention Philadelphia, Portland, Pittsburgh and Phoenix, but not in Panama City, Panama. Across the Central American region, tattoos are rare.  

One reason is the association of tattoos with gangs and drug cartels. People with tattoos were seen as part of those groups. 

A barista in Panama City who is college age said she and her friends don't get tattoos.  No particular reason, they just don't.

I have been living in Panama since November and just noticed that I don't see tattoos everywhere, as I would in any major city in America or Europe.  

Today I rode the both subway lines in Panama. The five-car trains are open. You can see from one end of the train to the other.  As far as I could see, no tattoos.  At one busy stop a security guard with a tattoo got on the train. If I rode a subway in New York, Philadelphia, or DC, I would have a hard time finding people without tattoos. 

It was a woman with sleeve tattoos that made me aware that I was not seeing tattoos.  When I saw her fully-inked arms in an outdoor restaurant I realized I had not seen sleeve tattoos for months--since I was last in Philadelphia. The woman with sleeve tattoos I saw here was an American tourist, not a Panamanian.

As perception, I know it is much harder to "see" what is absent than what is present so I don't feel too bad about not noticing that people in Panama don't have tattoos. I also wonder if I was simply seeing "normal" for most of my life.  Before this century, most Americans did not have tattoos. For fifty years, I lived in the world where tattoos were rare.        

Now they are everywhere--in the US.  

But not here in Panama. 

 

International Neighborhood Near the Panama Canal

 

Less than a kilometer from my AirBnb is a short road that connects a residential area with the main bus route to the city.  At one end is the massive 7-story Russian embassy.  At the other end is a little Russian Orthodox Church which is currently closed for construction. 

My wife and I walk by it several times a week after dinner.  Last night we met a young couple walking down the hill toward the church with their young toddler. We were walking up.  The family was Russian, part of the staff at the embassy.  

For many reasons, Panama is home to people who came from across the region and around the world.  Three blocks away is a Korean Church.  Every convenience store I have been to on the east side of the city is run by Koreans.  

The fresh fruit market nearby is run by Venezuelans. Cruise ships dock on both coasts bringing tourists from the whole world.      

Today I went to the convenience store closest to my house.  The young woman who runs the store (while taking care of two small children) has been very pregnant recently. When I walked in the store her husband, who is usually stocking shelves, was holding a very young baby. Mom had just walked into the  back room.  A teenage girl was at the counter.  I said "Felicidades! Dos dias?" He nodded and said  yes, two days old. 

A very international neighborhood.

Sunken Sailboat in a Beautiful Bay: Relaxed Life Near the Panama Canal

Above is bay I ride past along the Amador Causeway in Panama.  It's peaceful and beautiful with many different small boats.  

About halfway between the island at the end of the causeway and the city is this mast sticking out of the water maybe ten meters from the water's edge.  I learned the boat has been there for more than two years.   The harbormaster told the owner to anchor his boat in this place during a storm. The owner didn't like the spot but complied.  The boat sank.

The owner refused to salvage the boat. the dispute is still on going.  

This pelican now has a place to view the bay and swoop down for dinner.

The skyline is lovely here.

And the island.

For everyone. 

Watching Ukraine Tank Battles in Panama: Maybe the Panama Canal will be the Next Battlefield

 

My AirBnB host in Panama watches a lot of tank battles from the War in Ukraine. We may go live near the Panama Canal soon if Trump carries through on his threats to take back the Panama Canal.

All my life I have watched war movies.  Tactics look awesome on screens big and small.  As a kid, I loved tanks. By age 22, I was a US Army tank commander.  Tactics make great movies, but tactical battlefield videos, tank porn, are not the way to follow a war.  

Wars are won far from the battlefield.  The bigger the war, the more the outcome depends on the decisions, the beliefs, the hatreds, the prejudices of those with power.  

When Hitler declared war on America after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Nazi leader made the biggest mistake of his  horrible career.  Millions of Germans became dead people walking at that moment. They were just waiting for their particular B-17 Flying Fortress to reduce their home to rubble three years later.  

Currently, I am sharing a house in Panama with an enthusiastic follower of the Ukraine War.  My housemate is particularly fond of tank battle videos and was delighted to find I am a former tank commander.  I watched a few, but my interest waned quickly.  

As much as I love seeing Russian formations defeated, I know the war will be won or lost in diplomatic meetings and conferences with NATO nations that support Ukraine.  Sadly, clandestine agreements among the new Axis of  Evil: Russia, Iran, China, Turkey and Jihadi Arab countries with North Korea and Hungary as appendages, will also determine the outcome.

The bravery and sacrifice of the people and Ukraine is not enough by itself to defeat an enemy much greater in population with seemingly endless supplies of weapons.  Ukraine will win or lose based on support from allies--or not.  

The smoking wrecks of several Russian tanks hit by Ukrainian drones and direct fire delights me, but reports of Britain and Germany sending more weapons and support to Ukraine delights me more.  

Tank porn, like the other kind, can be exciting, but leaves the viewer with a limp feeling afterward, and nothing accomplished.  

Russian Embassy in my Panama Canal Neighborhood

 The day after I returned to Panama we moved to a different AirBnB closer to Panama City in the Albrook area.  Less than a mile away on the road is the Russian Embassy.  It's a seven-story yellow building which our host says has seven stories underground. 

Today  I was riding in my Ukraine bike clothes, so I rode back and forth in front of the Russian Embassy then stopped to take some pictures and a selfie.

I'm sure they have plenty of security, but I saw no guards, guns, dogs or drones as I rode.  Across the road is a stream that runs past where I live.  Crocodiles live on the banks of the stream. Maybe part of the security team?

Down the hill from the embassy is a little Russian Orthodox Church. 

I'll be riding this way a lot in the next six months.  

Прибет Товариши!  

(Hello Comrades!) 

Back in Panama: Finding Better Roads Near the Panama Canal

 

Today is the seventh day since I arrived in Panama.  After some very difficult rides back in August, I have found better roads and hope to find more.

Today I rode the Amador Causeway, a long straight smooth three-mile road that runs to an island in the Panama City harbor. The Panama City skyline is off to the east of the long roadway and bicycle path.  A beautiful ride on a sunny day.  

  I'm meeting new neighbors also.  A coati on the balcony.

An agouti who lives across the street.  

Ships in the harbor beyond the causeway.

On Sunday I rode about a third of the way across the country to the town of Chililibre.  Since I was last here, ten kilometers of the road between State Highways 4 and 9 were completely repaved.  The rolling mostly uphill stretch of road two of very smooth pavement. Still no shoulder, but the traffic is not as bad on Sunday.I had a delightful 50km ride up to Chililibre  and back down again.  

It's better, but still a place where I am always alert. 

 

The (Pot)Hole Story -- Panama is a tough place to ride

 

First Week in Panama--The Daily Downpour

I bought a bike the first full day I was in Panama.  The bike is great. I wrote about it here.    

I quickly got good at dodging the rain. The weather app in my phone that is so reliable in America, is rubbish here. It says it will rain when the sun is shining and it will be cloudy when rain is falling in sheets.   

Rain I could handle.  But the farther I ride, the more I have to contend with potholes.  On a descent a few miles from the city, I hit a hole so deep it flatted the tire and tore a hole in it.  I wrote about that here.  

And the holes deep enough to flatten a tire are everywhere.  It's not so bad riding uphill, but downhill, I have to scan for holes the whole way! I'm riding the brakes and very focused--not having fun feeling the wind.  It's surely safer to roll down hills on high alert hands on the brake hoods, but it's not fun. 

On the way up the hills, the holes are no problem, but even riding the white stripe at the edge of the tarmac, buses and trucks have to move around me.  One the main roads in and out of the city, there are no shoulders.  

When there are shoulders, another hazard appears at random--sewers without covers.  Some of these uncovered drains are big enough to swallow a whole wheel, not just flat a tire.  I told a local guy about this. He shrugged and said people steal the covers and sell them for the metal.  When there is a shoulder, I ride just off the roadway and scan for the uncovered drain.  

I've been riding every day here, but my rides are getting shorter and are on roads where I have memorized the holes and know the hazards.  On Labor Day I will return to the US until mid November.  

When I return, I will have Gatorskin tires and be looking for weekend groups to ride with.  Right now, I'm feeling like the cocodrillo in the photo below is waiting in holes on every road here.

 

First Flat Fixed: Pinched in a Pothole Next to the Panama Canal

Today I had my first flat in Panama.  The pothole was not quite as bad as the one above, but for those who kvetch about potholes in Pennsylvania, Panama has a lot more.  

Today I was rolling back toward the canal from the Gamboa road junction. I stayed away from the edge of the state highway running along the canal to avoid the gaps in the pavement, but saw a pothole too late to swerve.  The front tire flatted immediately, the back was fine.  

I was near a bus stop at the village of Paraiso a five miles from where I live.

Buses in Panama do not allow bicycles on board.  I waved at  a couple of taxis, then ordered and Uber.  It was $5.83 to take me home.  The driver didn't have a bungee cord to put the bike in the trunk, so I took the wheels of and held it in the back seat.  

I fixed the flat at home and rode to a local bike  shop to buy another tube. When I got there I saw a small bulge in the sidewall.  The tube was coming out. I had cut through the sidewall. The shop owner wasn't busy so I bought a new tire and he put it on for me.  $50 with an extra tube. All the tires he sold were Goodyear Eagles--which is what was on the bike already.

With all the potholes here, I will bring back more tubes and cartridges and a pair of Continental Gatorskin tires.        

I Love Panama; It's Like Florida without Rednecks!

 

The Panama Canal near Panama City

So far, I have traveled to 59 countries on all six inhabited continents. In some countries, I feel very much at home. In some, I feel like I am on another planet.  

Panama is among the most familiar and easiest to be in.  The plugs are just as in the US.  No adapters. There is local currency, but US dollars work everywhere. The countryside is tropical. It seems very much like the Everglades and other tropical parts of Florida, but without rednecks and their ridiculous Trump and Rebel flags.

Also, there is a Mormon Temple near the canal:

And a cemetery that has many US military graves:

On my second day here in Panama, I bought a bike and rode up to the first lock of the Panama Canal. 

Traffic laws seem much like the US. And the cars are left drive like the US. Of course, the official language of Panama is Spanish, but I can speak a little Spanish and understand a lot from so much Spanish culture in the US.  

The Contrast

When I first went to China in the 1990s, I really knew I was in a foreign country and culture.  I took a train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. It had a uniformed Chinese Communist crew.  Two hours later I was in the smoggiest place I had ever seen. Brown haze everywhere.  

A van took us from the train station to the hotel.  The driver hit a bicyclist and kept going. The bicyclist was supposed to get out of the way of the van. There is no tradition of chivalry I would later learn riding in Beijing, Shanghai and near the Great Wall.  

So Panama is just like home--if it rained every day.

 

Buy or Rent? I Bought a Bike Right Next to the Panama Canal

 

My second day in Panama, I bought a Giant SCR 16-speed aluminum road bike.  I bought the bike for $500 at a used bike shop in a residential neighborhood near the canal called ReCyclingPTY. They had road and mountain bikes of many vintages.  They also rent bikes for $50 per day  or $200 per week so $500 to buy for 6 to 9 months is a much better deal for me.

Andre, the owner, will also sell the bike on consignment when I leave. 

Right after I bought the bike I rode to the first lock on the Panama Canal.  Soon I hope to ride the length of the canal continuing on the same road.   

Moving to Panama--For a Year

 

The Panama Canal

For the third time in my life, I will live in another country beginning on August 15.  My wife got a Fulbright grant to study abroad for a year, so I will join her in Panama City on the Pacific Coast of a very narrow country. She is going to study math and to teach in a community outreach math program (She is fluent in Spanish). 

While she works, I will make dinner and ride coast to coast! I have never ridden coast to coast before on the six continents I have visited, but Panama will be the place I make my first transcontinental ride from Pacific.  The distance is 75km or 45 miles ocean to ocean. A lot less distance than New York to San Francisco.

The last two times I lived overseas, I was a soldier. I carried a gun.  This time, no gun.  

In Iraq I had the gun all the time. 

In West Germany during the Cold War, I rode inside my gun. I also carried a sidearm. 

I have never been to anyplace between Tijuana, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, so there are many places to explore.  Panama is a beautiful place from all I have read and heard, and the canal is a marvel of engineering.  So it should be an amazing year.