This cool gentleman playing an old, beaten up banjo was one of the best sights and sounds from our evening stroll around Panama’s old city.
I’m going to miss the view, sitting on the 10th-floor balcony, looking out over the Pacific and the dozen-and-more ships lined up to enter the Panama Canal.
Enveloped in a humid wash of sound, temperature and flavor, there is no better word to describe the experience than vivid. Senses are assailed here with unknown variables, experiences that defy description, though surely they’re primal, continuous since the birth of time.
A particular mangrove copse down and to the left of the beach has called to me again and again. For some reason, maybe based in my reptilian first brain, I am drawn to it at high tide and low. During low ebbs, I’ve wandered among the rocks, plants, mud, lizards, birds and sounds. During the tide’s high flow, I’ve kayaked through looking for something perhaps unseeable, unknowable.
Beautiful, long and languid alabaster birds casually step further as I pass. Pelicans and other birds of sea inquire about the visitor, then they too wander away. There are sounds that scare me, probably deep bassoon frogs, hopefully so. There are steps not taken for fear of snakes or crocodiles. Sometimes I’m a real wussy.
Across the isthmus there are similar spaces, the whole country is teeming with a vivid vida I’ve never felt before. It’s January everywhere else; here it’s mid-August, Alabama.
We traveled along a jungle path the other day and saw a sloth hanging upside down, slowly collecting and munching on leaves. That sloth had it right; you live here, you sleep and hang out as much as possible.
We saw monkeys that shimmied down branches to our idling boat, putt-puttering off THE canal. My daughter spotted a baby croc, harmless in its infancy, while I looked for its mother. Birds of every color hover high or flap low, one of the greatest concentration of exotic birds anywhere.
My pictures feel vivid too.
Flying out, it takes three or four attempts over 48 hours for us to all make it home. I realize how privileged we are in our First World. Though I’ve dreamt of Panama since coming home. Maybe it’s Michigan in January; though maybe it’s something deeper.
PANO-ma 1 : Looking out over the Pacific ocean as ships to the left wait to enter the canal.
PANO-ma 2: Flowers and towers. The Old City built in the 1600s and the new city still being built.
PANO-ma 3: A ship heads through the Panama Canal at the Miraflores locks.
Iconic Panama hats are sold everywhere, even though the majority of them are made in Ecuador.
A white-faced capuchin monkey came within a few meters of us.
Eduardo manned the helm while Alex looked for wildlife as we patrolled the backwaters of the famed Panama Canal.
Reservoir Daughters (and wife and guide, Guibel).
Mi familia es muy bonita!
A newly married couple spent “literally” all their time together.
Shadow play on a pillar along the old wall built in the 1600s around Panama’s old city.
What’s the first thing I photograph when I get to Panama: the amazing scenery, the beautiful people or that canal thingy? None of the above when there’s a lizard down below.
This one-year-old crocodile is actually a lot smaller than it looks, though I wouldn’t go petting it.
Alex, a naturalist, also took us on a jungle walk through the rainforest.
