Take me down to Panama City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty…

I apologize for channeling this band, sometimes my brain is not my best friend. My somewhat protracted series related to Panama is soon coming to an end. Yes, I’m milking it, but since I don’t travel every other week I sort of need to. After this post there will be a wrap up with a whole bunch, ok, a medium bunch, of scuba videos and miscellaneous pics. Following that I’ll leave you alone for a while.

Panama City, or Ciudad Panama, has a pretty impressive skyline. All of it built in the last ten years.

Recently Panama has been in the papers (haha) because of the banking shenanigans going on. I have an ambivalent position on this matter. Obviously, if you’re the viceroy of Iceland, and you have been advocating austerity because oooooh (insert shocked viceroy) evil banks fucked your country over, and then you turn around and hide your own assets from your revenue people, you’re a massive dick, and a crook. My dad would say you deserve to be beaten with muddy galoshes. My dad was a kindhearted man. Then again, if you’re an actress/whatever person with no skin/honour in the game and your accountant is like, hey, I might have something interesting for you… Well, I don’t know what I would do, generally I’m in favour of paying taxes but.. well sometimes you just feel like you’re being taken for a ride. I just think a lot of people tearing their shirts open on church steps and screaming bloody injustice about this would have done the same thing if they could, if they had the cash. Maybe they’re just jealous they don’t. As usual I digress.

The pic below is part of Panama City as I saw it, über modern, a little gaudy and the infrastructures, check out the electric wires, haven’t quite caught up. I’m very curious how it will look ten years from now, whether the boom will be sustained and the buildings maintained or if a certain decrepitude will settle in. Will the international banking go away? Probably not, but what if it did?

We were not long in Panama City, just long enough to get off a plane at a small airport, spend a day and night in the old part of town and then grab a cab to the new airport. Still, we managed to have a great time.

We elected to stay in the old quarter, because downtown looks just like Miami with some Atlantic City thrown in, and not the good bits either. Trump hotel or Mariott? No thank you. When possible we usually prefer stuff with more character. The Casco Viejo, Casco Antiguo or San Felipe (all the same thing), the locals just say the Casco, looked more promising in terms of an authentic non homogenized experience. It’s nice to feel like you’re somewhere else, when you’re, well, somewhere else. Interchangeable hotels and restaurants are not my thing. In the Casco there are no high rises or McDonald’s, but instead old colonial buildings and lots of semi ruined churches. Pretty much home yeah?

It was a very hot and humid tropical day as we explored the Casco, I’ve heard it compared to Old Havana, New Orleans’ French Quarter and Cartagena. It’s changing very fast, gentrification is under way, but it is still clearly torn between two drastically different worlds. It looks like attempts are made to keep locals living there, not just drive them out with higher rents. Abandoned or gutted buildings and ruins can stand next to beautifully renovated last century homes. There’s a ton of police as well.

Our hotel, Las Clementinas, used to be an apartment building, Built in the 1930’s, it is now a high end boutique hotel in every sense, but all around it is still the old Casco, the one before the tourists came.

Parts of the Casco are still very rough, and just next to it is El Chorillo, a virtual maze of buildings and poverty. Driving through it our taxi driver was like “yeah, it’s good I know where I”m going”. The police are extremely present in the Casco, not surprising since you have tourists and the presidential palace. Apparently officers stationed at some corners will simply forbid you to go past certain intersections.  Not being savages, we were drinking gin and tonics after sundown so I can’t vouch for it, but I tend to believe it. Did we feel unsafe? No. Did we push our luck? No. Even in the daytime some of the back streets looked dodgy.

Big money is being poured into the Casco, it seemed like all the old churches were in the process of extensive renovations, and the façades of ancient buildings are covered in scaffolding and preserved, while the insides are being completely redone. Still some buildings just looked abandoned. You get this feeling that for a long time this neighbourhood and its historical houses and churches were completely neglected. Clearly that is no longer the case.

For what it’s worth, this place has the potential to become a jewel of history and architecture, and speaking to people that live in the Casco, it seems to be headed that way. I certainly hope so, because its charms are undeniable.

The architecture is very Spanish colonial, as you would expect, and old churches are found seemingly everywhere. You’re walking through the narrow streets of history.

And then you wonder what happened to this scooter.

The Casco is the old Panama City, I mean the one that was built in 1673 after the old old Panama City was pretty much completely destroyed by fire during an attack by pirates, not just any pirate, a certain captain Morgan… I’m reading an old account/diary of a man that sailed under him on that expedition and I’ll come back to that eventually, at least tangentially.  The city was rebuilt in a different location, the current Casco, surrounded by the Pacific on three sides, it would be easier to defend in the future. From several points at the edge of the water you can see ships lining up for the canal and the highway/bridge that encircles the peninsula, the Cinta Costera.

We walked around the Casco doing touristy stuff, taking pictures, visiting churches (yay!) and being annoyed by rude cruise ship day-trippers. Really, lower your frickin’ voice when you’re in a church, a museum or a library, buster. We did buy a Panama hat (though they are actually originally from Ecuador), and let me tell you, they look good on just about everybody, even my father in law.

The vibe you get from the Casco is completely unlike North America. Restaurants open late, around 1800 at best, not a chain store or a logo in sight. It’s not hard to imagine that you are at the tail end of the 19th century just going for a late afternoon walk with your beautiful lady (or “roomate” in the case of bachelors and spinsters). The ruins and the greenery make for an ambiance I think of as “tropical gothic”. I did feel quite at home.

We walked around looking for a place to have a drink before dinner and through our meanderings actually ended up at our hotel’s bar. It was rather serendipitous and because they are so courteous ,the bar was renamed after us. Of course I jest, but still.

Even our “design studio” bears a certain resemblance.

As everybody knows, the quinine  contained in tonic is a wonderful anti-malarial drug. I was feeling a little bit feverish and so decided not to take any chances. We ordered G&T’s and a cart of buffet goodness was rolled in. Home.

You can go with the menu suggested combos or create your own. The bar tender, after a pleasant exchange about ingredients, mixed our drinks with old school skill and poured the tonic into the glass along a bar spoon so that it retained maximum fizz. Classy.

There’s much to be said about fancy gin and tonics, much like a Cuba libre it can be horrendously pedestrian, but, with the right twist, can also transport you to exotic places.

Strawberries, rose petals and cucumber worked a treat, as did pink grapefruit and black pepper. Don’t worry, the hair on your chest won’t fall off. Once our health concerns were addressed, it was time for a proper apéritif, to open up our appetite before dinner. We moved to the courtyard to enjoy the humid night. Large bats flew just above our heads. Tropical gothic I tell you.

The cocktails menu was made up of variations on classic drinks and the results extremely pleasing. It was the perfect set up for the great meal that followed. We had riffs on the Clover Club and a cousin of the Negroni called a temptation sour. Delish.

As far as I know Panamanian restaurants are not particularly renowned, but the kitchen at Las Clementinas is stellar. The risotto with pork rind was certainly one of the best things I’ve eaten this year. Everything we tasted was delicious, bold combinations of local traditions and international flavours and techniques. Highly recommended. The service was on par with the food.

The only humble hint I would have gently passed on to the management would be to improve the wine list.  You don’t need Cheval Blanc or Screaming Eagle or any other outrageously priced wine, but with food that good you need wine that can stand next to it and not feel like a red headed step child. Would I recommend people go out of their way to eat/drink there? Absofuckinglutely.

The Casco is a real neighbourhood and a noisy one. It was nice to find earplugs in our bathroom. The next morning a legit complimentary breakfast awaited us on the rooftop terrace, and I don’t mean the dreaded and dreadful continental breakfast. I mean full breakfast menu and kick ass coffee. And what a view.

After weeks of so so coffee, this hit the spot.

We had traditional local breakfast food and an omelette. Yes please.

This really was not your average room included breakfast.

It was early(ish) morning but the heat and humidity made me transpire straight through my shirt, and all I did was sit there and eat. We enjoyed a pleasant chat with the manager of the hotel, she told us about the Casco, what was around, even explained her tattoo.

We went for a last walk, another old church, this one with a huge inner courtyard with a central well, Zorro could have been hiding in the shadows. Our taxi was waiting when we came back.

We were ending a great trip on a high note.