I went off to Panama in January 2025, more or less to break up the winter in the absence of a bigger planned trip. I looked around for a destination that was new for me, and Panama City, which is a "real" city, had direct flights from Toronto and it seemed, enough to do. I found the city entertaining and I was often impressed with its infrastructure, including a modern subway that runs to the airport. I took two tours, which is very unusual for me, that brought me to the canal, an old fort on the Atlantic side of the country, and into the jungle in the interior. I crossed all three bridges over the canal. I saw monkeys and sloths. It was all enough.
Photo List - (Total 431 Photos) Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Casco Viejo (72 photos) - The Casco Viejo is the old walled historical city of Panama, though the walls have disappeared. It's on a peninsula into the Pacific, though views of the water are obstructed by an expressway built in the water but entirely circling the old city, so no ocean views are possible without also seeing the expressway. The gallery starts with a few photos from the expressway, showing the Casco from the water. It then meanders through the colonial buildings, enters into some churches and museums.
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Downtown Panamá City (101 photos) - The downtown is an area of highrises at some remove from the Casco Viejo. This gallery starts at my hotel and basically has a lot of tall buildings. For some reason, Panamá City had a huge building boom that seems to have petered out around 2012, very few tall buildings were under construction when I visited, but so many were of recent vintage. The design of the buildings is often a bit outlandish and it's hard to tell how well they will age. The gallery continues from the downtown along the Cinta Costera, an oceanside walkway. On the day that I walked it, the nearby highway was closed to vehicle traffic and was being used by bicyclists. The gallery ends with a visit to the Metropolitan Nature Park, a large park that I walked to and from. The walk was terrible but the park was beautiful and the gallery ends with some lovely views of the downtown from the park.
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Other Urban Panamá City (150 photos) - This gallery is basically everything in the city that is not downtown or the old city. It moves from north to south, starting at the edge of downtown, and moving through a long neighbourhood of gridded streets that encompasses the neighbourhood of Calidonia. This includes older commercial buildings, the city hall and other government buildings around a central park. It visits the very unremarkable National Assembly for Panamá and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The area just outside the Casco Viejo is a low-rent commercial zone that looks like it was mostly built out in the 1960's, though there are older colonial buildings in there as well. Photos here are of pedestrian streets, degraded colonial and 1960's buildings, and a few markets. The neighbourhood of El Chorillo, just west of the Casco Viejo near the ocean, is quite poor and fighting gentrification. Finally, the gallery ends on the Amador Causeway, where the Frank Gehry-designed Biomuseu is located. A few photos of the subway and the airport are right at the end.
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Outside Panamá City (108 photos) - It is very unusual for me to book tours, but while in Panamá I did two tours. The first took me to observe monkeys on Gatun Lake, to the canal, and to a ruined fort on the Atlantic coast. The second took me to gondolas that journeyed through the jungle canopy to a lookout, again to Gatun Lake, and then to a sloth sanctuary. The first was far more enjoyable and better organized. On the whole, I am not fond of tours and find them too passive with too much driving. Enforced sociability with strangers has never been my favourite thing. This gallery has lots of photos of animals, views of lakes and of the jungle. It starts at Gatun Lake, mixing together the photos from two visits there, then continues to the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal, the Castillo de San Lorenzo, the gondolas and the view, and the sloth sanctuary.
