Panama City – a city of contrasts!

We’ve had to get various repairs done on the boat whilst it’s been in Shelter Bay Marina, and currently on the hard, so we thought we would take the opportunity of coming back into Panama City and this time experiencing its more modern side. 

Located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal it is the political and administrative centre of the country, as well as a hub for banking and commerce.  Panama’s status as a convergence zone for capital around the world due to the canal, helped the city establish itself as a prime location for offshore banking and tax planning. I have never seen so many buildings display names of various banks – there are around 80 different banks in the city, at least 15 of which are local.  There are also over 200 high rise buildings which are a mix of hotels, offices and condominiums.

We booked into the Hilton Hotel which looks onto the waterfront on Avenida Balboa, the oceanfront avenue that stretches along Panama Bay. It is a 68-storey skyscraper standing 267m tall and is the third tallest building in Panama City, and the fourth in Latin America, known for its distinctive glass of gold and easily recognizable amidst all the other skyscrapers when viewed from the Old Town.  It has spectacular views across the two ends of the city, the central promenade and out across the Bay, where at any time you can see a mix of tankers, cargo ships and on one morning, a big cruise liner, waiting for their turn to go through the Canal.

Panama has a hot and humid climate with a long rainy season from May to January which explains why it is so green and lush.  The planting along the central reservation between our hotel and the waterside is beautiful.  Full of exotic trees and colourful plants, it felt like being in a park, not in the middle of a 6-lane, very busy, road. 

I spent a good few hours (and a good few dollars!) in MultiPlaza one of the best, most modern shopping malls I have ever been to, and we also enjoyed a delightful dinner at a restaurant named Azahar, which was inspired by the underground “speakeasy” of the twenties.  To enter you walked through the door of a cold room of a boutique flower shop!  Once again, our luck held out and we managed to snag a table on the outside balcony overlooking all of the Bay; the views were breathtaking.

We have really enjoyed the contrast between the old and modern parts of the city, and we’re not done yet - we will be back again after our next side trip– that will be a very exciting time as we will be taking the boat through the Canal!

We welcomed Jo, who flew in from Auckland yesterday, (she is the “Jo” in Salanjo) and tomorrow her son, wife and their two daughters will be joining us too, they live in Bogota, and we will be sailing around the San Blas islands for a week.  Minimal wifi there so you might have to wait a few days for my next update.