San Lorenzo fort and Gatun Locks

This morning, I wake up early to catch the train to go to Colon, on the Pacific Coast. This train goes along the canal and is very famous, but I heard it was difficult to get a ticket so I arrived at the station at 6 am. I understood quickly why. This train is for workers who live in Panama and go to Colon to work everyday. They is only a wagon for tourists and it's quite small, so places are limited.

Anyway I got on board! Built at the same time as the canal, the rail fell into disrepair but in 1998 the Panama Government partnered with Kansas City Southern, an American-based railway holding company, to create the Panama Canal Railway Company. In 2001 was introduced a passenger service.
It take 1 hour to travel the 76 km and 304 bridges and culverts. A nice trip looking on the Canal and Gatun lake.

On the train, I met Alan and Alan, 2 guys traveling together from UK and Canada. And we decided to take a taxi together to visit Lorenzo fort and Gatun Locks. But here in Panama all the touristic activities are very expensive. They started to ask USD80!! but we arrived to get down to USD30!

Fort San Lorenzo is perched at the mouth of the Rio Chagres on a promontory west of the Canal. Built in 1595, by order of Philip II of Spain, the fort was under constant pirate attack. It was abandoned in 1821 by Spain when Panama became independent. The fort was subsequently used as a Colombian prison, a post office for English mail and a campsite for gold miners en route to California.

Then we went to the Gatun locks, the first one coming from the Caribbean sea and the last one coming from the Pacific. It raises southbound ships 29.5 metres from Caribbean waters to the level of Lago Gatun.
You can have a good view on the locks, better than at the Miraflores locks. We saw the last ship for the day entering the canal and the first ship getting out of the canal. So it was quite interesting.

After a quick lunch, we took a bus back to Panama City for my last night in town. Tomorrow I'm leaving at 8:25 am to go back to Guatemala. Bye bye Panama, I'll be back!

Visit of an embera village in Panama

The one thing I really wanted to do during my trip in Panama was to visit an Embera Village. After searching on the internet, I decided to book with Anne Gordon who is an american woman who married a guy from an Embera Village. The day tour costs USD90.00 but it's really worthit!

At 7:00 am, Anne came to pick me up and after picking up everybody we head to the Chagres National Park on the road to Colon. The National Park has 4 Embera Villages and Embera' Puru is the farthest and less visited. We were the only one today so it was nice. We took a 45 minute dugout canoe trip on the river to get to the village.

The village has 24 families with a total of 114 persons. Kids go to school in a neighboor village until 6 grade, founded by the government. So at least all kids can speak Spanish and can read and write. Then if they want to continue school, they have to go to Panama City which is a big step. Anna has created a scholarship program to help some of the kids to study in a private school in Panama City. 3 students has finished high school last year and one is going to University. Which is really exciting for them!

People wear almost no clothes. Men wear only a tissue to hide their intime parts and have their bodies covered with painting. Women wear a colourful skirt (made in Japan with designs from the village). But with the heat, you wish you were like them!

We spent the day in the village, learing more about the culture, seeing traditional dances, doing a short hike in the jungle to learn about medicinal plants, and having tatoos! I did my left arm, it's supposed to last for 10 days so let's see ;)

We went with a young movie director and his crew who are planing to do a film in the village. They are from the States but Andrew, the director, has a Panamian mother and grand father. There was too the director of a TV from Venezuela named Latina Producciones who want to shot a small documentory on the ecotourism in the village. Seems they are very famous :o)

We were back at Panama City by 6 pm. To see my pictures, click here