Colon: the city tour you didn’t know you wanted to take

The Panama Railroad is said to be one of the best train journeys in the Americas and connects Panama City with the country’s second city, Colon. Most folks on this hour and a half train ride are taking it as a day trip to experience a bit of the jungle and view the canal from the comfort of an air-conditioned train car. We were the only tourists carrying backpacks who were planning to stay on in Colon. Most people would return by bus to Panama that same day, travel on to the islands, or were part of an organized tour. We didn’t have a return ticket, a hotel, or a tour booked. As the train pulled into the station at Colon I started to think that it might have been a good idea to at least have a plan!

 

Arriving at the train station in Colon we were met by a handful of taxis and tour touts hoping to recruit us for a tour or a ride into town. We joined a few other travelers who were in a van headed to the bus station and realized most people already had an idea about their onward travel. We however,  did not. In most cities this would not seem problematic, but after seeing the area around the bus station I wished we had a destination. We knew Colon had a dangerous reputation, but had not expected it to be quite so seemingly unsafe.

The driver stood at the sliding side door of the van waiting for us to exit the taxi, but none of us moved. He told us that this was the bus station, and asked where we wanted to go. It was just my friend and I and an older Italian man remaining in his van, taking in the scene at the bus station which was crawling with downtrodden locals. We asked if maybe he could take us to the center, thinking we could get a hotel or make a plan at a cafe about where to go from there. We all agreed that we had hoped to see a bit of the town. Without a word the driver closed the van door, having to jimmy it a bit to make it shut properly. It was a vehicle that would not pass an emission test in the US. He walked around the front of the van, got in, glanced back at us in his rear view mirror and said, “let me show you a bit of the town. I don’t think you understand what Colon is all about”.

He was a big guy, and spoke English like a Panamanian who had spent a good part of his youth in New York City. We drove past crumbling French colonial buildings that were struggling to remain standing and empty lots littered with old cars that marked the places where once magnificent structures had fallen victim to the elements of the tropics, human neglect and urban decay. A woman with two small children at her knees stood at the side of the road holding a hose above them, bathing them with the trickling water.

Two policemen on bikes wearing bullet proof vests stood questioning a young man wearing a guilty countenance. Makeshift shops were set up in the gutted remains of buildings and beneath crumbling stone archways in defiance of the decay. People carried on with their daily lives, but as far as I could tell it would not have been a good idea to try to explore this city alone. In fact, our driver Dino basically told us there was no way he would let us out of his car in this area.

We decided instead to stay with our driver and take him up on his original offer for a city tour. Wherever this big guy decided to take us would be better than trying to find our way around town on our own, and besides, he was a “zonian”- born in the Canal Zone, son of a U.S. army captain and a Panamanian mother, making him a perfect guide in this city where the USA had such a big presence for so many years.

We liked the way he breathed new life into what would have otherwise probably been a pretty bland city tour. This guy told the stories with character, like a spoken word poet with a rhythm and style that was all his own. Since there was just the three of us he wanted to return the van and take a smaller but better car for the tour. He also realized he didn’t have his cell phone, so we went to his house to switch cars and find the phone.

He went inside to look for the phone leaving the three of us in the car, air-conditioning and 70’s funk pumping at full throttle. The Italian sat in front and while attempting to help search the car for the missing phone, he found something unexpected. He picked up the bag from the driver seat and realized it was quite heavy, turning to us and saying, “it’s a gun inside!” None of us said anything more about the gun until later that day. The good news was, Dino found his phone after a second look in the side door of the van, so the mood, if not a little tense, was at least one of victory.

Besides the side tour to Dino’s house where we met his wife, realized he had a gun on him, and was also a DJ with a serious sub woofer in his trunk, the guy knew his history and liked to tell stories. He played his music loudly, but paused it during his monologues about Lesseps and Captain Morgan and this history of the canal. He also didn’t really care about obeying rules and signs warning, DO NOT STOP ON THE BRIDGE as we were going to cross over the site of the third set of locks currently being built for Post Panamax ships. In fact, he told us to get ready, because he was going to stop so that we could all jump out and take some “snaps” as he called them. These locks will allow container ships and cruise ships that are one and a half times the current maximum width and height and carry twice as much cargo to fit through the canal. Standing at the fence and looking down the enormous chamber you realize how massive these ships must be, and how there is no way in hell you could ever get this close to a construction site like this if we were in the United States! A few workers looked on in casual dismay by our presence but nobody stopped us. This impromptu tour was already way cooler than anything we could have booked legitimately. I was impressed with our guide Dino for his passion, his industrious character and his tenacity at making a tour of Colon seem worth it.

We talked about all sorts of things and learned a lot from our eccentric guide. We even discussed the gun control debate of of the US and asked about gun laws in Panama, which is when he decided to pull over and show us his gun. I am not a fan of guns, and being in Panama and having the driver of our unofficial tour of Colon pull over, open a sort of man bag and pull out a loaded Colt 45 was for me an unexpected experience and surely not stated on the tour brochure had there been one. He cleared the chamber and handed the gun to my friend to hold. I was having visions of an accident and could feel my heart racing. He told us that he also works as security for many visitors doing business in Panama, who expect him to be armed. He explained that in self defense of an armed attacker you can shoot to kill in Panama. Nobody wants to do this, however, because you may later face an angry family member who feels they now have the right to kill you. I was sort of half listening and trying not to be nervous around the gun, but I’m pretty sure when I asked casually if he ever had to use his gun for self defense he said, “yeah, and it didn’t end well for the other guy”.

 

But the city tour was not just guns and grit. We visited the San Lorenzo Fort, various sites of old US Canal Zone installations and even witnessed some howler monkeys in the trees on the opposite side of the canal where the jungle is thick and according to Dino, full of snakes. We stopped to check out the hotel located in the former School of the Americas building where the US trained Latin American military in anti-Communist counterinsurgency, now an outdated hotel lacking in character. We were lucky to be crossing the Gatun locks just after a giant container ship and could glimpse it within the locks, the colorful containers stacked in rows moving slowly through the locks toward the Gatun Lake. But what really made the tour, was the day to day musings of a local and his passion for his country (both the USA and Panama in equal parts) and his pride in sharing each story, each detail, and every chance to grab a “snap” of something that he knew we would have missed on any other tour of Colon. It was the tour you didn’t know you wanted to take, and the one that would leave the biggest impression. Trust your instincts. Be spontaneous. And get yourself a guide with guts (and a gun, maybe…) if you come to Colon.