Down in Panama

I spent the last week in Panama, which proved a cool relief to the overwhelming heat back in Washington, DC (over 100° F).

Rainy season means that for me, it rained almost every day–big, heavy, tropical downpours that came and went and left the ground fresh and the forest teeming with life. I think that’s why I love it so much.

Airlines and hotels and Christmas holidays have created “high” and “low” seasons for us, but nature has its own highs and lows, as well as its wet and dry. While most travelers head south in winter, I enjoy going in summer because the rainy season is so animate. The animals, plants and flowers are awake and alive and everywhere you step sets something into motion. Simply standing in the middle of the rain forest offers a concert of wildlife: hummingbirds, loud bugs, screaming parrots, chirping frogs and the thrashing and calling of loud monkeys high up in the trees.

I flew into Panama at dusk–a country so narrow that from an airplane, it takes less than five minutes to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. As our flight descended, I caught a glimpse of the nearly empty Caribbean coast and in the middle of the darkening shore, a vague and flickering glow. It was a village of thatched roofs, lit up not by electricity but by dim orange firelight–I think that’s the first time I’ve seen such a thing from a jet plane. I was astounded to be on a commercial airliner staring down at a primitive Indian village of thatched roofs. What’s more–not five  minutes later we had crossed the high mountains and thick jungles of the country’s middle and were landing in the country’s capital–Panama City–a citadel of spindly skyscrapers that look like a hundred Lego towers crowding the edge of the Pacific Ocean. That such a boundless city and such a quiet village exist side by side is exactly why I love Panama. This country offers the whole range of humanity and civilization–as much or as little as you want.

My time was short but I made the most of it, spending a few days in the thick of the rain forest, enjoying the animals, as well as traveling out to a Wounaan indian village on the Chagres River. It was not my first time in Panama, nor will it be my last. Like most Central American countries, there is so much packed into such a tiny space, and each area so unique and particular. Best of all, it’s only four hours from home.

Four hours from home and a good twenty degrees cooler.

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