My Travels in Panama

Located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal is the Amador Causeway, a road and pedestrian walkway that connects the mainland of Panama City with three islands. This causeway was built with material extracted from the Culebra Cut when the Panama Canal was built from 1904-1914. It provided a breakwater for ships waiting to enter the Canal, and to prevent the buildup of sediment. Later the United States militarized the promontory and fortified it with ordnance during the two...

 Good roads leave no traces in the memory – smooth, seamless, without jarring bumps or sudden twists, they are the silent asphalt arteries that carry us from one place to another as we go about our daily lives, never calling attention to themselves. Not so with bad roads.  A bad road, like a bad marriage, feels endless, terminal, and impossible to escape, even years later.

 

I have seen many bad roads around the world. Some in Central America are...

My first trip to Panama was an accident. I had originally planned a holiday in the Brazilian Amazon. I like tropical jungles – big, green, humid things with massive, towering trees, snakes, and animals whose names I do not know and cannot pronounce. The strangeness of jungles appeals to me – strange at least for someone like myself from the wintry reaches of Canada.

It was my habit to take a winter vacation around March, just when I could no longer stand the grey,...