My unexpected day with Conrad, 78

If you read the guidebooks and travel websites, they all suggest steering clear of local people who actually want to talk to you. I’m still too young and naive to follow that advice…

My day started out by asking the hotel desk how I could take a local bus to the canal. They looked at me funny and told me I should spend $39 on the tourist trap bus (I may have added a word) which will take me to all the major sites of Panama City. As I am wont to do, I ignored this advice and started walking in the general direction of the canal thinking that I might find a bus along the way. The canal was 15 or 20 km away, I think.

After about 2 hours of walking, I ended up in Casco Viejo which is the old downtown of Panama City that has been partially, well mostly, restored by UNESCO grants/intervention. As I was staring into a shop, a man came up to me and asked if I was Canadian or from the United States (a gringo). He was happy to find out that I was Canadian, as you will learn later. We struck up a conversation and started what turned out to be a 3 hour tour of the downtown area. Of course, his intention all along was to give me a tour for money which I realized soon after it started, so I asked him how much he wanted. He said $20, so we continued as I thought it was a deal for a personal tour of the old city.

Conrad is 78 years old and has lived in Panama his entire life, having been born and grown up in the canal area. He lost his wife and home during the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 and spent 6 years in a refugee camp because of this displacement. This was one of the reasons he didn’t like gringos much and was glad that I was from Canada.

The whirlwind tour took us to a Panamanian restaurant where I had a local dish that included some prepared plantains, pulled pork and sweet rice. Of course, I forgot to take a picture as usual. I think the restaurant was called the Diablito or some such thing and was decorated with masks and papier mache statues of diablos a la Carnaval.

I also tried the Panama beer, Balboa, which tasted suspiciously like Canadian beer, but it was fine. It is also the name of a tree and the Panama currency which looks much like U.S. dollars (because they are, but they have their own coins minted in Canada according to Conrad; their dollar coin looks like a toonie).

I saw dungeons, palaces, monuments, pedestrian malls, a rooster, a leg extending from a balcony sans body, the Presidential Palace (for which I had to go through a metal detector and show my passport), an interesting looking colorful museum that was built by a Canadian architect that deserves a closer inspection, and many friendly and polite people. Panama City, like all the other places where I am supposed to be mugged and robbed, turned out to be a wonderful place.

Conrad and I ended our tour in a fishermen’s bar where we had another Balboa and enjoyed a little relaxation time. With his help, I got a $2 bus card and charged it up with $5 which is good for 20 rides, lol. Those 20 rides will be on the super nice air conditioned modern buses that travel around Panama City. Armed with my phone GPS and the ability to ask, in Spanish, whether this bus goes to a certain location, I should be able to find my way around the city without difficulty.

I didn’t make it to the canal today, but with Conrad’s advice, I now know how to get there and what to do. I also have a full three days left to go. I also found a shop that sells original paintings (thanks to Conrad which will require a little more looking, but I have a feeling that I will find something there).

One of the many sites I saw on my unexpected tour. This one is the flat arch found in the ruins of an old church.