If this is the first post you've read about my Panama trip, start here instead.
After visiting the canal, we ventured on to El Amador. There's not much to do there, but we ate dinner and enjoyed the view:
If you go to Panama City, there are very few things that are attractions there. The city is dirty and mainly business oriented, not a lot of tourist attractions.
One of the places to see is Casco Viejo, the old town and the French Plaza. The sad part is that the U.S. struck this part of town in 1989. I had no idea before I went on this trip. It seems like everything was pretty much left the same, so it's a mix of war aftermath and newly renovated buildings.
On the other side of this building, there is a large open plaza where the native Panamanian indians and people traveling through Panama sell their wares. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip, but I didn't get any pictures!
There's a really bad neighborhood just outside of Casco Viejo that you pass on the way there. It's pretty much made up of the people that were displaced because of the U.S. strike on their country. There was so much destruction and not enough new jobs, and a lot of people lost their jobs after they were finished building the canal. There are a lot of drugs and there is a lot of crime in the area. We didn't have any issues, but we avoided the area as much as possible.
It's hard not to take this area and the destruction that we caused and not wonder what it's like for the countries we're doing this to now. It really opened my eyes.
Rachel May
