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Travel Related
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COLON |
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 In
all the world there is not, perhaps, now concentrated in a single spot
so much swindling and villainy, so much foul disease, such a hideous
dung-heap of moral and physical abomination as in the scene of this far-fetched
undertaking of nineteenth-century engineering .
-James Anthony Froude, British journalist, 1886
In fact, Froude never visited COLÓN , claiming that his curiosity was
less strong than his disgust, but his opinion of the city during the
French canal construction was widely shared by his contemporaries and
were he to visit the city today he would find little to change his mind.
Situated at the Atlantic entrance to the canal, with a population
approaching 150,000, Panama's second city represents the dark side of
the Caribbean that never makes it into the holiday brochures, and to
most Panamanians its name is a byword for poverty, violence and urban
decay. To a certain extent, this is fair enough - much of the city is a
run-down slum, the streets strewn with rubbish and rife with violent
crime. But despite decades of terminal decline, Colón retains the
decadent charm of a steamy Caribbean port where pretty much anything
goes, its former glory still evident in its many monuments and crumbling
turn-of-the-century architecture. Moreover, if you can get past the
initial hostility and suspicion, the people of Colón, mostly descendants
of West Indians who came here to build the canal, are as warm and
friendly as anywhere in the country, and enjoy a lively street culture
that helps offset the desperate poverty that most of them face. Most
visitors to Colón come here solely to shop at the Colón Free Zone , a
walled enclave where goods from all over the world can be bought at very
low prices - the starkest possible contrast to the rest of the city,
which they avoid assiduously. Beside the Free Zone a similar enclave
development known as Colón 2000 has been set up in a bid to persuade
passengers on the many cruise ships that pass through the canal to
disembark and spend some money, but it has little to offer besides
souvenir shops. Southwest of Colón, a road runs along the Costa Abajo to
Gatún Locks, where ships are raised and lowered between sea level and
Lago Gatún, and on to San Lorenzo , a formidable colonial fortress
overlooking the mouth of the Río Chagres.
The City
From the bus terminal, a left turn takes you north up dilapidated Front
Street (Av Frente), once the city's main commercial road, which runs
along the waterfront of Bahía Limón. Most of the shops are closed and
the elegant two- and...
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