Juxtaposition Face-Plants

Panama City, PANAMA
Feb.21-22, 2015
[MAP II]

Panama City is a fascinating city. The old town, Casco Viejo, is of quaint Spanish colonial buildings with their wrought iron balconies or fancy carved wood, pretty colours, elegant.  Round moorish windows and tile work are subtly integrated here and there.  A second look brings forth the places that once were lovely, but now are decrepit and falling apart - some have fallen apart - with fresh laundry hanging on lines across the windows.  Across the bay is the business downtown, with blocks and blocks of glassy skyscrapers.  Indigenous people in their intricate colourful clothing weave into the crowds of fair Spanish-like to dark indigenous-like faces, along with the occasional whitey tourist.  I find I am not comfortable in a new town until I walk around and get to know it a little.  Kind of like meeting a new person I suppose.

Iglesia La Merced - dating back to
the late 1600's

Renovated shop below, decrepit abodes above

The Moorish-style lobby in our second hotel -
Hotel Casco Antiguo

Now I can speak architect and use "juxtaposition"

General street juxtaposition

Catedral de Panama - completed late 1700's

Across the bay from Casco Viejo is Downtown Panama City

But I wasn't thinking that when I first arrived.  Our all-day boat-and-bus trip from Bastimentos Island, in Bocas del Toro, ended at midnight, six hours later than anticipated.  When the taxi dropped us off - Jeannie, her roommate Rasheedah, and me - at our little hotel, it was all closed up, nothing but police guards, chest-pounding beats from the nightclub next door, and a few random stragglers in the dark street.  Somehow, we made enough noise and managed to rouse the owner and his English translation-helper.  I was so happy we got in that my first doubts did not register until the young translator opened the door to our, um, room.  Ish.

Bunkbed - that was not in the pictures when we booked online.  Third mattress on the floor.  An old old board floor, crud in the cracks, a thick layer of dirt and dust along the walls where people do not regularly walk.  And then I saw the single chair.  Something out of an old airplane?  Much of the covering missing, a few patches and exposed filling, with a hair brush left on the patched part of the seat (the next morning, Jeannie thought maybe it was art).  If we had glanced up, we would have seen the gaping hole, water stains and cracks in the ceiling, along with the walls that rose only 3/4 of the way to the ceiling - we saw that later when we lay down to sleep.  It was a second to take it all in, but an eternity to try and rectify what we had booked online to the horror that faced us.  A quick tour of the "kitchen", shared toilet room, shower room, and all I wanted was to lay down, close my eyes and hide in my sleep.  What else can you do at 1:30am?  I must have been desperate for escape, because only a few minutes after putting in my earplugs, the next-door nightclub beats were gone and I was waking up the following morning to Jeannie and Rasheedah's chatting.

The chair

The bunkbed

Third mattress on the floor

Unfortunately, everything looked the same in the morning.  The daylight also introduced the broken furniture stacked in various corners of the place, a doorway blocked off with a tarp.  Jeannie and Rasheedah were already well into finding and calling other places, and I worked on cancelling the rest of our 5-night reservation (on the internet which wasn't yet working), still seething, still trying to rectify in my head the images I had seen on the internet with the images that were branded on the "are you <expletive> kidding me" section of my brain.

The ceiling

Victor, the owner, seemed like a nice enough quiet older fellow, and a young child (his grandchild?) was hanging around with him in the morning.  I decided the best thing to do was to talk to him in my still-sad Spanish.  When I relayed (I think) that the room was <ahem> not what we had expected, he showed me the rooms which had been photographed for the online booking tool (AirBnB) - they were currently all booked.  Ah, I see.  I told him I understood, but that based on what we booked and what we got, we were planning to leave.  We would pay him for our night ($14 each), but would like a refund on the rest (AirBnB would normally take the next night too, and only refund the ones after that).  He understood, graciously agreed to refund 4 nights, no problem.

I am still shaking my head, still don't get it - how could he think he could offer up the barely-hostal room in place of the rooms advertised!?  But, I am glad I went to talk to him rather than write up the scathing letter I planned to send with all the photos we took, along with a damning review on AirBnB.  Something about everyone trying to do the best they can with what they've got...  I did suggest that he be careful about what he advertises and delivers, at least until he finishes renovating.  For what it's worth.

The new hotel room -
Hotel Casco Antiguo

The new place we found, the boutique-y Hotel Casco Antiguo, had a room available for the three of us - it looked like a hospital room with its four single beds in a row, crisp new sheets, white walls, and black and white tile floors.  We all let out a big loud "Aaaaah" of relief when we saw it - it was the most beautiful white hospital-like hotel room any of us had ever seen.  And it was only $13.75 each per night, including breakfast, while the hotel was under renovations.

The serenity poem sums it up well:

Grant me the serenity to accept that I cannot always be in paradise,
The courage to seek out new paradises,
And the wisdom to appreciate the juxtaposition of paradise lost and paradise found.

...or something like that.