Touring Panama: Bailes Tradicionales, Parque Omar, and Cerro Ancon

 Forecast: 88°/77° with thunderstorms likely after 11 a.m.; 

Humidity:  92%

Sunrise 6:07 am., Sunset 6:17 p.m.

I had another tourism-rich weekend; this might end up being a pattern.  I've put out lots of feelers along the lines of, "want to go to a museum with me during the week?", and everyone responds that during the week they have to go to work.  So my "work weeks" have been largely unstructured, and my weekends have been jam-packed.  Ah, the life of a retiree ex-pat!

At any rate, here's a whirlwind tour of my past weekend.

Friday night, Bailes Tradicionales

On Friday, my host Jeanette took me and a visiting speaker to a restaurant that features traditional Panamanian dancing, music, and also a tour of the traditional dance clothes.

In the first dance, I was struck by both the swirly skirts, 
and also the "traditional" jeans that the men wore. 

One of the musicians was an award-winning drummer. This guy, when he drummed, he did it so fast that I literally could not see his hands: it actually looked like his right hand was in two places at once! My husband and I are both reading a book about animal and human perception, and one of the things the author points out is that there are animals that can see faster than us; our receptors blur things faster than 60 times-per-second into a continuous movie, but other animals might see that like an old-fashioned slide show. Well, this guy's hands were an amazing example of the hand being faster than the eye. Wow!

His right hand looked, for all I could see, like TWO hands: 
one up and one down.  I was in awe.

After the drum break, the dancers changed into their "Pollera" costumes, which are amazing, hand-embroidered dresses, handmade shirts, handmade pants, and head dresses that are marvels of engineering.

The head-dresses called "tembleques"
(because they have bangle that tremble)
are apparently heavy and a bit painful to wear.

And of course, because it's 2024, we got a photo with them.

Saturday, Parque Omar (plus other stuff)

The next morning, my friend Lissette suggested that we meet at 7:30 AM at the bus terminal, from where we could go via another long and windy bus to a beautiful park called Parque Omar.

These look like vines hanging from the trees,
But they're actually branches hanging down, or "tree vines" hanging down.
Whatever those things hanging down are, they are actually part of the tree,
and not another species hanging on.
More of these later on the walk!

It's a park in the middle of Panama City, full of beautiful trees, some of which are helpful labeled with their names, and with a long, hilly, paved walking path on which many happy people were getting their weekend exercise.

I have no idea what these things are;
they look like olives, but they're much harder.

Lisette is standing in front of the tree where these interesting nuts grow.

These are different; they from a tree called a "Maria".

When you're tired, you can sit on these chairs that are also tired!
It's not as funny to say that in Spanish:
Cuando estás cansado,  puedes sentarse en estas sillas de llantas.

These tree-vine thingies sometimes make their own little mini forest grove clustered around the host tree.  This particular one remind me of the secret forest hideaway in Bridge to Terabithia.

It was a magical spot to enter.

And there were buzzards up in the balcony/branches above the vine thingies.

Also, they were beautiful flowers, but of course.

I think these flowers were designed by Dr. Seuss.

There was a small circle with several of these awesome butterfly benches, so of course we had to take a couple of pictures here.

After going to this park and walking all the way around it, and then busing back to the terminal, I went to a meet and greet for lunch. As I was leaving the lunch to walk the mile back home, the thunder began. I had my rain poncho and my umbrella with me, and maybe that was my way of warding off the rain. At any rate, 32 seconds after I shut the door to my Airbnb behind me, the skies let loose and a torrential downpour--one that lasted two or three hours--began.

Later that same evening the skies cleared, and my neighbors hosted an outdoor potluck event that I got to attend as the sun was setting. It was a lovely day.

Sunday, Cerro Ancón

There's a hill in Panama that looks like an odd addition to the city. It reminds me of making my kids a dinosaur cake where the 'mountain' was an extra cupcake or ice cream cone turned upside down on otherwise flat cake. Cerro Ancón is incredibly steep and incredibly self-contained, a little bump rising out of the land toward one end of the city. It's beloved for historic reasons, some of which include the planting of the Panamanian flag up at the top of the hill where it would be highly visible despite the U.S. control of the canal zone.

Sunday after church, my friend Jesse and I decided to climb this hill together. Jesse loves walking, and she's not afraid of the afternoon heat the way that many other people around here are, and I think we're going to be doing a lot of hiking together!

By the time we got to the top of the hill, we work we had both worked up a good sweat!

Here we are in front of the flag.

There's a statue near the flag dedicated to Amelia Denis de Icaza, the first female Panamanian poet to publish her work.  She'd written a famous poem, memorized by many school children, about her sadness when she wasn't allowed to walk along her favorite former paths anymore.  (I don't know much more about that poem . . . yet).

Also at the top, there's a great view of the city and coastline below.

Cerro Ancón is sometimes referred to as the lungs of the city. The walk itself often feels like walking through a tunnel of trees.

On the way down, we discovered one of the most scenic
dead-ends that I've ever wandered down.
We didn't mind walking down and back this path

There are other parks and museums to discover, so I'm looking forward to future weekends where I'll get to explore even more.