Touring Panama: Casca Viejo, Chocolate, Cinta Costera

I recently wrote that I was going to try to (a) widen my Panama friend circle and (b) do some touristy things.  Who knew I'd start making inroads on both so quickly?

Jessie (short for "Yesenia") was one of the volunteers who attended my practice-run workshop, and she mentioned that she had tickets for a . . . (I'm going to do the dramatic pause thing here, because for me this is so cool) . . . for a Chocolate Tour. 

Was I interested in joining her?  Oh, man, WAS I!  

Turns out Jessie also likes public transportation, and even more likes walking all over, so the two of us had a total blast.  The chocolate tour was only a small part our 5-hour excursion together (6-hour if you count my bus rides to and from the main terminal to meet her).  By the time I got back home I was more happily exhausted than I'd been so far during my times on the isthmus.  So here's a glimpse of what our lovely day was like.  

Metro

My bus card also works on the Panama City metro, but I hadn't ridden it yet, so I was glad for my first chance to take a ride on the trains I'd heard a lot of good stuff about.  There are two lines, with a third line still under construction.  

I love Panama public transportation, and not just because of the cost, even though it turns out the metro is more expensive than riding a bus: we rode Line 1 and I had to shell out a whole 35¢.  Line 2 is more expensive still at 50¢.  Locals boast about having the cleanest train system in all of Latin America, and I have to say the trains were not only clean, but quick, quiet, and comfortable.  There's limited seating because they fill up with a LOT of people during the week days, but our trains on Saturday were relatively empty. 

Excited about boarding my first Panama city Metro train. 

A taxi ride

Oh, heck was THAT an experience!  I've been warned by many people in many ways not to trust local taxis; to take Ubers instead.  The reason people give is that taxi drivers can be dishonest; there are lots of stories about drivers charging tourists $20 for what should be a $3 fare.  But when Jessie (a local) hailed one to take us from the Metro stop to the Chocolate tour, I figured I'd be okay with her.  And it's true that we didn't get ripped off; our ride cost $3.00 -- for one person, it would have been $2.50.  Entirely reasonable.

But wow was the actual driving experience like being in a cartoon video game.  The driver darted in and out of highly congested traffic, several times pulling into oncoming traffic or turning the wrong way along roads.  It seemed he used equal parts of accelerator and brake, and knew the width of his car to within a quarter of an inch, the way we slipped through narrow gaps between other cars.

At one point, he stopped to pick up another passenger as well.  When we got close to our destination, he saw another family waiting for a taxi and asked us to get out early so he could switch fares.  

It was an experience I'm definitely not going to repeat on my own!  So, check that one off the list.

Glad to be on the outside of this vehicle!

Chocolate Tour!

We paid for a pair of tickets to tour the "I love chocolate" store in Casco Viejo (a historic area within Panama City).  This place demonstrates how to make chocolate, and it actually makes chocolate, and it also celebrates chocolate -- for example with these sculptures, carved/molded out of chocolate by local artisans, and featuring Panamanian iconography.

In front of a chocolate sculpture of a costume and a bird,
and a new moon with a lotus (behind Jessie).

They gave us a description of how chocolate is made, which I will probably mangle (the description was all in Spanish, and I understood much of it, but still I make no promises of accuracy).

It all begins with the cocoa fruit, which looks a bit like a squash on the outside.  But when you smash it open (our guide literally smashed the fruit against a wall to demonstrate how it splits in two), it reveals some seed pods inside.  The seed pods are hard and brown, but they're coated in a sweet, slimy material.  We were all invited to pop a coated pod in our mouths and suck on it; our first taste of cocoa in the wild.  It was yummy, but not yet chocolate.

A cocoa fruit 

Jessie later ate one of the raw pods; it's a little bitter and not particularly yummy, but perfectly edible.

What a raw cocoa pod looks like if you break it in two,
which is not hard to do.

The next step is to collect a bunch of these seed pods into a wooden cask, and to let them ferment naturally, like beer.  The fermentation process creates alcohol, and then a vinegar, and finally turns sweet.  In doing so, the liquid seeps back into the pods and changes them, so that they become more . . . well, more like what you want to make chocolate with.  When they're done after about 6 or 7 days, you dry them in the sun* until they're dark and beautiful and ready for milling.

* "sun" is highly intermittent here in Panama, of course.  

They use something like a green house for drying their cocoa beans. 

The bowl on the left shows the fermented-and-then-dried
cocoa seeds.  Note also the big metal spatula; 
we'll see it in action soon!

When the seed are at this stage, if you peel off the outside husk, you can eat them.  Did we eat these seeds ourselves?  You bet we did!  These could be addictive snacks, if what comes next weren't even better.

A husk and a cocoa bean de-husked.  It smells amazing!

After that, you mill the cocoa beans, and then it's all about temperature.  Temperature, temperature, temperature.  The marble tabletop was cool; the chocolate was warm; thermometers played starring roles.  Our guide made a big display of pouring the chocolate onto the tabletop and swirling it around with his metal spatula to bring the temperature back into a good range.  Then he scraped it back into the bowl, and poured the thickened chocolate into a mold.  

Chocolate art happening right before our eyes. 
The mold in the top right was the last step.

We got to choose our own toppings (which became, I guess, our own "bottomings") for the bars that became our takeaways.  Our instructor used cookies on one and plantains on another that he shared with us.  I chose coffee and salt.  He stuck the mold in a fridge, and it quickly became six chocolate bars.

What the chocolate looked like after it cooled
and he popped it out of the mold.

While we were waiting for the mold to cool, there was a bunch of tasting going on.  The tasting got messy but we didn't mind.  Not at all!

Nom nom nom.

And then, with edible souvenirs in hand, we thanked our guides for a lovely tour of chocolate making, and headed out for the next adventure.

Casco:  Historic Panama City

The chocolate shop/museum is in a beautiful old part of the city, with narrow (and beautiful) streets.  

 

Jessie right outside the Chocolate shop/museum.

It's right near the Pacific Ocean, and often you can see glimpses of the water as you look along the streets lined with beautiful houses.

Beautiful streets:  and look! there's sunshine!

We were there on September 7, which is an important day for Panamanians:  it's the anniversary of the Torrijos-Carter Treaty, in which U.S. President Carter agreed to cede control of the canal to the Panamanian people before the year 2000.  Either because of that, or maybe because of a celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, we wandered into a parade as we were leaving the chocolate place.  

Music in the streets

And ahead, a platform (with white flowers)
on which they're carrying as statue of the virgin (in a blue robe).

There's much more to see in this area: there's a beautiful cathedral, and also the president's palace.  There are, as you might expect, many stores selling traditional and not-so-traditional Panamanian wares.  The architecture is lovely and everything feels cozy.  Cars do come through, but the streets are so narrow that it feels very pedestrian friendly.

However, we didn't see much because instead we took a walk along the . . .

Cinta Costera

The Cinta Costera is a long (more than 4 mile), scenic walkway along the coast of Panama City.  The part that is in Casco Viejo feels particularly bucolic.  

A portion of the walkway runs under flowery bowers, 
with vendors selling traditional arts and crafts called "molas"
along the way. 

The path passes by a small plaza that's an homage to the French builders who started the canal, including a giant tower topped by a rooster, and a statue of Ferdinand Lesseps, the man who chose Panama as the site for the canal (against the advice of many geologists and surveyors).  Lesseps swore he'd build a sea-level canal (with no locks, that is); his plan ended up dooming tens of thousands of workers to horrible yellow-fever and malaria deaths; he bankrupted countless French citizens, and ultimately ended up abandoning the canal and selling off what remained of the project to the U.S.  So, here's his statue, in a rotunda with placards extolling the history of the area.

As we left Casco Viejo, Jessie explained that she prefers walking to taking cabs when she can . . . a sentiment I agreed with even before I'd had my first Panama cab ride, and so we walked happily along the Cinta Costera.  I stopped taking as many pictures, but there was so much to see.  There's a pedestrian bridge that just makes a big loop out into the ocean.  There are amazing views of the ocean and also the city.  

Looking at modern Panama City and its sky scrapers 
from Casco Viejo.

Getting closer to downtown.
The buildings are even more beautiful in person. 
(It's hard to see in this photo, but the second building
has multicolored balconies, very pretty).

There are raccoons that beg food from passers by.  (In Spanish, a raccoon is a "mapache", not to be confused with an indigenous people from Chile called "mapuche".)

The closer you get to downtown, the more street vendors, playgrounds, performers, markets, and other fun things there are to see.  

We were fortunate that, despite the constant thunder we heard off in the distance, the rain held off the whole time.  The cloud cover made walking even easier; we were sweaty of course, but it wasn't blazing hot.  

And still, by the time I got home I was pretty darned tired, and I'd even earned myself a small blister.  

We'd planned to go out the next day to climb Ancon Hill, but our weather luck turned against us; Sunday was a "pouring buckets all day" kind of a day, and instead of hopping on a bus after church to head down to the terminal, I tucked my shoes under my arm to keep them dry and walked home barefoot under my umbrella.  So Ancon Hill will be a tourism adventure for another day.