November 20, 2005
Spirit of the Isthmus
By SILVANA PATERNOSTRO

Teddy Roosevelt, Cómo Está?

On my flight from Newark to Panama City, I wonder what I will find after years of being away. People say Panama is going to become a destination for packaged ecotours, much the same as Costa Rica. I still find that hard, and sad, to believe. From 1977 to 1986, Panama was my home - it was a Latin Casablanca, with arms runners, drug lords and revolutionaries as well as Farah Diba, Margot Fonteyn and Graham Greene.

I returned years later as a reporter after Manuel Noriega was thrown out. That Panama was about discothèques serving Dom Perignon. The men wore starched guayaberas and drove shiny BMW's, and the women wore high heels, even to the beach.

Now I am back again. As we near the city, my driver, shows me with pride all that I've missed since I've been away. "Panama has really grown," she says, pointing at MultiCentro. "The mall that competes with Miami."

I meet a landscape architect who says her Panama is not about hair and makeup. "I came here because I saw a white owl on the beach," she says.

Who will prevail? I wonder. The shopper or the nature lover?

Want a Hotel Room? Better Know Someone

Aware that there are no good hotels in Casco Viejo, the colonial part of the city, where I wanted to stay, I call my friend Ovidio Diaz Espino, a Panamanian banker who lives in New York. When I lived in Panama, Casco Viejo was rundown and dangerous. Ten years later, people are renovating buildings and opening restaurants, art galleries and jazz bars.

Ovidio bought a four-bedroom apartment around the corner from the National Theater and turned it into a bed-and-breakfast called Casa Mar Alta. It's always booked, but using Ovidio's name gets me the master suite, with all the charm and decadence of the Chateau Marmont - wraparound balconies, roof terrace, original 1920 mosaic floor tiles.

Vielka Quezada serves as the casa's lady-in-waiting. No request is taken lightly. She can iron clothes, get white cheese from Queso Chela and charter a private plane, all in one day. But alas, even my pull can't help me remain. Other guests are coming. Vielka arranges for me to move to the University Club, which turns out to be a lovely duplex with a balcony that faces another balcony belonging to a bright blue house with a rusty zinc roof that transforms the rain into a jazzy accompaniment to the blaring reggaeton.

For those who prefer a bigger hotel, there's the Intercontinental Miramar Panama Hotel, a glossy high-rise on the bay of Panama that is "so tacky," an Italian expat tells me, "Mick Jagger thinks it's cool." Jagger has been seen in Panama City a few times on his way to boarding a friend's boat that is anchored in nearby Coiba, an archipelago of 35 islands or so off the Pacific coast of Panama. I am, like Jagger, on my way there.

But First, a Little Cultura

Casco Viejo is a walled area of colonial buildings where artists, journalists and prominent rabiblancos - the local _expression for the well bred - live. Rubén Blades, the musician and now the minister of tourism, was one of the first to move in. It feels like a mix of the Lower East Side and Old Havana, with a couple of prettified streets like the ones you find in Old San Juan. Some of the buildings and parks have been beautifully restored. Others are decrepit and scary.

I sit in the Cathedral Square sipping sangria, away from the neon lights and glass-and-steel towers of Panama City. The lovely old plaza is nearly deserted. It is probably the only colonial square left in the Caribbean that is not overrun with foreigners. Women who look like grandmothers walk to 6 o'clock mass; some kids kick around a soccer ball. Don't tell these ladies that Panama is no longer about hair and makeup. I see a woman with rollers the size of soup cans taking communion.

Outside Las Bovedas, the old Spanish fort and prison, the Kuna Indians sell trinkets to tourists. Elderly women in traditional dress don't say much, but a young man in a T-shirt tells me he is a university student majoring in tourism. Downstairs, in what served as prison cells for pirates, is an art gallery that houses la coleccion de la dictadura, the dictator's collection. I've noticed that everyone now refers to the Noriega years as la dictadura, as if reducing

them to a generic label affords some patina from the past. Of the hundreds of confiscated paintings, my favorite is the one of Noriega's wife wearing pearls, with much whiter skin than she has. I ask about prices, thinking it would be fun to own a piece of art from a deposed dictator, but the receptionist, who has gone back to filing her long nails, tells me it is not for sale. The collection is considered national patrimony.

Is Biology Destiny?

In 1992, soon after Noriega was hauled off to prison, I flew over Panama with the new drug czar, who wanted to show journalists how, with the nature of the coastline, it was going to be "very hard" to eradicate drug traffic in Panama. "Look at all those nooks and crannies," he said. Where he saw ominous drug depots, I saw amazing places to surf and to dive.

What I didn't know then is that all those beaches are also unique and fragile. Panama has one of the richest ecosystems on the planet. "It is Mecca for tropical research," says Hector Guzman, a scientist stationed here with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute at Naos Marine Laboratory. "All the theories of tropical evolution originate here." He tells me how three million years ago, North and South America were not attached by Central America. The Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean were one body. Panama used to be hundreds of tiny islands that came together through a geological process. This closure brought much change in climate and in rainfall. "It all happened right here,"Guzman says.

For tourists, this means more birds than Costa Rica, more sharks, more whales, more coral reefs. The place is such an important ecological site that Frank Gehry, who is married to a Panamanian, has designed a museum to celebrate its biodiversity. A campaign is afoot to save the island of Coiba, which is its own Galápagos, a breeding ground for endangered sea life and home to plants, monkeys and birds that exist nowhere else. When I finally make it here - in a soaking rain and an uncovered boat - I am greeted by huge mangroves whose roots resemble black serpents, as entangled as the electric cables of Mexico City. I see dolphins and whales and a rainbow as big as the Brooklyn Bridge. I get to meet Tito, a tame crocodile that comes when called, if you have food.

Coiba is pristine because it was a penal colony for years.

In July of 2004 it finally became a national park, and there is just a handful of cabins for visitors. It has a population of about 25 policemen and park rangers and a dozen prisoners who help with the cooking and upkeep. It is the only place I've been where you can have coffee in the morning made by a convicted killer.

Getting the Goods

A day of driving, shopping and eating in Panama City is like going around the world. There is so much Hebrew spoken at the kosher deli in Punta Paitilla that it feels like Tel Aviv. Cross the gate with the red dragons and yellow lanterns of Barrio Chino, and you feel as if you've landed in Shanghai. Casa Danté, an elegant Spanish-style house on Calle Cincuenta, is a mini-Bloomingdale's. It's a nice, sobering sight between a huge McDonald's, the banks and a slew of supersonic-looking Ferrari and BMW dealerships.

There are a few fun, kitschy stores like Sol de la India on Avenida Tumbamuertos, which specializes in everything Indian. The best magazine shop is in a drugstore in Punta Paitilla, the Farmacia Arrocha, where I could leaf through Hola! for hours. Bargain hunters head to Salsipuedes, which means "get out if you can." It is Panama's bazaar, a street so narrow and filled with vendors that it is dark at noon. A step away is Santa Ana's Plaza, where on a weekday at noon you can visit a doctor and have your fortune told, each for $5.

You can buy lottery tickets and three different tabloids ablaze in brightly colored gore. You can also get a shoe shine.

At Café Coca Cola, an institution among the Avenida Central crowd, they do a good café con leche. If you like eating at Chino-Latino dives in New York, go in. Be careful crossing the street. The Red Devils, Panama's infamous buses, seem to stop for nothing. Panama is famous for its "bus art." On the windows, drivers write their girlfriends' names in gothic letters, and they compete with one another to see who has the better pop portrait spray-painted on the back. Britney Spears and Shakira are current favorites, after Jesus on the cross, of course.

Lo Que Pasa, Pasa

I think Panama will never be Costa Rica, although Panama clearly surpasses it in natural beauty. Costa Rica is an unambiguous magnet for ecotourists; Panama is too hard to categorize. It's a laboratory for scientists; a private Xanadu for the jet set; a moneymaker to real estate developers; and, yes, a money hider. Panama would like to become a place where people go to forget about their lives and see birds. But that is all pretense.

As I stand on the corner of Avenida España and Calle Argentina, an ugly intersection far from the charm of the Casco Viejo and the beauty of Coiba, I realize Panama is uncontrollable; it is a place that serves as a thoroughfare. Panama has a canal mentality - it lets anyone and anything move through it, as long as they pay. While some visit Panama for the birds, and many more will, many still go for the paradox.