Tour day trip # 2

Thankfully Thomas, my tour guide has a heart and understood my depression since our day had just begun, so after the canopy tour, and another stop at a "ruff" style zoo that didn't have much to offer, he drove me back to the hotel to get the memory card and we continued on to "The Hill", a mountain that you can see from anywhere in Panama city with a Huge Panama flag. The hill also overlooks all of downtown and parts of the canal and the Bridge to the Americas. Did you know where Panama City is now, that it is all built on reclaimed land. Yep, the entire city is built on land that was removed from the making of the canal itself.

Construction here is going crazy. Tons of people are starting to make there 2nd homes here since you can buy housing and you don't have to pay any property tax for 20 years. Needless to say they have the largest skyscrapers in all of Latin America with no threat of hurricanes or any other bad weather, just rain daily.

It was kind of funny when we were on top of this hill, I saw my first (tiki)monkey. How ironic, on top of some hill that had a 1 lane road and not in some forrest trip that I paid money for.. HA ha.. Silly tourist...

Panama is also in the path of all the birds that fly south for the winter along the Continental Divide. There are ton's of people (with heavy duty cameras and binoculrs) that come here to bird watch, count the number of condours (all voltures), hawks, butterflies, humming birds, etc. If it migrates, it comes thru here, pretty amazing.

Tour guide Thomas, after descending this sometime trecherous one way road down the Hill, took me all around the city showing me points of interest like the Amador Causeway where huge boats reside and dock in order to enjoy the city.

We continued on to the metropolitan part which was driving thru all the constuction of these huge buildings, that include one of Donald Trumps.

We then went on to the Panama Viejo (old Panama). We drove by old ruins that have been falling and some are being rebuilt, but at a very slow rate. These are mostly church's and missonaries from the time that Capatain Morgan (yep, the one some of you drink; he later died in the Bahama's) ran this city. Did you know he took it over from the Spaniards in the 1500's? Anyway, I did see something that was interesting that Thomas pointed out. The city had moved it, why, it seemed to not have an answer, but why do that??? They repositioned a huge rock that was used back in the old days to sacrifice virgin's to the God's near the ocean.
It's obviously in a good spot since it was full of trash. What a shame.

In this area there is also the oldest bridge in South America that has stayed errected and untouched since it was declaired unsafe to use. I believe it was made in the years of 1530's. The government just don't seem to care about keeping history around in this country.
From what Thomas said, it's a shame and they only care about building the big buildings for the future, brother, sad aint it?