Bach Travel Diary: Oct. 25, 2011

Last night our ship was at anchor in a bay just outside of Fuerte Amador. In the morning a tender took us to the marina in Fuerte Amador where we caught a bus for a tour of Historic and modern Pamama City. Our first stop was the museum where we were shown how the original people lived. Then we visited Panama de Vieja which is the original settlement made in August 15, 1519 by the Spanish conquistador, Petro Aries de Avila. This settlement was destroyed by the infamous Captain Morgan on January 21, 1671 who burnt the city and left with all the riches. We saw the ruins of the original settlement that are now being preserved. Instead of rebuilding the city at the location of the ruins, the city was rebuilt on a peninsula about 8 km from the original location. We visited this location and saw the old buildings and the very narrow streets. We saw in this place a church built with a altar area of gold.
What impressed us most was the new condominium buildings some of which had 80 stories high. Between the codominium buildings and the beach is a wide boulivard called Avida Balboa that has 4 lanes in each direction. This boulivard with the many new condominium building on the other side of the boulivard made a very beautiful looking city.
It was quite hot and muggy during the tour when we were outside. When we finally got back to the ship and had lunch, we had a heavy storm when it rained heavily for about 1 hour and then cleared up. This we were told was the usual weather of Panama City at this time of year.