travel

The Atlantic side province of Colon, and particularly the city of that same name, may be home to the import/export duty-free zone that's the main engine of Panamanian commerce, but it's also an area with serious economic problems and the social ills that go along with them. Thus Colon has a reputation among people who know the place only by reputation as this miserable urban jungle in which those dumb enough to visit will surely be robbed and killed.

There ARE certain areas in Colon where you will want to take certain precautions --- including some alleys and shantytowns that should be avoided altogether --- but there are lots of cool things to see and do in Colon province, including Colon city. The photos on this page were all taken within Colon city limits, in and around La Represa.

La Represa was one of the little pockets of the old Canal Zone in which property owners who were around before the canal was built were allowed to stay. However, under the old regime Panamanians were discouraged from living in the Canal Zone in many ways, one of which was to leave La Represa unconnected to the electric power grid until the 1970s.

You get to La Represa by taking the Trans-Isthmian Highway to the place where you would turn off to go the the Policlinica Hugo Spadafora (the old Coco Solo Hospital) and turning off the highway in the other direction instead. Once you get past this relatively recent housing development you will enter the Area Recreativa Lago Gatun, part of which is shown above. This beautiful urban park is never crowded and surely has to be counted as one of Colon's crown jewels.

Moving past the park, you will notice that the road up this little peninsula on Gatun Lake is medium-horrible. The people who have built nice homes in La Represa come and go in four-wheel-drive vehicles. But then, the difficult access has its compensations, as you may notice in the background of the photo above.

At La Represa you're dealing with an established little community with its own parish church and public school, and a population that lives from a combination of jobs in the city, subsistence farming and fishing. A few of the locals have found work as caretakers and maids at upscale homes and cottages in the area.

If La Represa seems at first glance to be the place where you'd want to live out your retirement dream, it may be just that. However, because it's on a lake that's part of the Panama Canal and also adjacent to a public park, there are certain building restrictions. Moreover, this is just a little peninsula, it's already inhabited and some of the land is public. You'd have to shop around to find the land you want, and most likely buy somebody's humble little dwelling to raze and rebuild from scratch.


Also in this section:
A Survivor tourist's tale
Bet you didn't know Colon was like this
Smasho!
Waiting out a lockage

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