travel

Chorrera's long-running road construction

photos by Eric Jackson

If you're at the National Bus Terminal in Albrook looking to catch a bus to the Interior, the ticke booths for the ones going to places in Panama Oeste or Cocle will frequently have a little sign specifying either "Camino" or "Autopista." If you get a "Camino" bus you will detour off the Arraijan - Chorrera Autopista for a ride through La Chorrera.

In ordinary times this would be an extra 20 minutes to half-hour, but for a long time ongoing road construction has added a few minutes to this time.

So why take the Camino bus?

Well, maybe you want to go to Chorrera, which has the best greasy fattening frituras in Panama. (You know about bollos, those filling lumps of boiled corn meal mush that usually come wrapped in the leaves of corn cobs? "Bollos chorreranos" in their simplest form have a little bacon grease to flavor them, and can come with hunks of pork and all sorts of other things to tempt the taste buds and/or clog the coronary arteries.)

You may live in Panama Oeste and find La Chorrera the closest place to shop for what you need.

You might be a soccer fan, wanting to catch a home game with Gary Stempel's San Francisco Monjes, the defending ANAPROF champs; or a curious New York Yankees fan, looking to see the place where Mariano Rivera grew up. (In the latter case, though, the bus ride through the downtown won't get you where you want to go --- you'll need to take another bus or cab ride out to the corregimiento of Puerto Caimito to see the sardine fishing village from whence the Yanks' closer hails.)

Will the widened highway through Chorrera help much? If nothing else it has created construction jobs, but such projects often do little to alleviate traffic congestion in the long run. We shall see --- one of these days.