Give Me Shelter

The Colón side (or ‘North’ side if that is your dubious preference) of the Panama Canal boasts only one marina – Shelter Bay Marina.  Fortunately for people passing through the canal it’s actually a pretty nice place.  It’s not cheap – but then there are very few places where to tie up to a dock that are.  But it is nice, well run, safe, and the bar has $1.00 “local” or “National” beers at happy hour every day but Sunday.

Shelter Bay is on the grounds of what used was Fort Sherman, a base then American Army abandoned when the Panama took ownership of the canal 2000.  Many of the old base buildings are there in various states of repair and disrepair.  Some are in use, some are crumbling with jungle rot.  Starting in 1951 the U.S. Army Jungle Operations Training Center ran out of the fort, and with good reason – it sits in and backs up into some serious tropical jungle.

The former fort is partly swallowed by jungle and abuts the San Lorenzo National Park.  Walking out of Shelter Bay Marina up the old army roads within minutes you feel like you are in…jungle.  You can hear howler monkeys and see exotic birds like Parakeets and Toucans.  The trees are also home to White Faced Capuchins that travel in troupes from treetop to treetop.

White Faced Capuchin

Sloth. They really do move that slow.

Really, it took him a while to move between these pictures.

Toucan

White Face Capuchin

Howler Monkeys are pretty amusing – if you were sleeping in the jungle at night and you hear the sound they make you’d think some 600 pound animal with nasty sharp pointy teeth was coming through the brush to eat you instead of a twenty pound fruit-eating monkey.  We saw (and heard) a different species in Trinidad as well, as I write this I realize I completely forgot the Trinidad monkeys in the blog – probably because I didn’t get decent pictures.  They sound impressive and you can hear them quite far away, though they are most impressive when you can see them in the trees howling at you personally.

To transit the Panama Canal in a small boat you need four “Line Handlers” – adults that can manage the lines to keep the boat in the center of the locks.  Evenstar comes with two – Kathy and Will are adult enough for the job with me at the helm.  Some of our friends from the states, Maggie and Charlie, were coming to join us in Panama to help us as Charlie had always wanted to do a canal transit as his Grandfather was one of the engineers that helped built it 100 years ago.  We scheduled our transit date around their arrival which gave us some time to check out the area and we even had some time to play tourist when Maggie and Charlie visit as well.

One can easily walk to the San Lorenzo Park from Shelter Bay, but it is a large park.  A few miles into it on the Chagres river over which Fort San Lorenzo presides.  Also in the jungle, the fort has a long and storied history where it was stormed, destroyed and rebuilt three times over the centuries.  The Chagres river was a key strategic route in the early days of Panama settlement providing a shortcut to row up the river and go over land to Panama City.  Many people did this with bad intent.

For us it was a nice place to explore.  When Maggie and Charlie arrived we packed everyone into a taxi van and visited the ruins and surrounding jungle.  It was here that we saw our first Sloth (pictured above).  “Come quick, a Sloth” someone yelled as I fumbled for my camera to get a picture before it disappeared.  I could have taken my time.  Those things really DO move in slow motion, it took him something like ten minutes to climb about 25 feet of tree and get out of sight.

One of many “Danielle on a Cannon” shots in our library

Fort San Lorenzo, Panama

These stairs are still nicer than the dinghy dock at Las Brisas

Maggie and Danielle in the moat

These little flowers were everywhere