1 post tagged “san lorenzo”
It's two o'clock in the afternoon and it's dark. Dark enough to require electric lights inside. Welcome to the wet season y'all.
In commemoration of the end of summer (AKA the dry season for all you northern types) here are some pics from a road trip that was a direct result of the beginning of the wet season (in 2006). Drude and I tried to do our usual Saturday morning hike that day. We headed out to Gamboa, but by the time we got halfway there it was pouring. We decided that hiking would be miserable, so why not go for a drive? (Famous last words)
The Gamboa road doesn't actually go anywhere except Gamboa so we had to drive back out and make a choice - right towards Panama City? Or left towards Colon? Colon it is. We drove out through Camino de Cruces, to Transistmica (the road that, like the name implies, crosses the Isthmus). Transistmica could be a contender for the ugliest road in the Americas (wall-to-wall billboards for Zona Libre in Colon). So we decided to take what we thought was the old Colon road. To be honest we had no idea where we were going - but there just aren't that many roads in Panama, how lost could we get? So we were slightly surprised to find ourselves driving over this:
It's the Madden Dam on the Chagres river that creates Lago Alajuela. A quick lesson on the Panama Canal - it's only a "canal" in the strictest sense for about half it's length. The rest is a channel through an artificial lake, Lago Gatun, that was created by damming up the Chagres river and flooding the river valley and some of the surrounding valleys. But it was soon discovered that the Gatun Dam and the Locks didn't provide sufficient control of the lake water level so a second dam and lake were created to better control the water levels. Thus demonstrating two of Panama's perennial problems - not enough water and too much water.
Anyhoo, just past here we discovered that the road that we were on merged with Transistmica, so we went on out to Colon. However, Colon is not exactly tourist friendly; once there we were at something of a loss as to what to do. So we decided to go find the Gatun locks. Not that we actually knew how to get to them (signs? In Panama? Are you JOKING?). So after getting lost, wandering through some neighborhoods and asking for directions about three times, we finally found the locks. Which I didn't take any pictures of because I am D-U-M (and it was raining). And we couldn't go all the way to the locks and not cross, Right? So what's on the other side of the locks?
Not much it turns out. National park land, the former Fort Sherman (now crumbling to bits, sad really) and San Lorenzo, the old Spanish fort built to protect the mouth of the Chagres. We'd come all that way, we couldn't turn back without seeing it, right? Only one problem. San Lorenzo is nine kilometers up this road:
I drive a Toyota Yaris. It's the smallest car that Toyota makes. Unpaved forest road, rainy weather, and my car? Not a great idea. Not that that stopped us, of course. So after about 45min of white-knuckle driving at about 5 mph, with only 1 or 2 minor slides, we arrived here:
It doesn't look like much from this angle, but that's because the majority of the fort is actually below the level of the surrounding land.
It's surrounded by a dry moat (we weren't the only visitors that day - I have no idea who those people are) and has a commanding view of the mouth of the Chagres
Plus it's just a cool ruin.
That's Drude walking through the arch.
A lot of the fort is inaccessible because it's below ground -
- or flooded (rainy season, remember?).
There's still a lot standing - not bad for 300 years in the tropics, eh?
The most conspicuous thing about San Lorenzo are these vaults - there's a bunch of them. They were probably used for storage - there's stone studs sticking out of the walls to support a floor about five feet up from the floor - no way could any one be expected to stand up in there, even taking account pre-modern nutrition shorter stature. Anyway, San Lorenzo was always primarily a military fort, not a city like Portobelo. They were pretty isolated so they probably had to store a lot of supplies.
All of this is supposition, of course. We didn't exactly have a guide.
There's still few cannons in place. No where near as many as at Portobelo (one of these days I post pictures from there as well). This one is almost perfectly aimed at the car park (the little gold one just behind and to the left of the tree is mine).
They must have built these guard towers really well - there's one still standing at almost every colonial ruin.
This little cove is on the other side of the fort - the grey rainy day doesn't really do justice to the Caribbean. It's really a beautiful spot.
And finally - it wouldn't be a Lyra post without a critter, or in this case evidence of critters:
Those are Oropendola nests - they're fairly large tropical birds but these hanging nests are probably their most conspicuous feature.
