About Colon

People on CruiseCritic are always asking about Colon, primarily because it is the primary port of call for many cruise ships and Royal Caribbean will be homeporting a ship in Colon this fall. Colon is the incredibly “poor sister” to Panama City, yet home to the second largest free port in the woirld.

Don Winter in Panama Guide summarizes an article from The Economist:

A bid to inject new life into Panama’s down-at-heel second city . . .  While Panama’s economy is booming, its second city has not shaken off its tropical decay. That was what led the makers of the latest James Bond film to choose it as a double for a once war-torn Haiti. Situated at the Caribbean end of the Panama Canal, Colón suffers an unpleasant combination of crime, poverty and unemployment. In the 1990s, its population shrank by a fifth (to 200,000). Of those who remain, only two in three have a proper job.

On Front Street, the main drag, six blocks of elegant colonnaded buildings in the French style are falling down. Amid the neo-classical rubble, residents fend off afternoon boredom playing dominoes and slugging booze. Gang violence and the divorce rate are well above the norm.

Founded in 1850 when the isthmus became a route to the California gold rush, Colón’s history is one of long periods of torpor punctuated by brief moments of prosperity. Many residents are the descendants of migrant labourers from the English-speaking Caribbean, brought in to dig the canal.

The city never really recovered from the closure of nearby American military bases after the second world war. A couple of these have found productive uses, like Manzanillo, a big container port, and the Colón Free Zone, which traded $16 billion last year. But others are derelict. Coco Solo, once a submarine base (and the birthplace of Senator John McCain), is overrun with squatters.

Panama’s government hopes to inject new life into the city. Next year a motorway will link Colón with Panama City, the capital, for the first time. A Spanish-backed consortium wants to build a $40 billion energy hub. Other investors plan hotels and shopping centres.

The best hope of jobs for unskilled locals may lie in tourism. There are plans to spruce up local heritage sites and expand the airport. A cruise line is to start using Colón as a base later this year, allowing passengers to avoid visa hassles at Miami. But fear of crime may put off tourists in a city where better-off residents live in gated communities. One guidebook says bluntly of Colón “there is no good time to visit”. Economic development and better security will have to go hand-in-hand.

Although a convenient place for dispatching cruise line tours to Panama City, the Canal area, the Embera Indian villages, and Portobello, most cruise lines advise passengers not to venture outside the cruise terminal areas.  Passengers returning to the ships after tours usually comment on “how dirty” the area is and wonder why people throw their trash everywhere.  This discourages cruise passengers from the thought of returning to Panama as independent tourists: who wants to come back and spend time in a country that would appear to be littered with trash?

Colon of course is focused on its role as being the world’s second largest free port, and not on tourism, but as long as it is a port of call for thousands of cruise tourists a year, who represent tremendous potential for future tourism, Colon needs to clean up its act.  The government would do well to focus some of the millions being spent in Panama City on cleaning up Colon and providing jobs and housing. 

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Witn Royal Caribbean homeporting a ship in Colon this fall, there are more and more questions appearing on the online cruise boards about Colon, including one recently from a couple wondering about doing their own transfers between the ship in Colon and the airport.  There seemed to be some confusion about what airport . . . Hopefully this helped them, and may help others as well.

Colon is an old city, and is one of the poorest and most run-down cities in Panama, as well as being the second or third largest, depending on how you count. It’s primary reason for being has been the Colon Free Zone, which is the second largest free port in the world, second only to Hong Kong. Don’t read “Tourist or Duty Free” here, it’s a different world for trading goods in huge quantities and acting as a world wide distribution hub, convenient to the Canal which has historically made Panama the “crossroads of the world.”

Although ships call there, they always tell their passengers not to go off into Colon on their own. Most Panamanians don’t. I wouldn’t, even although I live in Panama and feel comfortable in most areas of Panama City.

There is one road between Colon and Panama City, currently under construction. It was due to be finished this fall, now they are saying late Spring of ‘09 – keep your fingers crossed, since it could be ‘10 this being Panama. For some reason a lot of people who work in Panama City live in Colon, and vice versa, so traffic is heavy and pouring cement or an accident make it, what one cruise tour passenger called “the road to hell.” It can easily take 2 hours between Colon and Panama City.

Tocumen is Panama’s only International airport and is about a 40 minute drive, depending on traffic, from downtown Panama City. So you are going to be around 3 hours from the airport assuming good conditions.

You can probably get a cab, but, since he’s unlikely to have a fare coming back, and since diesel is now $4.25 a gallon, he’ll probably want you to pay him for both ways. If you can get a van you may be OK, but most Panama cabs can only seat 2 people and few would have enough space with their trunk closed to carry two people’s cruise luggage. And I wouldn’t want to drive through Colon with the trunk open or the luggage held in by a rope.

If you’re just looking for a transfer to the airport, I’d book it through the ship.  Yes, you might save a few bucks doing it on your own, but consider the hassle factor . . . Understand that having a ship homeport in Colon will be a new experience both for Colon and Panama, so be prepared for some initial glitches.

Now, if you want to see some of Panama, and stay and see a little of Panama, that’s a different story. You might consider going to see the authentic real Embera Indian village with Anne Gordon. She could pick you up in Colon and drop you off at a hotel in Panama City, even the one by the airport.  There are tons of cruise-posts here: just click on these categories – Cruising, Cruise Q&A, Cruising & Travel, Canal Cruise, Panama Canal and Embera.

Most of the US flights leave early in the morning (7AM-9AM) and in the afternoon (3 or 5PM), at least the ones I use. Panama hotels have the second highest occupancy rate in the world, so book early.

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Don’t you feel “better off”?

Now with oil at $132 a barrel and diesel at $3.81 and gas at $3.56 . . .