Portobelo

Portobelo is a small town on the northern, Atlantic coast of Panama directly across the isthmus from Panama City. I took a day trip here.

Portobelo has a history like many other Caribbean cities: The site was "discovered" by Spanish explorers, inhabited by them and their slaves as they used the place for the "operations," played host to a number of battles, and now has a diverse population of people of different ethnic backgrounds.

Here are the reasons to visit Portobelo:

• A slower paced, relaxing, "small village" style of life
• Congo, Afro-Caribbean culture
• Spanish colonial history
• Public art
• An excuse to ride the Panama Canal Railway

The village has its name because Christopher Columbus originally named the site in 1502 "Puerto Bello," which means "beautiful port." He called it "port" because the Spanish would use the site as a port for shipping silver that they were extracting from South America--various mines throughout modern day Peru and Bolivia--back to Spain. Somehow, though, by 1600, the name had morphed into "Portobelo." In 1597, a Spanish explorer, Francisco Valverde y Mercado, founded a town inland from the port site and named it after the harbor, but he spelled the name "Portobelo." This shows that sometime between 1502 and 1597, the name had changed, but no one really knows why. Records also show that during this time the site was encountered by English "privateers," so there is a chance that the name was somehow warped while being used back and forth between Spanish and English speakers, but this is 100% speculation on my part. 

Source: https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/14/1/93/155859/Porto-Bello-Puerto-Bello-or-Portobelo

The concept of a "privateer" seems ridiculous to me. Privateers were men who roamed the Caribbean Sea in ships seeking "commerce opportunities," which seems to have often included raiding settlements and stealing goods. In other words, they were basically pirates. But, because they were European and had the "official stamp of approval from a Western government," they got the esteemed title of "privateer," which was "different than a pirate."

You don't have to take the Panama Canal Railway to Portobelo. You can take a bus. Nor do you have to go to Portobelo if you travel by rail. You could take a round trip on the train from and back to your starting point just to experience it. But, for me, since I was starting in Panama City, where the train ride also starts, and I needed to go to Colón, where the train also goes, in order to travel towards Portobelo, it seemed obvious for me to take the train. I could have two unique experiences conveniently in one day.

The Panama Canal Railway was so cool. The first picture below shows you the path.

I also wrote a blog post with more details about how to access the railway here:

This is where things change. The one-way train journey ends at the Panama Canal Railway station in Margarita, a neighborhood in Colón, the second biggest city in Panama. From here, in order to get to Portobelo, you have to take a Local Bus. These busses are often old, painted school busses that stop along their routes to pick up anyone--children going to and coming from school, someone going to his/her grandmother's house for lunch, an out-of-place tourist like me, etc.

There isn't really a schedule or app you can use to track these busses. Yeah, there are websites and blogs that explain how the Panama Local Busses work, but they don't all provide the same information. The best way to navigate the Local Bus system is to ask people who live in Panama and use it regularly. They will know where and when to go.

In this case I found out that I needed to get to the Colón Bus Terminal, which was only a few blocks away from the train station. I walked there. Some websites and blogs will say not to walk because "Colón is dangerous." Maybe the city isn't as "nice" and developed as, say, some neighborhoods in Panama City, but it honestly seemed fine to me. If you don't want to walk, there will be taxi drivers waiting at the Panama Canal Railway station in Margarita who can take you to your destination, but I didn't because I didn't feel like negotiating the fare.

The Colón Bus Terminal won't be as well-marked as, say, Penn Station in New York City, but the ticket booth will be labeled and when you go there to buy your ticket, you can ask the attendant to direct you to the waiting area and departure time of your bus.

The ride to Portobelo is at least 1.5 hours long.

If you want to use your phone to help yourself navigate from the train station to the bus terminal, here are the locations to search:

• Origin: Panama Canal Railway, Colón, Panamá
• Destination: Terminal de autobuses, Avenida Herrera, Colón, Panamá

The Rome2Rio.com website is also a great one to use to help yourself understand the different options you have for navigating from almost any point A to point B in Panama.

Below are pictures that show the path from the train station to bus terminal, the Local Bus route from Colón to Portobelo, and the type of bus that I was about to ride.

Portobelo is not an island, but it certainly has "island feels." Life here is different than Panama City, the big city with skyscrapers, fancy neighborhoods, and easily accessible Ubers. The school bus right away showed. As I walked around the village, it was quiet. Life seemed to move slowly there.

There isn't much information that I could find about who lived in or around Portobelo before Spanish "discovery," just that the arrival of Europeans resulted in the decimation of 90% of Panama's indigenous population... So, I guess that for this blog post, the history of Portobelo starts with the Spanish...

The Spanish decided to use Portobelo in the 16th century as a port for shipping the silver that they had extracted from various mines in modern day Peru and Bolivia back to Spain. Like they did in many of their settlements throughout the Americas, they built defense systems in order to protect themselves from potential invaders, like pirates and privateers. 

In Portobelo, there are remains of two forts: Fuerte Santiago and Fuerte San Jerónimo. They are both UNESCO World Heritage Sites. They are also on UNESCO's List of World Heritage Sites in Danger due to environmental factors, lack of maintenance, and uncontrollable urban developments.

You can read more about these forts (and San Lorenzo, a fort in Colón) on this page here: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/135/ 

Where the Spanish were, there are also likely Catholic churches.

The next piece of history that will help you understand the people and culture of modern day Portobelo pertains to the Congo People.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, perhaps the strongest state in the Atlantic coastal region of western central Africa was the Kongo Kingdom. The picture below shows where the kingdom was. The Kongo Kingdom prospered due to the abundance of natural resources and a tributary system that helped them maintain an organized leadership structure.

Starting in the early 1500's, Kongo became a common source for the slave trade. The leaders of the tributary system mentioned in the paragraph above even sold their own people into slavery to Portuguese and Spanish slave traders. Many of these slaves ended up in Panama.

As such, Congo blood runs through the people of Portobelo and Congo customs--music forms, dances, clothing, and myths--are still a vibrant and important part of life for people in the village.

Casa Congo is a hotel in Portobelo that has a really nice museum with all sorts of informational displays, artifacts, and artwork about the history of Portobelo and its Afro-indigenous culture. I wasn't going to stay overnight, but the museum is free to enter for anyone, so I spent some time here learning and recommend that anyone visiting Portobelo do the same.

Below are a map that shows the location of Casa Congo, as well as some pictures of it and its museum.

There are a lot of public displays of art in Portobelo--Murals and artisan venders, mainly. It is cool to walk around and check them out.

I opted to return to Panama City by coach bus instead of the train because there were more options in the schedule that would suit my intended departure time.

Here is where you can buy a bus ticket from Colón to Panama City:

But, before I would be able to take the coach bus from Colón, I would have to rely on the same school bus that brought me to Portobelo to get me back to Colón first. Despite my fascination with the experience of riding the Local Bus, I didn't realize what kind of experience I was about to have.

First, 95% of the passengers ended up being students on their way home from school. They seemed young--maybe between 10 and 15 years old. It was total chaos. A number of the kids were misbehaving--jumping around and throwing stuff. The driver had to stop the bus and yell at them multiple times.

Meanwhile, I was drenched in sweat. The Caribbean sun, which normally kills me, was in full effect on this July day. There was obviously no air conditioning on the bus. It was nearly a two hour ride. Less than halfway through it, I was completely wet.

And then, our bus crashed. We hit another car. Look at the picture below. You can see the bus driver and the driver of the car he hit, as well as a few other guys, arguing outside the bus.

The bus could not continue. The driver pulled over and the few of us passengers left had to get off. Luckily, by this point, we were in Colón, so I was able to walk the remaining miles to the bus terminal where I would get the coach bus back to Panama City.