On The 7th Day

As it’s a Sunday, I thought a bit of religious sightseeing would be in order. Most of the historically important churches are in the old part of Panama City so back there I went.

To reduce the chance of pirate Henry Morgan nicking the gold on this altar piece,

the resident priest covered it with tar. This didn’t fool the Welshman who was, however, so impressed with this attempt at subterfuge that he not only left the artefact alone but also gave a donation to the church!

Being a seriously Catholic country, images of Christ and the Virgin Mary abound. There was one church I visited where some of the images were more reminiscent of a toy shop than a church

and another where the building had all but collapsed which was being used as a background to a modelling photo shoot!

This was all very interesting but hunger got the better of me so I snacked in the Red Lion pub in Independence Square

where a pretty little Panamanian girl looked after me.

Suitably fed and watered, I headed for the Metropolitan Park which is not a park as we would know it but a tropical rain forest somewhat unbelieveably within Panama City itself.

It was stickily hot and humid but ever onwards and upwards I strode

fully expecting to see many of the 320+ animals and birds who inhabit this place. I saw one butterfly and two human animals taking a rest

but precious little else other than hordes of leaf cutter ants.

These little creatures (which you can hardly see under their heavy loads) carry leaves back to their nest and use them for a sort of compost fertiliser on which grows a fungus that they eat. The weight they carry is equivalent to a human with a 270kg load. Impressive, although this little chap was really struggling!