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Mark Moxon's Travel Writing

Panama: Portobelo

A watchtower and cannon in Fuerte Santiago
A watchtower and cannon in Fuerte Santiago

The bus ride from the gleaming skyscrapers of Panama City to the grungy port town of Portobelo is a bit of a shock, to be honest. It's been a while since we took a proper chicken bus, and I'd forgotten just how much of an assault on the senses they can be; the last one we found ourselves on was back in Nicaragua, because for some unfathomable reason Costa Rica and Panama seem to be doing all they can to phase them out and replace them with modern buses. But the process isn't complete in Panama and you do still see multicoloured school buses grinding their way around some parts of the country, so when we stepped off the air-conditioned coach that had whisked us from the capital to the northern port of Colón and mentioned to the bus station boys that we wanted to continue on to Portobelo, they pushed us up the steps of the nearest bus and we burst into the psychedelic and ear-shattering world of the Central American chicken bus for the first time in two months.

A chicken bus in Portobelo
A chicken bus in Portobelo
Portobelo from Mirador Perú
Portobelo from Mirador Perú
Fuerte Santiago
Fuerte Santiago
The decaying entrance to Fuerte San Jerónimo
The decaying entrance to Fuerte San Jerónimo