One Beautiful Day in Panama

Photographer: Mark Where? We have fancy supermarkets with products from all over the world. They are a pleasure when you need something special. But the best markets, the ones that are the most fun and definitely the cheapest, are those you find in the towns of the “interior”. This one is in the town of El Valle in the mountains of central Panama.

Photographer: Richard Presha Where? Panama has a wonderful Native American population and plenty of North American and European residents, but we are more than that. We have immigrants from nearly every nation on earth. They came to build the Canal or to use it and they stayed. The first Chinese immigrant family arrived in 1854 with many more arriving in the decades that followed. Many generations later, they are as Panamanian as anyone. When you turn off the Inter-American highway to go to El Valle, you will pass the Las Uvas Ferreteria (a “ferreteria” is a hardware store). If you drop in, these are the friendly Panamanian faces that will greet you.