Recreovía — Sunday Morning in Panama City
By: Joel Epstein
It was Sunday in Panama City and I had plans. The weekend before I had been hiking on Barro Colorado, the island in the middle of Lago de Gatún that serves as the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. A biodiverse island in the middle of a lake created to make possible the Panama Canal and asphalt may not sound like they go together but that’s me in a nutshell.
My second Sunday in Panamá in the middle of the street was where I wanted to be. That I could rent a better bike than I own for $5 for six hours of riding was an added bonus.
Imagine busy streets and highways free of cars and trucks. Imagine families of all shapes and sizes, serious bikers in black Spandex on fancy Trek racing bikes consulting their Strava apps, and walkers and runners filling stretches of a city’s pavement usually choked with motorized traffic. That’s a happy place.
And it happens every Sunday from 6 am to noon along the Carretera Interamericana in Panama City.
On Sundays, some people have to work, some go to church and other people sleep in. If I am in Latin America and there is a weekly Ciclovía, come Sunday that is where you will find me. As I wrote last month in Feliz Viaje — Panamá, Ciclovia or Recreovía as it is known in Panamá, is the place to be if you are in the city on a Sunday morning.
There used to be an unwoke German beer ad (maybe there still is) about how you never forget your first girl. Be that as it may, I will never forget my first CicLAvia, L.A.’s inaugural open streets event modeled after Bogotá, Colombia’s weekly Ciclovía.
Back in 2010, I wrote about Los Angeles and how, “In a city with many neighborhoods starved for public space, CicLAvia promotes a creative way to make over LA for a few hours a week by converting city streets to pedestrian thoroughfares.” Most cities, short on public space, would do well to create their own open streets events.
In Bogotá, Ciclovía happens every Sunday from 7:00 am to 2:00 pm with the conversion of 127.69 kilometers of city streets to pedestrian-only and bicycle-accessible thoroughfares.
The more modest, quarterly LA event’s name is a play on the Bogotána name. Both are terrific open streets events that let the public take back the pavement for at least a few hours.
In Panama City, a great thing about Recreovía is how it is integrated with some terrific existing bike infrastructure along the Cinta Costera between Paitilla in the north and the Calzada de Amador in the south.
My favorite stretch is the landscaped Ciclovía and pedestrian way that runs around the Spanish Colonial enclave of Casco Viejo.
Ever the tour guide, my recommendation is pairing the morning at Recreovía with a ceviche de pescado and a cerveza at the Mercado de Marisco.
I am missing Sunday morning in Panama City already. ¡Adelante!
Yours in transit,
Joel
Joel Epstein is a New Yorker and an advocate for public transit, livable cities and public space.
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