Photo by Joe Pound
At the Farewell Panama party the Sullivan Eleven lined up with the rest of the tour group and with four native women dressed in Pollera, native dress of the culture. The elaborate dresses take up to a year to make and are adorned with thousands of dollars in jewelry.

•February 1, 2017•

By Jose Libra
for the News Progress

Along with about a dozen friends from Sullivan, we just returned from five warm, sunny days touring this remarkable civil engineering project and its environs in the Republic of Panama.

The preplanned trip was organized and led by Road Scholar guides, beginning with our landing in the skyscraper crowded Panama City, the capital of the country.

Led by Don Schmidgall of Sullivan our group benefited from his energy and attention to detail, making the trip easy and fascinating. Highlights included history of the canal, size and scope of this project, traversing by ship the entire canal, perfect weather in the 90’s, our two tour guides, the new bridge over the Canal being built at Colon, riding high in the top cabin of the tour boat, the railroad trip back to Panama City from Colon, wonderful breeze along the canal trip, the rainforest, delicious food and the farewell dinner and dancers.

Our local tour guides from Road Scholar were “Archie” and “Rey”, both Panamanian citizens. Both of them were a joy and taught us a great deal about the history and reality of this central part of Panama.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.