Panama’s Cinta Costera, More Than a $29 Belt
(costaricapages.com) For all the people who say that nothing moves quickly in Panama, the highway bypass project called Cinta Costera stands alone as an exception: the proverbial hare in a country of tortoises, the Lance Armstrong in a Race Against Obesity. The project, slated to be finished by the time current president Torijjos leaves office, has made monumental strides and, from the looks of it, will be a pleasant and alleviating addition to the debacle known as Avenida Balboa.
The first time I got word of Panama’s Cinta Costera, I was wandering around the pants department of a fairly prominent department store in Multiplaza Mall when a chatty young saleswoman approached and told me I had nice calves. It was probably the least orthodox sales pitch I’d ever heard and as a result, I was flustered into buying several pairs of jeans I’d never end up wearing.
“Have you heard about our Cinta Costera?” she said from the other side of the changing room door. Have you heard about our coastal belt?
I looked down at my waist and admitted no, I hadn’t, but now that you mention it, I was in the market for something to hold up the new jeans. I bought the coastal belt for $29, a steal as far as I’m concerned and over the course of the next few days, I’d hear a handful of people talking about the cinta costera and how exciting it would be. “Look,” I’d say to them, lifting my shirt. “I got one just the other day!”
Cinta Costera, it turned out, was not an accessory but rather an ostentatious infrastructure project sponsored by the government as a solution to lighten City traffic. Besides its inherent usefulness in this regard, the project also supplies several much-needed characteristics to the Panama City skyline: a place for people to walk around without the probability of getting hit by a car for example, or recreation areas with something unbeknownst to Panama, the prospect of green grass.
There are also two finished basketball courts on the Cinta Costera landfill, courts that remind me of a time in my youth living in Laguna Beach. It was a weekend morning of pickup games on Laguna’s famous basketball strip when a familiar face, Michael Jordan, arrived and asked if he could have next. A number of thoughts ran through my mind (such as how it might be possible to steal any of his personal belongings) when he took the court against a small man around my size named something like Road Runna’ or White Chocolate. Jordan played predictably well but lost in the end to the diminutive man who had the whole crowd hooting and hollering on his side.
The Cinta Costera project also seems to have the kind of modern touches we’d expect of an international hotspot like Panama City: clean pagodas for bathrooms, sleek road lamps and street signs, and a stunning view of towers, boats, and the historic peninsula of Casco Viejo. The Brazilian team managing the project has had workers active around the clock, with squadrons of aggressive dump trucks tearing out into four-lane traffic at night in a race to see who can complete the most laps. From the ground, I don’t know of a more progressive infrastructure project in the Republic: from the sky, Cinta Costera looks less like a $29 belt and more like functional facet that will add to the value and allure of Panama City.
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Original Source: Costa Rica Page
Date Retrieved: April 30, 2009
