Panama Hats

[Martin Hash]

I know my Panama Hat is real because I bought it off a folding table on the Promenade deck of the Norwegian “Sun” cruise ship I was sailing on through the Panama Canal, plus the hat had a locally-made hat-band on it that said “Panama.” It cost $20 but considering the situation, that's not too bad. I'd heard that most Panama Hats were machine-made but the real expensive ones were handmade, the difference being the machine-made hats had perfect weaving. Later, our ship stopped at Manta, Ecuador, where we went on a tour that included a nature walk and Panama Hat-making demonstration.

Panama Hat.jpg

The walk was good, a tourist reserve named “Pacoche,” that provided a meal in the facade of the Amazon rain forest complete with Howler monkeys, and there was a mule named Alice that walked around in a circle turning an old wood press that squeezed the liquid out of sugarcane which we all got to sip: go Alice. However, the Panama Hat making was obviously staged; the 3 workers looked local but there were no signs of scrap around the hat-making stations, nor any other indication that there was anything going on but play-acting intended to justify the “handmade” nature of the obviously machine-made hats, driving the price up to $80-120. Needless-to-say, there was no sale to me since I already had a Panama Hat.