Taking a moment out for my annual post from Panama City. Each year I visit family here I am greeted with a fresh crop of confections that have sprung forth on Panama City’s skyline. The Trump Tower, or The Man-Eating Clam (along with a cluster of about eight or nine other towers on Punta Pacifica, the new landfill that juts out into the Pacific) is now fully operational and, as I type from my in-laws’ balcony, the elevators zip up and down behind the glass wall inside its crease.

A strange blocky, dark-tinted glass behemoth (spec offices? a bank?) has dropped anchor amidst the condos of the neighboring Punta Paitilla,

and, to the west, something I will here on out affectionately refer to as The Big Screw looks ready to lift off from its moorings with one great twirling motion.

Notably, a new “island” or, more appropriately, a swath of real estate is being created just off Punta Pacifica. Offshore cranes have formed a loop of landfill in the water and have been working overtime through Holy Week to render it a landmass.

It will inevitably showcase residential properties boasting new “waterfront” views, superseding last year’s waterfront view properties. Word is that the construction will be three-story “townhouses,” but from a casual observation, towers (in the vein of Miami-meets-Dubai) really do seem to be all the rage in these parts. Stay tuned for 2013.