george davies puts his feet up in the Panamanian hotel that used to be a dictator-training school
The ice in my rum tinkles as I lounge by the pool at the Melia Hotel near the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal. The thwock of a tennis match and vultures circling overhead are the only distractions. Bliss.
Business is booming right now at the Melia as a surge in Chinese trade through the Canal and into Panama's free trade zone pulls in merchants from around the world. It's certainly a sumptuous place to stay - if you can overlook its grisly history as the School of the Americas, a training ground for some of Latin America's most notorious dictators.
