Panama, The Canal and Beyond
Day Two – 8 November 2014
Weather: Oh no, the sun is out.
I’m the type that never complains about the cold. That’s the nice thing about Canada. In summer, it never gets hot enough to need air conditioning (where I live) and in winter it doesn’t get cold enough that we can’t go outside. I’ve been to places where it is hot enough to force one to stay inside. So, I get to enjoy four seasons outside.
All this means I can whine about the heat. LOL
After all, one can dress warmer for the cold but one can only take so much off (legally) when it’s hot.
So, I googled the weather for Panama City to see how much I had to take off and Google will bring up a quick reference window showing the forecast for the day….and all I saw 50 degrees.
Once I picked myself off the floor, I realized it was the forecast for Panama City, Florida…and it was in Fahrenheit.
Let me try that again. Okay. Leave out the word City.
Oh, and when I say complain…I mean have fun with it. Oh look, I can hang my washing on the back of a chair in the sunbeam and it should be the time I get back from breakfast.
Oh…just had to get my cell phone out of the sunbeam. I had to drag it by the charger cord…it was too hot to touch.
Hmmm…I might have to turn the AC back on or my bed will be a puddle on the floor when I get back.
Anyway…where was I? Oh yeah. I was awake at 7:30 which meant I got 10 hours of blissful sleep. Something to be said for not being woken up hourly by a 19 year old cat with dementia looking for a heat source.
I went down to breakfast at 9 am. Nice spread. An omelet station where you get to choose your toppings and then hand them to the cook. A full selection of all the sides and a toaster that takes two slices and gives you back one. I expect to hear the fire alarm any second now.
I got back to my room to find the side of my pants facing the window was dry. Yup. I’m turning on the AC and closing the curtains while I’m gone.
I was down to the lobby for 10 and Gustavo told us we could thank the Panama Canal Authority for the late start, but that if we were delayed at all, we could blame the Panama Canal Authority. Then he said they had already thrown a wrench in the plan for the day as the transit wasn’t starting until 2 pm, so he decided to take us to the old town first.
We got aboard the bus and I headed for the back seat and slowly the seats around me filled by others who walked straight back. Yup, we’re the fun crowd.
We drove along Balboa Ave towards Casco Antiguo.
Casco Antiguo was established in 1637 as a public market and much of the area is under restoration.
We got off the bus and Gustavo showed us to the Presidential Palace. It is where the President works but he lives at the Miramar Residential Tower. (We’re in the Miramar Intercontinental…so he’s in the taller tower next door).
The view of Panama City is pretty nice from here. The elevated highway offshore there is a recent addition and circles around the old town which is a UNESCO sight. I recently watched a show that noted the possibility it would lose the status if the highway was built. That apparently hasn’t happened and the highway is there.
We walked along streets that remind my very much of New Orleans. (Haven’t been…don’t need to now…LOL).
Gustavo showed us the Panama City Cathedral which is closed except for special occasions.
Now, around this point, my pen ran out of ink, so I missed some of the commentary. I remember he showed us to a statue of General Tomas Herrera on a horse and he said it was the only equine statue in the country.
Then he asked us what it means if one of the horse’s leg is off the ground, like this statue. After a few suggestions, he said it meant the rider was wounded in battle.
And if both legs were up, the rider died.
If all four are up…the horse died too.
Heh.
So, we returned to the square and someone asked about bathrooms. The only place with a bathroom was the museum but Gustavo was a bit cryptic about it. He said to visit the gift shop then go to the bathroom. The problem is the museum will let you into the gift shop for free but you had to pay admission to use the washroom. Some made the diversion while I went to the gift shop for a new pen. As I left, the clerk tried to get me to pay for them all but I escaped.
Back in the square, Gustavo treated us all to a shaved ice drink. The vendor used an interesting contraption to scrap the ice off a block and then you could squirt stuff in it…like a slush puppy. And soooo refreshing in 30+ weather.
By now, the clouds are moving in and we feel sprinkles just as we board the bus. We were supposed to visit the market but ran out of time and headed straight for the boat.
En route, Gustavo said that Panama no longer had an army. The national police just has multiple branches to cover everything. He said that Panama doesn’t get hurricanes thanks to the Coriolis Effect which means the systems will always shift to the right (except hurricanes named Sandy) so Panama’s location means the storms don’t quite make it down here. He also said Panama doesn’t get earthquakes because it’s sitting on its own micro-tectonic plate sandwiched between the Nazca, Cocos and Caribbean plates. They get tremors but nothing major.
There is also no hunting permitted in Panama except by some native groups. As we passed through a national park, he said the area around the Canal is preserved because the rain forest provides water that is necessary to maintain the water levels in the Canal.
As we approach the dock, Gustavo says that we should not do anything to upset the Canal police. Even the most minor offence can get you banned from the Canal for life. He told us a story of some men who were in Panama for business and took the partial transit tour like what we’re doing. En route, they mooned a canal pilot and when they got ashore, the Canal police were waiting for them.
They got fined. Their company got fined. They got fired.
Just before the dock area, we passed over a one lane bridge that he said a previous Trafalgar guest had dubbed the Oh My God Bridge.
Then we passed an area with what Gustavo described as a 1 star resort which was all inclusive. Yup. It’s the prison where Noreiga has a suite.
We arrived at the dock and boarded the tour boat which is designed for 400 but only had 200 today. (I can’t imagine 400 fitting!). As we boarded, Gustavo said they were serving snacks and we picked up a bun, cake and saw a bin the size of a washer and dryer filled with soft drinks, water, juice and ice. All free and kept filled throughout the day.
We launched not long after 1 pm when the guide came on and said that there were delays and that we expected to get through by 7 or 8 pm.
Well, you want to see mouths drop. LOL. We thought we’d be back by 4 pm.
And just as Gustavo said…don’t blame the boat or guides. Blame the Panama Canal Authority.
Just don’t moon them.
So, we started sailing through the cuts (areas where the hills had been cut back to prevent landslides) and got a long explanation about the Canal.
Panama got its independence from Spain in 1821 but united with Colombia for protection. Not long after, France came looking to build a canal. They hired the guy who had built the Suez Canal thinking it wouldn’t be that hard. The Panama Canal needed to only be 50 miles long while the Suez is 100 miles.
However, the Suez is a level canal built in the desert and the terrain dug up was sand for the most part. In Panama, they faced mountains, jungle and disease, not to mention the heat.
Ohhh, the heat!
They faced cutting through rock while battling yellow fever and malaria. Twenty-three thousand died from the disease and the project went bust after 20 years.
In 1890, Colombian civil problems led Panama to look at separating from Colombia and they looked to the US to help them by offering them the opportunity to build a canal. The US had sent its Pacific navy to the Caribbean during the Spanish American war and it took so long to get there, the war was over by the time they arrived. Because of this, they wanted a shorter route. They were already looking to build one in Nicaragua but realized they could build one in Panama that was much much shorter. Essentially, by utilizing locks on both ends, they could transit most of the distance on a newly created Gatun Lake and in the end only had to excavate about ten miles.
So, the US agreed and Panama ceded from Colombia. The US navy blockaded the Colombian navy so that they couldn’t do anything about it and in 1903, the US began construction of the Canal. It was completed in 1914. It meant that ships no longer had to spend 2 weeks traveling around the Horn to get to the other side, which even with the cost of transiting the Canal, was a great cost savings.
The locks are 110 feet wide which restricts ships to that width. Those ships are called Panamax ships. The larger ships are called Post-Panamax and the new locks will be able to accommodate most of them. If a ship is more than 65 feet long, it requires a pilot.
We were served lunch on the ship – rice, beef, chicken and salad. The chicken was delicious. And then we sat down and spent a total of nine hours transiting through two locks with a trimaran and a container ship.
We first went through the Pedro Miguel lock which was a single section and then moved to the Miraflores locks which had two sections. We got to see how the mules work on either side of the lock to keep the larger ships in line as they move through the locks under their own power.
The mules don’t tug the ship. they only keep it centred.
Gustavo told us the average cost to transit the Canal is $120,000. The small craft like the trimaran behind us, pays $800. Our tour boat pays $3000. The largest cruise ship to go through the canal, the Norwegian Pearl paid $480,000.
And now they are constructing a third set of locks large enough to accommodate the super-tankers. They expect the revenue from the new locks to increase from $1 billion a year to $7 billion a year. As it got dark, we could see the construction in the area to the west of the locks. They expect to have the third locks completed in a year.
The airspace above the canal is also a no-fly zone as they want to prevent any accidents or damage to the locks given that closing them for any length of time would be devastating to the Panamanian and US economy and of course, the world economy.
This wasn’t my first time through locks so I knew what would happen. I wandered the boat, held my camera above everyone’s head to snap a pic at specific times and then sat back down with our group and chatted as we went down, down and down.
It made for a very long day and we were spent by the time the boat docked at one of the islands at the end of the Amador Causeway. We were back in the hotel just after 9 pm and I wasn’t long before I hit the pillow hard.
Go to Day Three
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