A man, a plan, a canal

Panama!

Today was the day to accomplish the whole purpose for making a stopover in Panama City:  an all-day cruise through the Panama Canal, Pacific to Atlantic.

We queued up for a 7:30 a.m. departure.

And this was our boat, the Pacific Queen:

Not long after our scheduled departure time, we are on our way.  This one was taken one minute into the 10-hour journey:

This is a view of Flamenco Marina, our point of embarcation, which is a word despite the fact that blogger.com software has flagged it as a spelling error:

The Panama City skyline is somewhat visible in that picture, although it is largely obscured by ominous stormclouds, it being the rainy season after all.  Foreshadow!

We were now motoring up the canal side of the Amador Causeway.  That ugly multi-colored monstrosity is a Frank Gehry.  It is the only building in Latin America designed by "star-chitect" Frank Gehry, whose claim-to-fame is designed these horribly ugly monstrosities that clash with their surroundings.  See, e.g., the Brain Building in downtown Las Vegas.

This building I recognized because we were about to go under the Bridge of the Americas.  It is the Country Inn, which is where I stayed my first two times in PTY.  ("PTY" because all the cool kids refer to every city by its three-letter airport code.  Except "LAS."  No one calls Las Vegas that.)

And here we go under the Bridge of the Americas.

Which means we soon come upon the Port of Balboa, which is where ships unload and load if they have only a partial load that needs to go through the Panama Canal.  Think of it as the "Atlanta-Hartsfield" hub of the Panama Canal.

The top deck immediately filled up with the cruisers.

There was even a band up there, playing what I believe was Colombian cumbia music.  Cumbia serves the same purpose in Colombian culture as polka used to in Pennsylvania of the 1970s.  It's the lively, fun dance music that only old people and the rurals will admit listening to,  In the cities of Colombia, if you want to dance, it's salsa salsa and more salsa.  I don't know if the band was part of the ticket price or just a bonus, seeing as the band disembarked at the midpoint of the trip.

And then ...

The skies opened up and it was pouring buckets.  I hid in the lower forward deck, which gave me a nice view of this:

A giant Celebrity cruise ship, the Infinity if you keep track of these things, going through the Miraflores locks, next lock over, at the same time as us.

I had a decent view of the work being done tying us down for the trip through the lock.  The boat has to be tied to the sides, or another vessel that is tied to the sides, when the water comes in because there will be whirlpools and otherwise your boat will spin which is not good for so many reasons.

This is the giant Infinity, pulled up next to us.  It is big enough that it got a lock to itself.  We shared this lock with two other smaller vessels.

We're all tied down so there's nothing to do but wait to float to the top:

And the wait is over.  Back to work.

You can see the little train cars in this picture:

They are called "mules."  They don't pull the massive ships through the lock.  They just steady them in there so they don't bang up against the walls.

The Miraflores locks are a series of two locks.  We got through one, so it was time to tie us down for the second one.  Rain stopped for a bit at this point.

And, again, nothing to do but wait to float to the top of the lock.

And then we and the cruise ship with whom we shared a moment together were off into the heart of the canal.

And we start putting some distance between us and the Celebrity.

And then the cruise shippers were left in our wake.  Or were they?

This is looking back at the Centennial Bridge, Puente Centenario:

With the sun out, it was time to try to enjoy the view from the forward upper deck.  But it was mighty crowded.

We were now arriving at the third and final lock on the Pacific side, the Pedro Miguel lock, the only single lock on the canal.  Here you can see those train-car-like mules:

We are locked and loaded:

This is a tugboat that we were tied to, sharing a lock together:

And in the lock:

And now the lock is filled:

Time to untie, this time being the view from the back of the boat:

At this point, we were now at maximum water level inside the canal.

And the band played on.

Emerging from the lock:

Crossing under the Puente Centenario:

And this is the Continental Divide, Panama style.

We are now in the Atlantic.  And at this point, we will pause in our journey through the Panama Canal and resume with a second post.

Miraflores Locks

The Panama Canal.  Up close.  Personal.

Next up in the whirlwind tour of all Panama City has to offer:  the Panama Canal.  More specifically, the Miraflores Locks, the canal locks closest to the Pacific Ocean.

I'm not going to reiterate the whole history of the Panama Canal and pretend that I knew it when I was copying wikipedia, but let's just say that (a) the building of the Panama Canal was a monumental engineering achievement, (b) it is the seminal event in the history of Panama, and (c) it is extremely important to the whole economy of the Republic of Panama.

The skies opened up and it started pouring rain on the drive over the Miraflores Locks.  It lightened up by the time we got to the Miraflores Locks, which are about eight miles from the Port of Balboa alongside the canal.  Eight miles may not seem like much, but considering that the whole canal is only about 48 miles long, that's a decent percentage of the entirety of the canal's length.

The purpose of the locks is to raise ocean-going ships from sea level to the level of Gatun Lake, the middle section of the canal, 85 feet.  Here is the view looking down at the Pacific side of the locks:



Miraflores Lock

This will give you a better view of the drop to Pacific level:

Miraflores Locks:  downward view

Unfortunately, I did not get to see a ship go through the locks.  The tour of the Miraflores Locks includes a 3-D film on the construction of the canal, and a small museum:

Artist's rendering of workers shoveling away rock on the original canal construction project

Tickets for the whole she-bang are only $8.00.  Panama is not a bargain-hunter's paradise.  They use U.S. dollars as their national currency and prices are comparable to those in most U.S. cities.  But the $8.00 admission price was worth it.  I'd pay even more if I could be guaranteed seeing a ship go through the locks and see the locks water level rise and fall.

Alas, I had paid my driver for only a four-hour tour.  So there was no waiting around on the off-chance a ship would roll through.  So it was back to the Country Inn & Suites in the old Canal Zone.  I was planning on walking down the Amador Causeway, but the skies really opened up and it was coming down in sheets of rain for the rest of the afternoon.  Apparently this is the "wet" season in Panama.  There is a dry season.  It lasts for about a week and a half late January, early February.