Panama Canal
We wanted to sail down the Panama Canal to commemorate our anniversary but also to mark the end of our Central American travels (or at least forward progress). There's a little more of Panama to do, but we haven't time and some parts of Darien sound frankly scary - so maybe another time we'll get there.
Anyway, we were slightly put off initially because their courtesy bus didn't show up and we had a little to and fro on the phone while they decided what to do - eventually we just jumped in a taxi which got us there easily enough although we had to pay an extra $3. We made the 9:00 sailing with plenty of time to spare and joined the 150 or so other tourists on board the "Fantasia del Mar".
Having set sail, we had to hang about for a pilot to turn up who would guide us through the canal transit - why we couldn't have picked him up on land I dunno but I guess they have these things worked out. Anyway, once the guide was safely on board, we set off underneath the Bridge of the Americas headed for the Miraflores locks - the ones we'd visited the day before. As we approached the two locks it was awe-inspiring to pass between the two 662 tonne lock doors into the locks themselves. Although the doors towered over us at first, as the lock slowly filled up to raise us up 31 feet to the next lock, the doors gradually disappeared from sight as they were covered by the rising water. As we were raised up to the level of Gatun lake - 85 feet above sea level - we passed through 3 locks (2 at Miraflores and 1 at Pedro Miguel) each locking procedure taking about 30-45 minutes to complete. Each time the locks are used to raise or lower a ship, 27 million US gallons of water have to be added to or drained from the lock chamber - most of it is provided by the massive, man-made Gatun Lake.
The Panama Canal is a statistician's dream. There are so many incredible feats of engineering, staggering sums of money, enormous quantities of water, huge volumes of shipping that it's almost impossible to take in. We were blasted with so many pieces of information that I can't really remember too many of them. Needless to say that just the spectacle of the canal itself and knowing that it is (mostly) man made is mind-blowing in itself.
The full transit wound up taking 10 hours from start to finish after which we had to take a bus back to Panama from the lovely seaside resort (or crime-ridden slum - depending on who you speak to) Colon.
Anyway, we were slightly put off initially because their courtesy bus didn't show up and we had a little to and fro on the phone while they decided what to do - eventually we just jumped in a taxi which got us there easily enough although we had to pay an extra $3. We made the 9:00 sailing with plenty of time to spare and joined the 150 or so other tourists on board the "Fantasia del Mar".
Having set sail, we had to hang about for a pilot to turn up who would guide us through the canal transit - why we couldn't have picked him up on land I dunno but I guess they have these things worked out. Anyway, once the guide was safely on board, we set off underneath the Bridge of the Americas headed for the Miraflores locks - the ones we'd visited the day before. As we approached the two locks it was awe-inspiring to pass between the two 662 tonne lock doors into the locks themselves. Although the doors towered over us at first, as the lock slowly filled up to raise us up 31 feet to the next lock, the doors gradually disappeared from sight as they were covered by the rising water. As we were raised up to the level of Gatun lake - 85 feet above sea level - we passed through 3 locks (2 at Miraflores and 1 at Pedro Miguel) each locking procedure taking about 30-45 minutes to complete. Each time the locks are used to raise or lower a ship, 27 million US gallons of water have to be added to or drained from the lock chamber - most of it is provided by the massive, man-made Gatun Lake.
The Panama Canal is a statistician's dream. There are so many incredible feats of engineering, staggering sums of money, enormous quantities of water, huge volumes of shipping that it's almost impossible to take in. We were blasted with so many pieces of information that I can't really remember too many of them. Needless to say that just the spectacle of the canal itself and knowing that it is (mostly) man made is mind-blowing in itself.
The full transit wound up taking 10 hours from start to finish after which we had to take a bus back to Panama from the lovely seaside resort (or crime-ridden slum - depending on who you speak to) Colon.
posted by Iff at
8:25 pm
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