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Panama Canal, Panama

Today was the day we came for: Panama Canal.

We got up at 6am so that we could catch the approach to the canal. We weren’t alone. We started out watching from our balcony, but eventually squeezed in with the masses at the front of the ship. As we were coming in from the Caribbean, we started with the 3 Gatun locks, going into Gatun Lake. The cruise ship anchored in the lake and took those of us going on excursions to shore via the ship’s tenders. It’s amazing how many people they can get into one of those which, I suppose, should be reassuring if one ever had to abandon ship.

From there we were taken by bus to another portion of Gatun Lake and loaded on to a ferry for the remainder of the way through the canal. From the lake you go into the narrowest portion of the canal, the Culebra Cut, which is cut through the continential divide. This goes to the Pedro Miguel lock, on to Miraflores lake, and then to the 2 Miraflores locks. These then take you out to the Pacific Ocean right near Panama City.

In case you’re not up on canal and lock engineering, here’s basically how it works. As a ship comes in to the canal, each lock raises the water level so that the ship ends up at the level of Gatun Lake which is about 85 feet above sea level. Once the ship is closed in a lock, water is added to the lock and the water level is raised until it meets the level of the next lock. At that point the lock opens and the ship can go to the next lock to repeat until it gets to the lake’s level. On the way out, the locks remove water until the ship is back at sea level. While a large ship is in a lock, there are “mules,” which are basically small engines on rails, that keep the ship in place in the lock and move it to the next one.

We were surprised that much of the land around the canal is bare. I suppose this is partly due to the fact that they’ve done some widening and dredging in some portions of the canal. They’re also adding a 3rd set of locks at each end, scheduled to open next year, so there’s a lot of construction. We were expecting to see some wildlife along the way. We did see some birds and crocodiles at each ends, but not anything of note in the middle.

The trip through the canal was very worthwhile. It was hot and we shared the ferry with over 300 of our cruise-mates, but there’s no substitute for going through the entire thing. It is fascinating that they were able to build this huge mechanism over 100 years ago in the heat without air conditioning and with disease-carrying mosquitoes. An estimated 40,000 died due to the heat and varies mosquito born illness building the canal.

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