Big ass Canal
Trip Start
Sep 13, 2006
1
148
178
Trip End
May 08, 2008
Panama City,
Panama
Sunday, February 24, 2008
As soon as Panama city came in to view it was giving off good vibes and looking well in the early evening sun. About 12 km outside the city you cross the entrance of the Panama canal and the pacific ocean on a massive bridge. You can see these massive container ships and boats waiting in the bay to pass through the canal.
We got dropped off at the main transport station which was way out of town so after sharing a taxi into the city i found myself Zuly's hostel which had been recomended and had a nice atmosphere. So i settled in here and went in search of dinner which turned out to be the worst dinner i had in the last few months. But did make it out to a few of the local bars with one of the lads i met in the hostel.
Friday was hot and off i went to the pacific coast..
scott me and amanda
. 10 minutes walk away. Panama city is very different to other central america capitols and big city's i have been in. Its pretty clean, lots of modern buildings, you dont get hasseled so much and are left alone apart from the usual dickhead taxi driver that beeps at you looking for fare's. I made it through several areas of the city and over to Viejo which is a colonial area and basically the old part of the city. Its pretty different and most of it is currently being restored or has been restored. The whole area has a lot of history and some monuments dedicated to the innovaters of the canal and the cuban doctor who eventually found a cure for yellow fever which killled off the canal workers. Over 20 thousand died in the construction of the canal which was originally started by the french and finished by the americans in the early 20th century.I visited the Panama canal museum in Viejo which was facinating but took me forever to read as it was all in spanish, but all good. It was a long walk back then to the city centre and out to Sushi restaurant with Scott, matt and Amanda 3 americans i had met in the hostel and from there we went on to various bars before geting back home.
My saturday i set off early after an insufficient 2 hours sleep to go to Miraflores locks and the Canal. The Miraflores locks are the first set of locks that the ships pass through from the pacific side
scott amanda and matt
. The canal is just over 80km long and handles thousands of ships. They have several sets of locks along the canal raising and lowering these ships over 26 meters. Some of these ships are just massive and some of them carry up to 4000 of those 40 ft containers. A Japanese ship was going through when i was there and it was the full width and length of the lock.. carrying refrigerated stock of saome kind appearantly. The average toll the ships pay is about 30 thousand dollars but its all measured on weight and some cruiseliner paid close to 250,000 bucks allegedly... That west link doesnt sound like such a shambles now...lol.. Takes some 8 hours for these ships to go from the pacific to the atlantic... Not a bad shortcut when you consider the size of south america. The visitor center here was pretty cool and i enjoyed it and it was back into the city then 12km away to sort myself out before starting a new contintent. Still had a chunk of the day to kill so off i went to the cinema with american crew to see ..bloody oil... least i think that was the title.. they change the movie titles to spanish but its all in subtitles... so no worries. It was back then to the Hostel into a taxi to the airport for my 5.45 am flight to Lima... With a connection in San Salvador... only what the airline fail to mention is that you also have a connection in San jose.. None of this is welcoming when you have only had 2 hours kip in the last 48 hours...lol. Would have liked to have scraped the flight and gone by land into Columbia but unfortunatly its not a wise thing to do with all the FARC boys... oh and there is no road connecting the two continents.. Could have got a boat alright but was going to work out messy so thought i better stick to the flight... South America here we go..
