Finishing up in Panama City

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  Panama City, Panama
Sunday, October 14, 2007

After our long bus ride, we were looking forward to staying in Panama City for a while.  We ended up getting off the Tica bus into a huge bus terminal.  It had a FOOD COURT...and a MOVIE THEATER.  I don't think we've seen so many people at one time since we left.  We took a taxi into town and checked in at the Hotel Colon.  It was a pretty nice place and had a great balcony overlooking the ocean.  Unfortunately the water decides not to work for a good majority of the day and they haven't cleaned it in the three nights we've stayed.  In any case, we spent our first evening walking along the open-air mall.  Lots of places to buy clothes.  Not so many places to get food.  We settled on Chinese, which was pretty terrible.  Oh well.

Erin spent most of the night throwing up.  It was probably brought on by the bad Chinese, but it lasted a lot longer than it should have.  She slept most of the next day and I brought her a continuous supply of Gatorade.  I wandered around a little bit through the older neighborhoods and along the ocean to see the impressive skyline.  A modern city indeed.  But we didn't do much that day

church with a mini church

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She felt much better the next morning and we decided to try to get to the Miraflores locks to see the canal.  It was quite a ways outside of the city so the guidebook said to take a city bus towards Gamboa or Paraiso and ask to be dropped off at the locks.  We waited for a Gamboa bus for around 45 minutes before giving up and jumping on a bus that said Paraiso on it.  I asked the bus driver whether the bus passed Miraflores.  He said yes.  Then I asked him whether he could tell us when to get off.  He said yes.  So we sat down and he drove us out of the city in the wrong direction.  He told us to get off at a bus stop and wouldn't let us pay for the ride.  This was probably because we were nowhere near the locks.  At all.  We stopped at a McDonald's to ask for directions and they told us we were far away.  So we waited in the rain for the next Paraiso bound bus and got on.  This time the driver was much more helpful, and said he wasn't going to Miraflores but he could take us to the bus that did.  The whole bus got in on it this time and told us when we were getting close.  He dropped us off at the terminal (he didn't ask us to pay either) with a sign clearly marked that said Paraiso.  Apparently the buses that had Paraiso painted on them didn't actually go there.  We were being too literal. 

This one went in the right direction and we were dropped off in front of the turn off for Miraflores locks.  After being welcomed by a Panamanian Texan, we hiked over to the visitors center.  It was very fancy.  We even got color brochures.  We walked straight up on deck to see a ship that was in the process of passing through the locks.  Commentary in Spanish and English explained the process

fancy church

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There are three sets of locks on the Canal.  From the Pacific side, the Miraflores lock raises the ship in two steps of about 8 meters each.  The Gatun Lock raises it another 15 meters in one step.  And another set on the Caribbean side lowers the ships back to sea level.  The ships enter the canal, towed by locomotives along the sides to steady them.  The water level is raised or lowered very quickly considering their size (faster than it takes to fill a bathtub).  Then they proceed to the second set, the process is repeated, and they enter the lake to continue across the canal.  About 50 ships a day pass through the canal, it takes about 8 hours to transit, and they bring in 2-3 million dollars a day.  It can cost up to half a million to pass through.  The cheapest price ever was the guy who swam through the canal for about 36 cents. 

I found it interesting that they don't recycle water and it's just flushed out to sea.  They depend on the big rainy season and the Gatun Lake to provide enough water.  The canal was first attempted by the French who were overcome by tropical disease and money.  The United States finished and operated the canal until 1999 when it was handed back to the Panamanians.  The museum showed all of the various trains and ships that were invented specifically to move dirt and earth from the canal during its construction.  It was one of the largest earth moving operations ever.  They are planning to build two new sets of locks that recycle water and will allow ships that are twice as big to travel through the canal. 

The locks and the museum were pretty interesting to see.  We found out pretty late that we hadn't changed our clock to Panama time and were an hour behind.  This made us scramble for the bus because we didn't want to get stuck.  The first couple didn't even stop for us so we grabbed a random one and luckily got off very near the place we had left in the morning.  It had taken much longer than expected, but I'm glad we got to see it.  We treated ourselves to an ice cream cone. 

Tomorrow we head to the airport to hopefully catch our flight.  We head to Lima, Peru to start our South American portion.

Travis

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lots of pretty ruined buildings	soccer!	boardwalk on the Panama Bay	neat sculptures
she's sewing	monument to the canal builders	Miraflores locks	ship being lowered
view going out to sea	little locomotives steady the ships	the boats leaving the first set of locks	look at the boat go!
Erin was really excited about the sailing ship	two boats at once	watch the level of the ships	lowered completely
big boat

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