Month: November 2014

We took a short flight yesterday from Panama City to David, then took an 80 minute bus ride to Boquete. The bus was super crowded, cheap, and full of locals.

We grabbed a late lunch in town at Mike’s Global Grill and we lucked out: it was Mike’s birthday. Instead of the normal high price of $1.25, the beers were $.44 in honor of Mike’s 44th.

Boquete is a relatively small mountain town with a sizable US ex-pat community. I guess the AARP recommended it as a retirement spot some years ago. It is a lovely setting. Today we did a couple of waterfall hikes. Each took a couple of hours.

We booked a boat tour of the Panama Canal and started with a 40 minute bus ride to Gamboa, a town on the Southern end of Gatun Lake. The lake was formed by damming the Chagres River, a river that flows to the Atlantic. At the time it was created, it was both the largest dam on the planet and the largest man-made lake. (Today, Lake Powell is larger.)

We headed south towards the Pacific (and Panama City). The canal crosses the Continental Divide at the Gaillard Cut, the largest excavation needed for the canal.

Gatun Lake is 85 feet above sea level, and there are three locks in each direction to get to sea level. Each lock is 1000 feet long, 110 feet wide, and 39 1/2 feet deep. The largest vessels that can navigate the canal are basically the dimension of the locks with all of two feet of clearance on each side. Such vessels are called Panamax. Here’s such a vessel in the first lock heading to the Pacific.

Each lock holds 26 million gallons of water yet takes just 8 minutes to fill or empty. Here’s our boat in the first lock before the lock empties.

Here we are ~30 feet lower after the lock has emptied.

The canal operates 24×7 and completes an average of 42 transits a day. An average transit takes 8-10 hours; a transit around the Cape takes ~22 days. Panamax-size ships can only fit one at a time through the Gaillard Cut, so there’s a daily schedule to manage traffic. Each vessel is boarded by a Canal Captain at the start of transit who navigates the vessel through the entire canal. Large vessels are also required to be escorted by tug boats. An engine failure at the wrong time could be catastrophic – running aground could close the canal.

The Bridge of Americas at the Pacific entrance is one of two bridges across the canal (the other was pictured at the Continental Divide).

More canal info:

• 35% of commercial boats in operation are too big for the canal. A second set of locks is set to open in 2016. These will be 1400 feet long, 180 feet wide, and 50 feet deep. The expansion cost has passed $5B.
• The canal employs 9000 people full-time.
• Transit is generally first come, first serve. Today, the wait to transit is ~24 hours.
• The minimum fee to use the canal is $3k. Our 120 foot boat was $4k. A typical Panamax boat is $120k. It was noted, though, that boats that size use ~$100k in fuel each day, so it’s very economical to use the canal. The largest fees go to cruise ships and can be more than $400k. Fees are based on size and cargo; passengers command a premium fee.
• The 3-mile causeway built at the Pacific entrance to the canal used about 10% of the material excavated for the canal.
• The original canal proposed by the French was a sea-level canal. Such a canal, however, would not be commercially viable. At the canal location, the Atlantic has tides of just 1 to 2 feet while the Pacific has tides up to 20 feet. This would have created dangerous currents.

We headed to El Parque Metropolitano on Friday morning. It’s an urban park with a few simple hikes that promised views of the city and the canal. We hiked 45 minutes to the viewpoint and had a view of the city but couldn’t see the canal.

Lunch called for a visit to El Mercado de Mariscos – the fish market. Lots of fish!

Yes, of course we got ceviche!

We spent the afternoon walking southeast along the Pacific waterfront and exploring the downtown neighborhood. We grabbed some Italian before heading back to our neighborhood for the evening.

We flew to Panama City via Dallas and Miami on Wednesday, arriving a bit past 10p local time. It wasn’t too hard to fall asleep on Eastern time since we’d gotten up at 4a for an early departure from Portland.

We’re staying near the Pacific entrance to the canal. There’s a 5k causeway that was constructed to connect the mainland to a few small islands and create a harbor (and calm water) at the entrance to the canal. We walked to the end of the causeway. We could see a bunch of huge ships lined up to enter the canal, but only saw a couple go in. No doubt there’s a lot of logistics on who gets to go in and when.

We grabbed some lunch – ceviche, empanadas and camorones (shrimp), tried a few of the local brews (Atlas and Panamá), then took a cab over to El Casco Antiguo.

El Casco Antiguo was built from 1673 after the original site of Panama City (a few kilometers east) was destroyed. The architecture is European; it feels like the French Quarter in New Orleans. We started in La Plaza de Francia.

We spent the afternoon walking the streets and poking our heads in a few shops. We checked out El Museo del Canal. It was entirely in Spanish! Fortunately, Leena minored in Spanish and I took cuatro años in high school, so we managed to put together most of the story. We actually just missed the 100-year anniversary of its opening (August 1914). To summarize a bit… The French started the project, but abandoned it – the project was costing too much in both money and lives. The US took another 10 years to finish the canal. Even today, it would take a monumental engineering effort, so it’s remarkable that it was completed a century ago. We also learned about some of the political history, including US military bases. The ownership by the US and lack of revenue for Panama from the canal boiled over in the late 60s in riots that numbers more than 250,000 people. Jimmy Carter eventually signed a renegotiated treaty that did in fact hand over control of the canal to Panama in 1999. Panama holds Carter in high regard for this; the act was described as an act of political suicide.

El Casco Antiguo is situated on a peninsula and looks across at the modern downtown. Panama City is the largest city in Central America with over 1 million residents.

Random sighting: a guy was riding his skateboard while being towed along by his dog – a beagle! Oh, hey, it’s also really hot and humid here!