Day 22: Panama Canal

We were due to hit the canal around 8am, so we set the alarm for 7am. This was pointless as we were wide awake by 6.30. We arrived at the Palm Court lounge at 7am and found it already half-filled, so we weren’t the only ones who were excited.

We plonked our stuff on a table, grabbed a coffee, and waited to reach the first lock.

That’s when it started to get interesting.

In one sense excitement is strange, considering how slow the passage is. The total time from first to last lock is about eight hours, and the actual process of entering a lock, waiting for it to fill, then opening the gates and passing into the next lock is quite slow.

Still, I managed to take 263 photos, so clearly there was enough going on to keep me interested. Nor was I alone, there were people buzzing all over the ship the entire day. It’s the history and scale more than the pace. Impressive stuff.

The weather was perfect, with the predicted rain holding off until we had cleared the first three locks and entered the lake. Then it bucketed down, clearing by the time we reached the Pedro Miguel locks.

When I say “perfect” I mean “not raining”. It was stinking hot, and humid. A damn good reason to head below deck to drink beer while the crew worked.

For those of us interested in the information about the canal Crystal had arranged an expert to talk on the Canal. Author Corey Sandler had been giving a series of lectures on the Canal leading up to this day. I thought that was a good effort, but on top of that he was around for the entire eight-hour passage, giving commentary and answering questions. Corey has an excellent knowledge of the Canal, so much so that he was providing the occasional correction to comments being made over the loudspeaker by the representative of the Panama Canal Authority. Most impressive of all, he maintained his enthusiasm for the entire passage.

I took a tonne of notes. Then I lost them. This is likely a good thing or I’d this post could go on forever.

I did manage to remember a few things:

The Panama Canal came at a huge cost in human life. It’s estimated that 30,000 men died constructing it, 25,000 under the French and 5,000 under the Americans. It doesn’t seem as if it should have been that difficult. It’s only three locks up, three locks down. It’s when you realize they had to build a dam to create an artificial lake (the second largest in the world), hack through a basalt mountain, deal with floods and landslides, cope with horrific disease problems, especially malaria, and fight off invasions from aliens, that you begin to realize why.

OK, I’m not sure about the aliens. It might have been subterranean lizard people. As I said I lost my notes.

While it’s no longer a lethal enterprise, using the Canal still comes at a cost. Our ship paid $US200,000 to pass through (as there are approximately 1,000 guests that means Emma and I paid about $200 each for the privilege), and every time a ship passes through the Gatun locks alone they lose 26 million gallons of fresh water from Gatun Lake.

We spent most of the day pacing another Cruise ship, the Carnival Infinity, across the Canal. For amusement we turned it into a race, albeit a rather slow one.

We lost, due to a delay sending a passenger off in an ambulance. Sadly, when you’re travelling with people whose average age is 78 medical emergencies aren’t uncommon.

Once out of the canal we could see Panama City to the south. The Canal provides about 1/6^th of Panama’s income, which I’m guessing is what finances all the construction currently underway. I counted 28 construction cranes on the Panama City skyline.

The only real downside to the day was that I started coming down with a cold. We skipped dinner in the main dining room and ate in our cabin. So much for flu shots.

Despite this the day was brilliant. Well worth the trip.