Two Days in Panama

One of the highlights of this cruise, the segment from Miami to Los Angeles, and the reason many people chose it is the transit of the Panama Canal. In operation for over 100 years, it is still an engineering marvel. Even people who have been through the canal numerous times, like 20, were still running around with cameras to watch the process.

We arrived at the entrance to the canal channel on time – before 7 a.m., so we hadn’t gotten up yet – and once the line crew, Atlantic pilot and commentator were on board, began the 8 hour transit. The Panama Canal is the only place in the world where a ship’s captain relinquishes control of his vessel to somebody else; but these pilots are highly trained and highly skilled to be able to guide ships of all sizes through the locks, Gatun Lake and the Gaillard Cut.  That doesn’t mean that a ship doesn’t acquire a few ‘Panama Canal racing stripes’ as Larry describes them…we noticed that Serenity had a few black scuff marks that weren’t there when we left Miami. But then again, she is what is considered Panamax in the original canal – about 965 feet in length and 106 feet wide. The locks are 110 feet wide and 1050 feet long, so we didn’t have much leeway.

Here are some photos of the transit through the 3-level Gatun Lock which takes a ship a total of 87 feet above the level of the Atlantic Ocean/Caribbean Sea.

The pilot boat arriving with our line crew and canal pilot

All ships are accompanied by tugboats

The shoreside lights that were installed in the 1960s to allow 24-hour
operation of the canal are also favourite perches for the pelicans

As are the trees

Arriving at Gatun Lock. The mules are only used to
keep vessels centered in the lock; they don't provide any
power to move them.

The Regent Seven Seas Mariner in Lock 1 as we are in Lock 3; and
a Panamax auto carrier going the other way.

The lighthouse was probably originally used so ships coming from the
lake could find the locks; now they use range markers like the black
and white one further along, and electronic navigation aids.

As the ship rose in Lock #3, our lead photographer, Neil,
who was taking photos of the ship, and all of us, had to get to the
pilot boat that picked up the Atlantic side line crew so he
could reboard the ship.

For the first time, we have a photo of us during the
canal transit.

Mules guiding a bulk carrier into the lock

Once we were through the locks, we were in Gatun Lake, the largest man-made lake in the world. The lake was created by placing a dam on the Chagres River, a few miles upriver from the Caribbean Sea. This is the largest earthen dam in the world. The water from the lake supplies the locks with the water to raise and lower the ships in the Gatun Lock as well as the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores Locks on the Pacific side.

All sorts of cargo comes through the canal. This ship is carrying some
kind of dangerous substance, as it is painted bright orange.

These little islands used to be hills before the Chagres River was
dammed and Gatun Lake created.

Another Panamax ship. The largest ones used to carry about 5,000 containers,
now with the new locks, neo-Panamax ships can carry up
to 15,000 of them.

What a nice way to spend a very hot and humid day.

On the right side you can see the channel running to the new larger
locks.

The special destination lecturer on board for this segment was Dick Morgan, who had been the General Services Director of the Panama Canal Commission for the last years of US administration, up to December 31, 1999, when the canal operations were turned over to Panama. He spoke of the general trepidation about the future of the canal at that point, because of the disasters that happened as other infrastructure, like the railroad and the ports, had transferred to the old political regime. Panama now has much more stable government, but the Panama Canal is run as an autonomous arm, with its own constitution and a board of directors that includes representation from all stakeholders and canal users. Some would suggest that the Chinese are running the Canal, but this is not true. There are Chinese port management companies running the ports at Colon and Balboa, both ends of the Canal, but they are not involved in the Canal operation itself. The Canal Authority keeps the government from trying to meddle by providing the economy with about $1.5 billion US per year, most of which goes to social programs, education and medical care. The canal has been a real success story, as the recent expansion was done entirely under the direction of the Panama Canal Authority and may be one of the few projects of its size in the world that actually was completed with a cost overrun of less than 10%!

Once through Gatun Lake, a ship enters the Gaillard Cut. This was the hardest section of the canal to build, as it goes through the Continental Divide, which is made up of multiple types of rock, all of which was used to build the Chagres River dam.

Approaching the Gaillard Cut

This is the Continental Divide

The 2-stage Miraflores Lock. The last ones before the Pacific. The
big orange building is the Visitor Centre

The lock gates are immense

Our mule guide leading us to the last lock

You don't have to be a big ship to transit the canal.
There have been kayaks, canoes and even a swimmer
many years ago who paid 35 cents to swim
the whole canal.

Birds of all types hang around the canal. This one looks like
a vulture cooling off on the light standard.

The downward leg of the canal into the Pacific Ocean is done in two stages; the Pedro Miguel is a single stage lock and the Miraflores is a two-stage. The reason for this separation is that, as they began excavation for the locks, engineers discovered that there is a fault line running along the divide, just where they were digging. They weren’t sure what the effects of each on the other would be, so they decided to move one of the lockages further along the channel.

We had thought we would be going all the way out into the Pacific and toward Panama City, but we were quite surprised when we suddenly turned sideways to the channel just before we reached the Bridge of the Americas, and started backing up! Where the heck was Captain Vorland taking us???

We were spending the night in the Port of Balboa; not the most exciting spot, but as he explained later, chosen so that we would not have to tender for the Panama City tours the next day. Which was a rather good idea, since the tender ride would otherwise have been quite long. We saw Emerald Princess sitting far offshore as we toured the next day, and were happy to only have a 20 minute bus ride from the port.

Our view of the Bridge of the Americas and the Port of Balboa

Looking back toward the locks

An LNG (liquid natural gas) carrier passes by just as the
sun sinks behind the hills.

In the evening, we had a small dance group come on board for local entertainment. The dances didn’t seem to change much, nor did the music, and there was no explanation of the meaning of the dance, if any. But the ladies’ dresses were very pretty!

We finally left the ship on a tour on Sunday. We were going to see the Colonial heritage of Panama City and also go to the Miraflores Visitor Centre, to watch lock operations from the land side.

Our first stop was the Visitor Centre, just in time to see a couple of tour boats enter the lock. These were very similar to the one we were on when we were last here with Norm and Barb on Princess. The ship only went to Gatun Lake and then back out to the Caribbean, so we did a tour to complete the transit.

A map in the museum showing the area with the new
2016 locks. Gatun Lake was actually made a little deeper, therefore
larger, when the locks were opened.

Our next stop took us all the way back into the early history of the earliest Spanish settlement of Panama in 1519. What is left of it now, ruins of the stone walls of various monasteries and convents and a whole village around them, was originally scheduled to be destroyed to build high rise towers, but UNESCO intervened and has named it a World Heritage Site. This is Panama Viejo, which was ultimately burned down as privateer Captain Henry Morgan (of Captain Morgan Rum fame….or is it the other way around?) looted for all the gold and silver he could find in 1671. The best story we heard about this time was one where a number of priests duped Morgan by covering their prized golden altarpiece with coats of mud because they didn't have time to take it down and hide it. ‘Gold? What gold?’ they asked when he came looking for it. ‘Do you see any gold shining here?’ They must have done a really good job, because he left, and their golden altar was saved. It is now in one of the churches in colonial Panama City.

Walking along the ruins, we could see skyscrapers on both sides. It
looks like there's no water here because the tide was out at the time
and the whole bay was empty.

Ruins of one of the monasteries in the old settlement.

Another of our feathered friends - a green parakeet.

Another monastery ruin

Then we went into the city and walked through some colonial period streets to the Plaza de la Catedral, the place where Panama gained its independence from Spain in 1821.

The ubiquitous Panama Hat, which of course originated in
Ecuador, but got its name because they were worn during
the building of the canal.

Some local crafts made of beads and grasses.

A quilt made of local animal patterns

Whimsical animal carvings

One of the bodegas of bougainvilleas in a plaza.

The Metropolitan Cathedral was consecrated as a Basilica by Pope John Paul II in 2003, 100 years after Panama became independent from Colombia. It is impressive inside, but we didn’t spend much time there as there was a service taking place at the time. The bells in one of the two bell towers came from the original 1519 bell tower at Panama Viejo and the shiny decoration in the towers is all mother-of-pearl. It is a very beautiful building inside and out.

The Central Hotel Panama has a history of being the place where foreign officials would stay when they visited Panama. It's colonial style inside is just gorgeous, but apparently not the way it was supposed to be when the hotel was renovated a few years ago. Unfortunately, during the restoration, somebody pulled a wrong piece out of a floor at the wrong time, and much of the building collapsed around it...But it certainly turned out to be a lovely respite from the heat outside.

As we walked around the area, we also came upon another ruined church, the Church and Convent of Santo Domingo. This was burned in a fire in 1756 and was never rebuilt, but it is a testament to the engineering of the time with its flat arch. Even as a ruin, it had withstood a number of earthquakes over the years, but did fall in 2003. It has been rebuilt, and the ruins are now being used as an event venue.

We sailed at about 6:30, having had to wait for a break in the canal traffic, and finally sailed under the Bridge of the Americas.

An even bigger LNG carrier than the one we'd seen on Saturday. It
looks like it will just fit under the bridge!

The evening show was by a group called Vox Fortura, four opera-trained singers who had wowed the judges on Britain’s Got Talent a few years ago with their mixture of opera, pop and show music. We had seen them on Serenity before, and their show was just as good this time.