The Big Ditch

The bike is on it's way to Colombia and my flight is booked for Tuesday, so I have a few days in Panama City to do the tourist thing. There have been a couple of advertisements for the Colombian tourist industry on the TV here. I was sitting at breakfast and couldn't help noticing the word "risk" in their commercial - "the only risk is not wanting to leave". After being warned about Colombia several times in Costa Rica I'm starting to read "the only risk is wanting to leave and not being able to" :). Still, I was warned about Mexico numerous times in the States and I loved it.

Yesterday I decided to visit Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal, I could see the canal from my hotel room but it just looks like any other river there. Growing up near the mouths of the rivers Thames and Medway I was used to seeing large sea going ships in rivers, so container vessels steaming past on their way from the Pacific to the Atlantic and vice versa were no real surprise.

Until you get to the locks that is. I took a cab from the hotel and a short while later arrived at Miraflores which was opened in 1913. During the journey the cabbie kept on about buceo (diving) and how good Bocas Del Toro is, and that it wasn't that far away (by cab, no doubt). I told him I was more interested in speleobuceo, and how cool the caves in the Yucatan are. He nodded vigorously and went straight back to Bocas Del Toro :) I got the distinct impression he was aiming for that to be tomorrow's Frase destination.

At the locks there is a small exhibit and a viewing platform, basically designed to part tourists from their money, in order to see boats going through a couple of canal locks which you can do for free on any canal in the UK. The exhibit was interesting but frustrating, I never knew the French began the canal, but I had to dig around to find out they were forced to stop because Yellow Fever was wiping out the workforce. Then it was taken over by the Americans and completed a few weeks after Europe went to war in 1914. The workforce was a huge mix of races, but mostly Caribbean which explains why the population of Panama is a lot more mixed than the rest of Central America, which is mostly Hispanic/Indian. The width of Panama is only about 80Km here and it takes ships around 24 hours to get from one side to the other (only 8 hours journey time, the rest is waiting about). About 40 vessels pass through a day, and this meant I had to hang around for about three hours in the baking heat to get a picture of a container ship in the lock for my niece. Of course tourists mean ice cream, which helped to pass the time ;)

I was pretty shocked to learn the average toll for a vessel is $90,000 to pass through, that even makes Mexican toll roads seem cheap ;) Still I guess it would cost that in fuel to sail the long way around Cape Horn now. I also learned that the canal is being expanded, they are building bigger locks alongside the existing ones to take bigger vessels (and therefore more tolls!). No wonder Panama City is on a huge building spree.

I'd been wondering how they fit such large ships into such small locks, and I found out the answer is slooooooooooowly :) My cab had got fed up waiting for me and cleared off, but I got another back without any problem. I'm not used to relying on public tranport...

Later I managed to catch a picture of lightning over the Puente De Las Americas, the main bridge over the canal, just after sunset.


I had dinner that night in TGI Friday. All the American chains are in Panama City, it's like a small American city in a way. TGI was full of American men in their later years sharing tables with Panamanian women less than half their age. If you've got it, flaunt it I suppose :)

More soon.

Frase.