JE 90

Sunday, January 15 – Panama City

Experiencing the Panama Canal was the main reason I wanted to visit this country. I’ve booked a tour today that will fulfill that desire. I’ll be taking a boat ride for a few hours along a small portion of the Canal. Hopefully I won’t be disappointed!

Besides the cruise, the tour ($145) also includes hotel pickup and return, and lunch served on the boat. I think I’ll do chronological style entries of the tour for this post. It might get a little dorky, so feel free to scroll down if you get bored! I don’t plan on getting into a lot of technical stuff though; there’s plenty of information online regarding the history and operation of the Canal, for those who are interested. Here’s one source.

9:00am: Pickup at the hotel by the tour company’s shuttle bus. I was told yesterday that I would be picked up between 9:15 and 9:45. This is the opposite of what I’ve experienced in Latin America – early rather than late!

10:30am: Arrive in Gamboa. This is where we’ll be boarding the boat for the ride south on the Canal back towards Panama City. I was the second of what turned out to be seven hotel pickups (11 passengers), and then it was about a 40 minute drive to Gamboa. One problem though – the boarding isn’t scheduled to start until 11:30! So we head back down the road along the Canal to kill some time at a little restaurant/grocery store.

Across the street from our time-killing spot was this Canal facility with some lifting capability. It turns out this crane was purchased from the Port of Long Beach in the late 1990s.

11:30am: We’re back at the dock and the crew is ready for passenger boarding. While we were away however, several other tour buses have queued up to offload their passengers. This is going to be a full load!

Our mode of transport for the afternoon – *The Pacific Queen*. I ended up standing at the front corner of that upper deck railing on the right for most of the trip. I even skipped lunch. Kind of stupid, I know. I’m weird.

1st ship sighting! (We’re still tied up at the dock…)

11:50am: We’re underway!

A little bit of a crowd up here on top. Most of the passengers though are either towards the stern undercover, or down below in the air conditioned areas. That will change though when we approach the locks – it will get packed up here.

A Canal tug and a really small tour boat!

This is the Centennial Bridge spanning the Gaillard Cut section of the Canal. Off to the right there is some maintenance dredging taking place (brings back memories of my earlier life!)

You’re probably wondering why I’ve included this picture? Notice the fork we’re approaching? The diversion to the right was an expansion to the Canal that was completed in 2016. It allows for both increased traffic and the accommodation through the locks of the newer generation of ships with a wider beam.

Approaching the Pedro Miguel Locks. There are two parallel berths – note the arrow indicating which side we are to use.

12:45pm: Tied up at our first set of locks.

We’ll wait here until a ship comes along. Note the water elevation difference.

A ship passing through the new, wider section of the Canal

We have a ship approaching! (another car carrier) The sportfisherman tied up alongside us has also been waiting. It turns out it serves as a tender for a large yacht. Amazing!

Okay, I think that’s close enough! Notice the little train cars on the left, running on a single rail? They have a line attached to the ship and are used to assist in the transit through the lock.

1:58pm: The lock begins to drain.

2:06pm: We depart the locks.

Approaching the Miraflores Locks. You can see the train cars on the left.

2:19pm: Tied up at our second, and last set of locks. Again, we’ll wait here until the car carrier catches up.

The third set of gates further ahead were included as a safety factor, in the event of catastrophic failure upstream.

This is the Miraflores Visitor Center. I’ve included the picture to show the huge crowd gathered on the ground and lower level observation deck.

An LNG Carrier passing through the wider section of the locks. A fun sighting for me (and some of the readers of this journal), as I (we) spent a few years of my (our) life (lives) working on the estimates of LNG facilities.

2:56pm: The locks begins to drain.

3:07pm: We depart the locks.

3:15pm: We arrive at the 3rd set of gates.

3:23pm: The locks begins to drain.

The drain water can be seen spilling out ahead of us. The total elevation change in this set of locks is 54 feet.

3:32pm: We depart the locks.

Looks like there have been some tight fits coming through here!

Bridge of the Americas and the entrance to the Pacific Ocean

4:31pm: We disembark.

5:20pm: Dropped off at my hotel.

This was fun!. I was not disappointed!

There were 4 folks on our bus who travelled here from the States just for a long weekend, solely to take this cruise on the Canal. I spoke to a couple other people on the boat who were doing the same thing. And this was a small sample size, I’m there were others. Interesting. I guess I’m not the only Panama Canal geek!

But you may be shocked to learn that this Panama Canal cruise was NOT the highlight of my day. Nope. That’s because I made a new friend today…

Daniel is an 8 year old from Panama City. We were on the same tour bus (he and his grandfather were the first pickup), but didn’t talk on the way to the boat. Once we got onboard though, he joined me on the upper deck where I had planted myself by the railing. He would squeeze in next to me when it was crowded and go down below to get me snacks and drinks during the lulls. A very nice little guy. I had fun talking to him (his favorite car is the Supra, which I can relate to!). He wanted to sit with me on the bus as we returned and everyone was dropped off at their hotels. He even fell asleep next to me. Very cute.

JE 90

JE 90

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