Panama s defining landmark, the canal, the man made marine shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The 80 km waterway, finally completed in 1914 by the US and handed over to Panama in 1999, and now being expanded, is indeed an engineering marvel. A triumph of human ingenuity.
I had a perfect plan to arise in time to arrive for the morning traffic at the Miraflores visitor centre. I overslept! Never happens in a hostel so never occurred to me to set an alarm. Gulping down my free breakfast, false economy to skip that, I shot out towards the metro when a persistent taxi driver persuaded me to hire him for 10 dollars. A fairish price to save the hour on public transport, time being of the essence as the ships stop between 11 and 3 while the locks are 'reversed'. Thanks to my taxi splurge I made it by 9.30 and gazed in awe for over an hour as enormous container ships and two cruise vessels, tiny by comparison, edged through the three locks.
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| Queue to enter |
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| Ship entering canal |
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| Ships have inches either side! |
This is the Pacific access. There are more locks just within sight at the Atlantic access on this incredibly thin isthmus. I genuinely found the canal absolutely fascinating, even the science exhibition was absorbing and I was riveted by the social history.
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| Looking down from the visitor centre at Miraflores Locks |
No wonder Panama is such a melting pot of ethnicity. Migrants from Europe, India, China, Asia, all flooded here during the construction, first the failed French attempt then the eventually successful American one. There are thousands of official workers listed including 227 with the surname 'Griffith'.
The world is a small place. As I turned a corner in the museum I walked straight into my Shoreham friend from Bocas! Like me she's heading home soon, we shared another pleasant coffee in the shade discussing the complex, often controversial, background to the canal. There's race issues rumbling even today, the American cemetery is immaculately maintained whilst the neighbouring West Indian one is unkempt, focus of a current campaign to rectify matters
The new upgraded locks are due to open in June but are two years behind schedule and I get the impression the date is a fiction. Not least as there is a drought here, the water is so low in the current locks some ships can no longer use it, losing Panama a fortune. The wet season is apparently delayed, informally forecast to be June. So maybe Rasa’s folklore was wrong in Bocas, the rains could still be some weeks away.
I found the local bus easily for the return trip, breaking my journey to shop in the Albrook mall. It feels odd to buy anything but bare essentials. I've only brought food and toiletries for months. Now I’ve taken in the city highlights, souvenir hunting has commenced.
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