I forgot to mention last nights dinner, which was Italian night in the buffet. All sorts of pastas and antipastos and every kind of Italian meat and sweet you could think of. Ate far too much. The entertainment at the theatre was a broadway-type production called "On the Bayou" and it was so good! It started out at a funeral, and after the mourners left, the coffin sprung open and an old man got out, wishing he could see his New Orleans just one more time. The set changed to the past and the show began from his childhood to his teens and then marriage and finally to his old age and eventual death, but they incorporated all things New Orleans.....voodoo, Mardi gras, jazz and blues, food and life in the bayou. It was really funny in places, with lots of good music. The stage had secret trapdoors and things were appearing and disappearing all the time. It was pretty amazing. It ended as he crawled back into his coffin and the mourners and a band returned to carry him away, of course playing "As the Saints came Marching in...." Everyone really enjoyed it. I would have liked to have been able to see it again.
Anyhow, back to today. The Panama Canal is simply astounding. It was so much more impressive than I had expected. I have always wanted to go through the locks, ever since I first heard about them (probably in school), and I was pretty sure I knew what to expect, but it was so much more than that.
There was a lot of information on the ship's TV channels on the few days prior, as well as lots of pamphlets in our mailbox, and even on our beds. The two main things were: that all times were very much approximate and subject to change because the transit depends on other canal traffic, so to expect delays and be understanding about it, and the second thing was, there is no way to leave the ship and go to shore on your own unless you are with a Princess Line excursion. (The other ports all gave you the opportunity to come and go as you please during the hours the ship was in port) Needless to say, once that was announced the tours sold out in a heartbeat and there were a lot of disappointed people, but to be fair, that was all very plainly stated in all the pre-cruise documents. There were a lot of folks who chose to stay on the boat, but there were also a lot who had no choice. All I can say is, do your research folks.
In a nutshell, it worked like this: at approx 6 AM, the first of three Panama pilots board our ship, along with a Panama crew, they do all the technical stuff. It takes two hours to through the three locks. At that point the ship is in Gatun Lake, where a tender takes us to shore, where we take our various tours. The remaining tour-less passengers stay on board and get to see the locks a second time, plus they've got the ship almost to themselves, so it's not a horrible day for them at all.
The ship then swings around, gets in line with other ships and goes back through the locks and docks in Colon. At that point, those remaining tour-less passengers can get off and visit the port of Colon, so at least they can say they were in Panama. It's a rather sketchy place and there are no tours from there at all. It's not a town, it's just a port with a large souvenir and duty-free store. Those of us on tours are returned here eventually and we all get back on board the ship.
So they suggested to be up at 6 AM and go to the front of the boat for the best view of the whole thing. I set my alarm for 5:30 and for those of you who know me, that's pretty astounding in and of itself. I went up to the front and at 6 AM it was fairly crowded and so horribly humid already. The front of the ship is enclosed in plexiglass, so you didn't get a crystal clear view. I went to the buffet and got a breakfast selection; coffee, juices, pastries etc and returned to our room. Steven was up and showered by now, so we had our crummy Nescafé and then went back upstairs....where it was hotter and more crowded than ever, and you had to jostle for a spot. I'm thinking it was the passengers who had an inside stateroom with no window. We decided to go back to our room, our balcony was on the right side, and also the right side (as in "correct") for a perfect view.
At this point, about 7-ish, we were just first in line for the first lock. I couldn't believe how many massive ships were behind us. Close to 100 go through every day. And expensive? Close to half a million bucks in port fees and taxes to go through these locks, which were the older ones, and close to one million dollars for the newer, larger ones. But, it shaves off approx 8,000 miles, so the time saved and the fuel saved must be worth it.
This is just going under a huge new bridge that spans the canal. There was live footage of the view from the front of the boat on the giant TV, as well as on our stateroom TV's. I thought they might play a little Van Halen as we arrived, but nada. I sang a little "Panama-ah-ah-ah" to amuse myself and others who might get it.
There are two canals, side by side, which I didn't realize. We were in the left one, so we could look down from our balcony and see all the mechanics in the middle. They hook the boats up to locomotives called "mules" (because back in the day they used actual mules) and they run on a small cog railway and guide the ships. There is between 11 inches and 22 inches on either side of the ships!
In this pic I am looking at the canal beside us.
In this pic I am looking straight down. You can see two of the mules below me. There were 4 others; two midship and two at the front. You can also see the balconies below me. Steven was always drying his clothes on our balcony and I had fears that they'd fall below and I'd have to go asking for lost boxer shorts. Or I'd see his stuff sailing off into the ocean, to join that garbage patch in the middle of the pacific.
Looking ahead to the first lock.
"Hello. I am the grouchy maitre'd of the canal. Please be seated and don't leave a mess."
It was really neat to be able to sit on the balcony and see what was going on and then to watch the TV and see the front view. This pic shows the two canals side by side and the mules and machinery in the middle. We are just heading to the first lock
Then a smaller ship came up into the lock beside us, which was very cool because we were able to see exactly how the gates opened, and how the locks filled and raised the ships up. We were fortunate to see that, if we had been on the other side of the boat we wouldn't have had that experience. Plus, it's not often that another ship comes through at that exact right time.
Gates open, ship comes in, gates close, something like 61 million gallons of water flow in in 7 minutes, the ship floats up and the front gates open to let it enter into the next lock, where the procedure starts again. The lock they just came thru is drained of that 61 million gallons until its sea level again and the gates open for the next ship. It's incredible. You can visually see the water draining like a bathtub,
The last lock and you can just see Gatun Lake ahead.
Just a nice scene partway through.
An old railway track going somewhere unusual?
Here's a few interesting Canal tidbits.
It opened in 1914, fulfilling a 400 year old dream first imagined by the Spaniards in 1519.
The Gatun Locks that we went through raise the ships a total of 85 feet.
A complete transit to the Pacific Ocean is two more sets of locks, one lowering the ships 31 feet and the next set lowers them 58 more feet.
It took more than 34 years to complete and 27,000 lives were lost due to landslides, accidents and tropical diseases.
The islands you see in Gatun Lake are actually the tops of hills that peek up out of the water from when the area was flooded, to make Gatun Lake. It's not a natural lake at all.
So now we are through and in Gatun Lake. We are assigned a group number so that everyone doesn't crowd to the gangway at once. We get called to our designated waiting area, and before long we disembark onto a small tender that takes us to shore for our excursion.
Impatient waiting.
The tender had weird windows and made everything look like a dream sequence.
We found our bus and driver and started our tour through this area of Panama. To be honest, it was fairly boring. We drove through the old Panama Zone and Military area, which was slightly interesting, drove through a town called Margaritaville, which was not so interesting, it was like a gated community, so nothing special to see there. We did stop along the road to see a sloth, some howler monkeys and some coatimundi's running around, that was fun. Especially the sloth, since they're so popular right now.
Then we arrived at the little area/township called Agua Clara, on the edge of Gatun Lake. They had a theatre which showed a (free) documentary of the building of the canal, which normally wouldn't interest me, but it was air-conditioned so we went in, and the coolness alone would have been worth paying big bucks. This was the most humid day yet. And, the documentary was surprisingly fascinating and only 20 minutes long. Steven really enjoyed it too, it was well done, I was glad we went in. 
There was a short ecological walk we could take, through the rainforest, so we prepared ourselves for some more humidity and off we went. We saw some more coatimundis, you guys have probably seen them, they're the sweet looking creatures that resemble a raccoon and you see them a lot in Mexico, Cuba and other Central American places. We saw a lot of them in the Amazon too.
Then we saw a restaurant nearby so we stopped in and had a Panamanian beer and a Panamanian soft drink. I thought the heat was going to kill me. I had no hesitation in drinking the water and ice which probably wasn't wise (especially since we were told not to), but I was just dehydrated, even though we brought our own water. Luckily, it didn't bother me, I'm fortunate to have a pretty good gut system, as well I was taking pro and pre biotics, the same ones I took prior to going to India.
We also saw a lot of howler monkeys, but they swung so rapidly through the trees that it was hard to get a picture. They also threw stuff at us, which was probably shit, so I wasn't into gazing upwards with my camera. I'm not a fan of monkeys at the best of times.
It was shady at least, which cut the heat down a little bit. Not by much though and I was happy to return to our air-conditioned bus. Spoiled North Americanns. Such whiners we are.
We drove past the new locks, which are very cement-ish and sterile looking and saw a massive yet colorful ship going through. Just look at the height of this thing! It could not fit under the bridge at the old locks, so it had to pay the higher price to go through the new ones. Probably a million dollars.
So then we had a choice. We could take the bus back to the port and wait for our ship to return through the locks and pick us up, or we could get off in the city of Colon and spend a few hours in a local mall and shopping area with instructions on how to get back to the ship. Of course weplanned to get off the bus, but as we drove to this area, I'm thinking, "Nope. Not getting off here."
But then it turned into quite a nice part of the city.
There was a large supermarket that we were going to check out, but instead we spotted this (with such an awesome name!)
The first thing Steven spotted was a beer vending machine that sold you beer for $1.00. Sheesh, $7.95 American for a beer on the boat, and a buck in the casino. We had a beer and played some slots.
The beer was good, the casino was cool, the machines were hot. I put in $10.00, hoped for the best as we couldn't read anything, played for 1/2 hr or so and cashed out at $10.70. They sadly take taxes out before you get your money so I actually took home $10.11. Yes. 11 cents profit, less a dollar for the beer. It was a lot of fun for 89 cents.
But here we are:
This waiting room rapidly filled up, and this was the part that demanded patience. The pick-up time was an estimate since the ship had to wait its turn to get back through the locks again, so no one was sure of any times. I think it was about 45 minutes, but we checked out the store and schmoozed with other folks. Once the boat arrived and set up for embarkation, and had the gangplank down, we all filed back into the ship. At that point, those people who wanted to get off the boat and buy a souviner were allowed to disembark and come in here for an hour or two. They could have run over to the casino area and shops if they wanted, but time was limited and the boat waits for no man.
It was 6-ish by now, and we were starved! I had packed two buns, two bananas and two granola bars in our backpack, but that was all we had eaten since 6 am. So we decided to race to the sit down restaurant without changing since the other 1,000 folks who had been out and about probably were hungry too and all the restaurants were going to be crowded and were probably going to have a wait to get in. I was pretty pushy getting back on the boat. You can see from my pic in the waiting room that we were one of the first ones there, and when we were allowed to board, people who literally just walked in the door tried to walk right in front of me! I just said "Umm....sorry, we've been here much longer than you, and end of the line is waaaaay back there." The woman said "We're in a hurry" and I said "We all are and the ship isn't going anywhere until this room is empty. And there are bathrooms right over there" and I pushed my way past her, and told Steven to "get over here", which he meekly did. Sometimes enough is enough. Especially when I'm in need of coffee, even if it's only Nescafé.
So we got on the boat, and an elevator happened to be right there, and empty, so we zipped up to the Bordeaux and were sitting down when most people were still stuck in the waiting room. We ate heartily, and had two starters each. He had shrimp cocktail and chicken chicharonnes, surf n' turf for his main and a chocolate mouse for dessert. I had bacon wrapped pork terrine with a tiny baguette and chilled granny smith apple cider soup with calvados and spices, and duck l'orange for my main and for dessert a "Burned rhubarb Napoleon with nectarine ice-cream" OMG!
The entertainment show was a comedian, and this guy was hysterical. Not cheesy at all, he was actually a bit off-colour and some older folks left, but we loved it. A good belly laugh at poop and fart jokes is needed now and then by everyone, don't care who you are.
Another time change tonight, another hour back. We were in bed by 11 once again.
Good night.
No comments:
Post a Comment