The Panama Canal

As we sipped our coffee on the porch I spotted something huge flittering through a nearby tree. It was almost as big as a bird, only it didn't look like any bird I had ever seen. In fact, it looked a lot like a dragonfly that had done far too many steroids.

"What the hell was THAT?" I squeaked at my Dad.

He hadn't seen it and since we were taking off for the day, he was disinclined to go chasing it.

We survived another mad dash through traffic with Oscar at the wheel, despite his near miss with a five-ton truck, and ended up at the Panama Canal on the second day of my visit.

The most important canal in the world, as it is billed, connects the Atlantic to the Pacific and contributes somewhere between six and seven million dollars per day to the Panamanian economy. While this is impressive, I felt the presentation of the Canal, at least at the Miraflores lock, was poor and underwhelming.

We entered the air conditioned building after paying our eight bucks and were shown a dated 10 minute movie on the Canal's history. After that we emerged into the lobby where the gift shop and info booth were located, and after some wandering around stumbled upon the museum.

The museum on the 1st floor is basically what was shown in the movie, only with neat little scale models behind glass. There is no information on how the workers lived, and the scale models were largely unimpressive.

Moving on we hit the second floor where three fish tanks constructed into the walls housed a small variety of local fish but I couldn't tell you what kind of fish because the display did not include any information on them.

Other display cases on the walls showed the wild variety of insects native to the country, and these are all super-sized versions of North American bugs. These were all dead and pinned, so I braved the room and took some snaps.

I had my Dad hold up a finger for size comparison in these frames but if you ask me bigger is not always better, especially when it comes to insects.

The iridescent blue of the butterflies is lovely.

Either a beetle or... a bed bug!

Scorpions!

A hawk moth.

The dragonfly I had seen that morning wasn't actually a dragonfly at all. This is what I saw, and it's bigger than a hummingbird!

It's a winged cricket.

The third floor of the museum was closed for remodelling, so we headed outside onto the tiny observation platform and watched a container ship coming through the locks. I've seen ships moved through locks before but the sheer size of the container ships moving through mere inches from either side of the Canal is indeed impressive.

Also impressive was the price tag. The cost for this ship to move through the Canal was $340,000. The heftiest bill ever for passage through belongs to a passenger cruise ship, which paid $419,000. All payments are cash ONLY and guards armed to the eyeballs with automatic weapons collect the money from ships pursers.

As super container ships are being built and the current Canal locks are too small to accommodate them, Panama is busy cutting a new canal which will run alongside the existing one. I expect the price tag for the super ships will set a new bar for the most expensive passage through the Canal once the new locks are completed.

The ship in the upper lock.

The water level is lowered, dropping the ship to lower lock height.

The ship is moved into the lower lock.

The immense container ship is lowered to the Pacific ocean.

The ships are held taut with lines tethered to little iron engines on tracks called "mules". Here's a shot of one in front of the lock pumping station.

They look like a fun ride, no?

Dad and I enjoyed a beer on the small observation deck (it really does need to be so much larger), but my headache kept getting worse and worse so we retreated to the air conditioned interior of the building where we bought a few cheap souvenirs.

By the time Oscar came to get us I was fighting off a strong desire to pass out, and when we got back to the cabin I lay down. I had a bad night wherein I had to take ice cold showers to lower my body temperature and had a lot of trouble keeping even a bit of water down.

Despite all my precautions I had gotten heat stroke, and it was something that I would battle with for the duration of my stay, along with a multitude of insects that would torment me mercilessly and have me clawing the flesh from my body.

I guess I'm just not designed for the tropics.

I've updated the album to include all the photos of my day at the Panama Canal. Click HERE.

Next up: Taboga Island.