Panama Cruise
Gale and I went on a cruise March 2016. The cruise was out of Fort Lauderdale and went to several places in the Caribbean, including the Panama Canal.
I decided for a change in the subjects I sometimes write about, I would share with you some of the things we saw and did on this trip.
The ship was the Coral Princess. This is a fairly large cruise ship, but was built expressly to
be able to go through the Panama Canal. It has 1000 state rooms and a guest capacity of 2000 and has a crew of 895. It is 965 feet long and 203 feet high. Its inaugural cruise was in January 2003, but had just gotten out of dry dock after
a complete refurbishing prior to our trip. The ship was very nice, neat, and clean and everything worked as expected.
We were somewhat worried about the Zika virus mosquito problem in the part of the world
we were headed to. We bought 98% DEETs repellant, and Gale refilled her epi pen prescription. I was on the lookout for mosquitos throughout our trip and never saw one. Apparently the mosquito controls in the areas we were in are still
in effect and are working. Brazil should take a lesson.
Aruba
We left Fort Lauderdale in the afternoon, and arrived at our first port, Aruba the day after.
Aruba is a fairly small island, and is Netherlands administered. The weather was mild, and the shopping for jewelry was good; just ask Gale. We were only in port there for a few hours, which was enough to get a feeling for the island. The
island has an arid climate, and is a popular destination for vacationers from the North East US who want a relaxing vacation. It does have several resorts, with golf, swimming, dining, etc.
Cartagena
The next day we arrived in Cartagena, Columbia. As far as I can tell, Cartagena is composed of three very different sections: modern high rise office and apartment buildings, the Old
Colonial section, and the slums. We went on a bus tour which took us to an old monastery, to the old fort which was built in the 16th and 17th century to repel pirates, and to the Colonial section. The fort is very interesting
if you have any interest in fort engineering. For example, the walls are very thick, and are sloped inward so that cannon balls bounce up and over rather than smash into the wall as would happen if they were vertical. Also, the outer surface of
the walls are built of coral, which is rather soft and they absorb the energy of a cannon shot rather than cracking and breaking like a hard wall would. This fort was never conquered, even though various pirates tried. The old Colonial city is
walled for additional protection, and the architecture is quite pretty. It looks much like New Orleans to me.
Panama Canal
The
next morning we arrived at the Panama Canal. This was the highlight of the trip, and if I had a bucket list, experiencing the Canal would have been on it. In preparation for this, I read The Path Between the Seas, the Creation of the Panama Canal
by David McCullough. This is a massive book about the building of the Canal. It takes some time to read, but if you are thinking about going to the Canal, I recommend reading it. We had on board the ship a historian who gave lectures about
the Canal. He was very informative and interesting. He had grown up in the Canal Zone because his father worked there as a welder. I spoke with him and told him I was reading the book. He recommended just reading the second half as
the first part of the history, primarily the part about the French attempts to build the Canal didn’t really have much bearing on the final result. I kind of disagree with this. Read the whole book.
The French gave
building a canal a valent effort, expending vast sums of money, many lives and fruitless efforts. Their idea originally was to build a sea level canal, rather than one with locks to gain altitude. After seeing the final Canal, it is very clear
that the amount of digging that a sea level canal would have required would have made the project impossible, then and now.
Here is a summary of the results of the French activities:
In France, de Lesseps
(the President of the French Canal Company and self-appointed manager of the project) kept the investment and supply of workers flowing long after it was obvious that the targets were not being met, but eventually the money ran out. The French effort went
bankrupt in 1889 after reportedly spending US$287,000,000 and losing an estimated 22,000 lives to disease and accidents, wiping out the savings of 800,000 investors. Work was suspended on May 15 and in the ensuing scandal, known as the Panama affair,
several of those deemed responsible were prosecuted, including Gustave Eiffel. (He of Eiffel Tower fame.) De Lesseps and his son Charles were found guilty of misappropriation of funds and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, though this was later overturned
and the father, at 88, was never imprisoned.
Then the US, under President Teddy Roosevelt stepped in, using classic gun boat diplomacy, forced Columbia to allow Panama to secede and allow us to take over the building of
the Canal. The Canal construction by the US began in 1904 and was completed in 1914, 401 years after Panama was first crossed by Vasco Núñez de Balboa. The United States spent almost $375,000,000 (roughly equivalent to $8,600,000,000 now)
to finish the project. This was by far the largest American engineering project to date. The canal was formally opened on August 15, 1914, with the passage of the cargo ship SS Ancon.
The canal consists of
a total of 12 locks in two parallel sets of three locks each at both ends. Each lock is 110.0 ft wide and 1,050 ft long. Each lock raises or lowers a ship approximately 30 feet, to or from Gatun Lake in the center of Panama, which is
85 feet above sea level. This lake is man-made, and was created by building a dam on the Chagres River. At the time it was created it was the biggest man-made lake in the world. There are two parallel sets of locks at both the Caribbean
and Pacific end of the canal. The water that is used to fill the locks as the ships are raised or lowered comes from this lake. The upper most lock is filled from the lake, and when it is full it is at the level of the lake. The lock
gate is opened and the ship in this upper-most lock moves into the lake. The gate is closed, and the water in the lock is let into the lock below it, filling that lock and raising the ship in it to the lower level of the top lock. The gate between
the upper-most lock is opened, the ship moves into the upper-most lock to be raised by water from the lake, the gate is closed, the water in the middle lock is let into the lower lock raising the ship in that lock to the middle level, etc. All water
movement is done by gravity; there are no pumps involved. Since the locks are filled from the lake or from the lock above, only the lowest locks’ water is lost into the ocean. Each flush of the lowest lock into the ocean consists of 26,700,000
gallons of water. Ships are moved into and out of the locks under their own power, but also are controlled by electric locomotives which run on rails beside the locks. For a much better explanation of how this system works and for much more
detail, check out these links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_locks#Mules
A second set of locks is nearing completion. The new lock chambers feature sliding gates, doubled for safety, and are 1,400 ft long and 180 ft wide. These will accommodate much larger ships. This larger passage was
supposed to be completed by the 100 year anniversary of the opening of the Canal, or in 2014. They didn’t make it. It is now expected to open in June 2016. These new locks at both the Caribbean and Pacific side of Panama will again
use Gatun Lake as the passage from the two sets of locks. There is only one set at each end; no parallel set as in the original locks. These new locks will not have the electric locomotives to help keep the ships from hitting the sides of the locks.
It will be interesting to see how this works in strong side winds. The water usage from the lake will increase also. When we were there, it was the dry season in an El Nino year (which means dry in that part of the world) and the water level on
the lake was about two feet below where they want it. The new set of locks will of course use more water despite having water saving features, so they may run into water issues some years.
Our cruise ship only went
through the three locks at the Caribbean end of the canal, stayed in Gatun Lake for a few hours and then went back down again to the Caribbean. I wanted to see the entire canal, so we took an excursion on a small ferry boat that took us through the locks
on the Pacific end of the canal ending in Panama City. Because the ferry was small, we teamed up with two sail boats and a large car carrier ship in each lock as we were being lowered to the Pacific Ocean level. They do this to save water – that
is, cram as many boats in each lock as will fit. From Panama City we took a bus back to Colon to meet our cruise ship. This was a 48 mile ride on good roads with jungle on both sides of the road for most of the way. It was a long day,
but well worth the time and money.
The picture in this post is of a container ship that was going through the parallel set of locks on our right. They use both sets of locks in the morning to move ships from the Caribbean to
the Pacific, and in the afternoon they move ships the other way. This apparently is the most efficient way to use the locks.
So in summary, I really liked the Panama Canal, and recommend this experience to everyone
with any interest in engineering or history.
Panama City, on the Pacific side of the Canal is a modern city with business and residential high rise buildings, construction everywhere and is one of the most popular places for
Americans to retire. We heard that the plan is to make Panama City into a New World Dubai. That is, to be the commercial hub, with air connections to everywhere in the Americas. It looks like they are well on the way.
Costa Rica
Our next port was Limon, Costa Rica. We spent a day there, and Gale and I went on an excursion that took us to a banana plantation, a jungle train ride and
a jungle river boat trip. The banana plantation was interesting. It was a Del Monte plantation, about 600 acres in size, which we were told is a small one. The large banana bunches are cut from the trees while still green, washed, divided
into five or six bananas, sorted (the small or bruised ones are used for baby food) and a label is stuck onto the bunch and they are packed in crates and then into refrigerated containers for transport by truck to the port, loaded onto ships and brought to
the US for sale to us.
The train was an old narrow gauge diesel electric two car open air affair. We saw howler monkeys and sloths. Sloths look like large hairballs. Not very exciting. The howler
monkeys were very active in the trees, swinging from branches and jumping from limb to limb. They are noisy, but not as much as I remembered from a trip we took years ago to the Amazon. The boat trip was sort of the same thing, except for on the
water. We again saw howler monkeys and lots of birds. I was struck by how the wildlife that we saw in the jungle, which is quite close to peoples’ houses and even truck terminals and roads are still there and don’t seem to care if the
people are about. The part of Costa Rica that we saw is not very developed. Limon is mostly one and two story businesses and houses, and outside of Limon the houses are really just shacks in clearings in the jungle. There is some farming,
some small cattle ranching, and lots of banana plantations.
Cayman Islands
Our last port exclusive of Fort Lauderdale was Grand Cayman. We
spent a pleasant afternoon on a beach just relaxing. Gale and I had been to the Cayman Islands before. It is a great place to go for SCUBA diving, snorkeling, swimming and even golfing.
So that was our trip.
Fun, interesting, relaxing and safe. I recommend it.