 Welcome to Blue Ocean Studios  Around the World
The first idea of building a canal occured way back in 1534, but it took several centuries before anyone decided to take on such a huge project. In 1881, the French began 1 of 2 attempts to build the canal. For 18 years, they dug, blasted, and otherwise carved the canal through mountainous regions of Panama. After 18 years of work, they admitted defeat, due to disease, land slides, and exhausted funds.
Seeing the canal first hand was incredible. As much as we knew of the canal, and from a few pictures, it was hard to conceive what really happens. As we all know, the canal's lock systems raise and lower ships (27 ft per lock). What I didn't understand is that the regardless of what direction the ships were going, they all have to be raised to the level of the Gatun Lake, in the center of the canal system.
It was really fascinating to see the large ship move through the locks - canal workers board the ship at the beginning and continue the 10-14 hour ride until the other side. They attach cables to all 4 corners of the ship and lead it through the locks with the help of motorized rail vehicles that run on tracks along the canal edge. After seeing our first big ship, we watched the short movie and explored the museum during which they annouced a sail boat was coming through the locks. We went back out to see the sailboat, which moved much quicker through the locks and then decided to grab some lunch in the restaurant they have right by the canal.
By the time we got back to the restaurant we didn't feel much like finishing our cold meals, so we paid and went up to the top floor again to check out the ship. It was a really tight fit for this one and you could tell it was made with the Panama Canal in mind :) We'd had enough of the sun and heat and ships so we headed out in a taxi and stopped at the Taca Airlines office to finally get our refund processed for the tickets to Tikal - we got lucky... they said that only because Mario had called an hour before our flight left, could we get the refund on these otherwise non-refundable tickets!
We'll leave you in a cliffhanger now, as we are not expecting to have any internet access on the remote Bocas islands! View Panama City Photo Gallery Day 15 - Panama City < | Index | Photo Galleries | > Day 17 - Bocas del Toro © 2007 Blue Ocean Studios, LTD. All rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Services | About | Contact Prints | Return Policy | View Cart World Travel Galleries | World Travel Blog | Links |
Another great night sleep and we are off to view, often referred to as one of the 7 wonders of the modern world. We caught a taxi and for $5, he brought us to the Miraflores Locks, the set of locks closest to Panama City and the first locks that boats go through when they are coming in from the Pacific. 
In 1904, the US purchased the canal and leftover machinery for $40 million. During the next 10 years, thousands of people from around the world contributed to constructing this incredible feat of a passageway from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Overall, some 80,000 people worked on the canal, with 30,000 of them losing their lives! Panama assumed full ownership and responsibility for the canal from the United States on Dec 31, 1999.
Luckily, we arrived just in time to see the last large ship of the morning go through the Miraflores locks (10:30am). There is a lull in the traffic between 10:30am and 1:30pm because of a bottleneck further down the canal where the ships can only go in one direction at a time. This section is called the Gaillard or Culebra Cut and is 13.7 km long and is carved through almost pure rock and shale. They are currently working on widening this portion so that 2-way traffic can flow all day long.
It was about 1:15 and we could see down in the next lock that there were 2 huge oceanliners that were coming our way! We settled in to eating lunch (our first Panamanian food - a little more of a Carribean feel to it, but overall we were not impressed) and watched as the 1st ship started moving towards us. All of a sudden the waiter came outside and said there was a fire alarm and we had to go outside! Not the most convenient time in the middle of our eating and finally getting a good view of the largest ship :( But what can you do - you know the one time you don't exit is the time you'll get burned. So we went outside, and of course it was a false alarm. 
Back in the hotel, we had a lot of researching to do to get things set for the Bocas trip - and this did not turn out to be easy. It seems that no one in Panama feels like answering the phone at any hotels or if they do, they often don't have a clue if they even have rooms available!! It was so frustrating as Mario tried to call probably 20 places repeatedly and got only 4-5 on the phone. None of them ended up having rooms and we almost gave up. We started looking into other places to go - Panama has hundreds of small islands and we checked into the Pearl Islands and a few other beach resorts along the Pacific coast. Of course no one picked up at many of those places either, so we decided to just try to go with our original plan of flying into Bocas. By this time it was too late to book the flight online, so now we are totally winging it - we plan to just show up at the local airport at 5am and hope to get tickets on the 6:30am flight. Very Amazing Race style I think!! :) 