Panama Canal—Picking the Landlocked Oceans

Long-overdue greetings, my jungle jaguars! Have you got your Panama Hat? You'll need it to ward off the intense sun for our transit through the mighty Panama Canal. More than the Suez Canal, the rise and fall of this water is an expensive convenience. "Canal" is misleading, for this is really an inland river with wee lakes along the way, to house ships resting or waiting. The "Pan" in "Panama" is the key: this system of locks is the endpoint of long effort, which cost many lives across an array of cultures. I won't chart the slow-mo history of fighting malaria and actually scratching the dirt out of the way, as a number of films cover this pretty well. You might want to start by watching Nova's take: A Man, A Plan, A Canal, available on DVD.

This "Pan-American" effort (which was also a political ploy and liability for American politicians) begins with a little help from our tugboat friends:





A pilot boat delivers a guide who uses the ship's P.A. system to explain the passage:





The Pacific is behind us, as we enter:



Before long, the locks loom up:





The tugs bump us in, and follow:



Once we're in and the gates are closed, water begins to rise, getting ready to raise the boat up enough to float "downhill":







There's not a lot of room on our side:







The metal cars on rails attach cables to pull us through and keep us straight:







Small cranes sometimes off-load supplies:



The lock moving ships in the other direction is nearby and, currently, empty:







But in the second set of locks, a ship approaches us going in the other direction:









Near the locks, we're often in close proximity to other ships, which underlines the values of those tiny angels, the tugs:









There are long passages through tropical jungle and islands:









Along the way we pass bridges:



And we go under them, including this amazing suspension bridge:





We happen to be passing through on the very day that crucial elections are occurring in Panama, which hold the future of the Canal in their hands. Incredibly expensive plans to widen the Canal hang in the balance. You can see the beginnings of this construction scraped into the hillsides:







When it's time to enter the Gulf of Mexico, tugs are nearby to help:



And then we're under our own power, heading out into open sea:



Once we're in the Caribbean, it's time for the Ambassador's Ball. Alas, I only have my odd, free mango tie to wear with my suit made in Vietnam, but I'm happy to celebrate the return of Skye Fitzgerald, back from his death-defying trip to get film footage in the DRC:



As we move toward Florida, the oddness of ending this voyage begins to arrive...