We´re now working at a frantic rate to catch up on blogging all of our adventures, sorry for the jumping around. We`ll try to do it sequentially from now on...
After getting our fill of wandering around Casco Viejo (despite Panama City being way better than San Jose and Managua, it still doesn´t have all that much to do), we took a morning trip out to the Amador Causeway. The causeway connects 4 islands to the mainland of Panama, and was built with stones dredged from the canal. Beyond being a nice promenade with good city views, it also had strategic significance in defending the entrance to the canal. They´re in the process of building a biodiversity museum designed by Frank Gehry at the beginning of the Causeway, but in typical Latin American fashion the opening date keeps getting pushed back. We managed to gawk at the outside, anyway (apparently they`re repairing parts of the walls that may have been done incorrectly the first time), and then sauntered down the causeway. Since we arrived in mid-morning during the week, it was deserted, and ended up being a hot walk. But it was still pretty, if not the amazing experience others had billed it as.
On one of the islands that the causeway connects to there is a small nature center run by the Smithsonian. We went in and saw some cute animals, as well as a beautiful beach that we weren't allowed to walk on :(.
After the causeway, we went to get a feel for the size of the Canal at the Miraflores Locks. It was very impressive. We watched an enormous ship going through, carrying BMWs to New Zealand, apparently. Mostly we couldn´t wrap our minds around how big the ship was - with only about 5 feet on either side of it going through the locks, I can´t imagine that anything bigger could fit. Wikipedia tells me that the locks are 110 feet wide, which means this ship must have been 100 feet WIDE - and far longer. Panama is in the process of expanding the canal, however, by adding a third lane of locks that will be even bigger. Since they charge ships based on weight (the most expensive was a cruise ship that paid $375,000, while the least ever paid was by a man who swam through and paid only 35 cents!), it's easy to see that the Canal brings Panama a lot of money. No wonder, then, that Nicaragua is desperately trying to build their own canal. We were very surprised to hear about the Nicaraguan Canal proposal, which apparently has already been approved. Currently all the biologists in Nicaragua are conducted impact assessment surveys, but it's hard to imagine how the canal will be built, especially since the lake it will go through is not currently deep enough to accommodate the largest ships. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
A friend of mine from work visited Panama and was impressed with the canal, to be expected, since he is an engineer and all. I think he mentioned that the largest ships that can fit through the Canal today are called Panamax. I guess they'll have to revisit that in 2015.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post!