Off the Coast of Panama

We spent the night anchored a few miles off the coast of Panama, surrounded by cargo ships doing the same as they wait their turn to pass through the Panama Canal. We left the port yesterday night at 9 pm, but because our next port in Costa Rica is so close, we will probably spend most of the day anchored and set sail this evening.

As I’m sitting out on the deck writing this, there is rain off in the distance over the water and a distinct line across the surface between the water disturbed by the rain and the water rustled by the wind. It’s quite an interesting contrast, but it also means I will have to move inside shortly as the rain moves closer.

Panama was a whirlwind, perhaps even more so than Trinidad, but here’s a little bit of what I got to see.

Day 1: Historic Panama City & Canal Orientation

I got a great overview of Panama City, Panama Viejo, y Casco Viejo in a day. We started our morning headed to the city about an hour from Colón, our port-of-call. We saw a visitor center, an artisan market, ruins from Casco Viejo, buildings being restored in Panama Viejo, y the outstanding Panama City skyline today (the skyscrapers of New York seem few in comparison).

The best part of the day, by far, was seeing the Panama Canal. We went to the Miraflores Locks, one of three sets of locks on the Canal that ships must pass through in their 8 hour or longer journey through the Canal at an average cost of over $200,000. We watched 4 different sets of ships and boats go through, from huge tankers to a set of sailboats. The process of draining the water and opening the locks was long but fascinating. The ships are pulled by a minimum of 4 small locomotives, 2 in the front and 2 in the back on opposite sides. I was surprised that although ships pay in advance for their crossing, it is still a first-come, first-serve process with the exception of cruise ships that pay a preferential fee to pass through at a designated time. That explained the loads of ships that have to wait in line to pass through.

The Canal is undergoing an expansion so that they can accommodate bigger ships (with triple the cargo capacity at 12000 containers), utilize tug boats instead of locomotives, and install water-saving basins to cut down on the millions of gallons of freshwater that are dumped into the ocean for each ship that passes through (over 14000 ships pass through annually).

We did not get to spend as long as I would’ve liked at the Canal, but realistically I probably would’ve enjoyed spending an entire day there just watching the ships. We came back to our ship in the afternoon and I spent some time around the cruise ship terminal and shops area until dinner. Colón enforces a 9 pm curfew for minors (18 and under), but we were told that if we even looked under 18 there was a good chance we would be arrested, no questions asked. Doubled with the fact that Colón is one of the most dangerous countries in Central America, I spent the rest of the evening on board with several other students who had field trips early in the morning.

Day 2: Parque Nacional Soberanía

This was my first full free day in a port (I did not have an organized trip) so I took advantage of the opportunity and planned my own trip to a nearby national park. I recruited people to join me and ended up travelling with 5 other students. We spent over 40 minutes trying to negotiate a lower cab fare with the swarm of drivers that approached us outside the terminal and finally agreed to pay $100 for the 6 of us. What we didn’t realize is that one of us was going to have to sit in the trunk of the hatchback plus we had to squeeze four people in the back. The drive was a little under an hour to the park and when we got there it was exactly what I was hoping for. We were finally out of a city and in the rainforest. We stopped at the first trail to look at a trail map and decided to go to the next one since the one we were at was approximated to be a 14-hour trip. Just at that first stop, we ended up finding and taking pictures of frogs and an amazing spider (I will definitely add the picture here once I can!). We moved on to the next trail, passing the Summit Gardens on our way which actually turned out to be a Zoo. We decided not to stop in hopes of returning after the hike. The trail we found was rated easy and estimated to be 20 minutes (it ended up taking us close to 2 hours with our continuous stops to admire everything around us). Just as soon as we started the trail, we stopped to take pictures. The rainforest was beautiful -- trees with roots as thick as the trunk and others almost as tall as we were, hardworking leaf cutter ants with highways across the forest floor, and nothing but the sounds of birds in the canopy above and the rustling of water in the creeks. When we finally finished the hike, our taxi driver took us to a restaurant just outside of Colón to try some of the local dishes. I ordered ceviche de corvino, raw fish soaked in lemon with onions and cilantro, arroz con coco, rice cooked in coconut water, and Panamá, one of the local beers. The food was delicious and we all left very satisfied. On our way back through Colón, we asked our driver to give us a tour to see if it really was as bad as they told us. He showed us areas of low to no income housing, the bus station, and cross streets that he said he (and most Panama natives) wouldn’t even walk on unless they wanted to get robbed at knife/gun point. After our brief tour behind the safety of car doors, we were dropped at the cruise terminal and spent the last part of the day around the shops until on-ship time.