Yesterday we went to see one of the engineering wonders of the world – the Panama canal. The Miraflores Locks are right outside Panama City so we could see the action up-close and personal.

Like everything in Panama City, it started with a little bargaining. Taxis in the city don’t have meters and while there is an official map indicating how much your trip should cost, very few drivers know and/or care about that. So you usually just tell the driver where you want to go and he’ll give you a price. If it’s too high, which it invariably is, you counter with something more reasonable, etc. Eventually you’ll meet somewhere in the middle about 2 dollars higher than what the official price would actually be. In the case of going to the Miraflores locks, the problem is that it’s a little outside of the city in an isolated spot, i.e. the taxis can pretty much charge whatever they want to get you there and away again since they are the only form of transport available. We found a driver who was willing to take us for $6 so we counted ourselves lucky and got into his truck. (Of course it was adorned with the local requirements: Panamanian flag stuck to the windshield and car-freshener tree dangling from the rear-view mirror.)

Once at the locks, we walked through the museum which is not as extensive or informative as the Museo del Canal in the old part of the city but it’s where most of the tourists get their info anyway because unlike the museo del canal, the explanations are in Spanish and English. So we learned how the French started the original dig for the canal, then handed it over to the Americans who did a super job and everyone was happy to give the canal away again to the Panamanians in 1999! Needless to say there was a bit of info missing here but it was interesting enough. Anyway, we had come for the ships and the canal! And we were not disappointed when around noon the ‘Asian Chorus’ started to make its way towards us to pass through the Miraflores locks. The ‘Asian Chorus’ is a cargo ship about 200m long which means it’s not the biggest ship that crosses through the canal but it’s still very impressive when it comes into the tiny little lane right in front of your eyes. ‘Asian Chorus’ is as wide as a Panama canal ship can get, 32m. Here it is, being bullied into the east lane by a tug boat. (Oh, and see that tiny little speck on the left-side of the lane? That’s a row boat which will go out to meet the ship so they can throw a tow line. I would not want to be the guy in that row boat.)

Speaking of sizes: the Panamanian government and the canal authorities are in talks to expand the canal with additional locks which would a) allow more daily traffic (currently 39 ships) and b) let wider ships pass through. This is obviously of great importance since at the moment all traffic is limited to a certain size ship. The largest possible ship to pass through the canal is called a Panamax and has become one of several standard ship-sizes. (The others are, unsurprisingly, Suez-max and Malacca Max.) Here’s a graph of the different size ships:

Once the ship enters this particular lock and the doors are closed on both sides, it takes about 8 minutes for 96 million liters of water to flow out and for the ship to sink about 8m. (Here is a strangely hypnotic time-lapse video someone created with screenshots taken from the Panama canal webcam.)

This is one of several locomotives used to stabilize the ship inside the lane.

These two locomotives at the back act as brakes and can bring the ship to a full stop in no time.

All in all the Miraflores locks lower or raise ships about 16m, depending on the tides. Southbound ships are off into the Pacific from here while northbound ships have two more locks to navigate as well as Gatun Lake and Gaillard Cut (Corte Culebra) before they reach the Caribbean sea.

But the coolest thing of all is the title of this blog post: “a man, a plan, a canal = Panama” is a palindrome, meaning it reads the same backwards and forwards. So clever…

Yesterday we caught a bus, walked across a bridge and suddenly found ourselves in a whole different country. That’s how easy it is to get to Panama from Costa Rica. (Although if you could take a boat it’d be even easier and faster.) The bridge isn’t quite what you’d expect of an international border but the adventure is all there:

Once we got our passports signed by the Tico authorities, we walked across, got a stamp from the Panamanians and we were all set. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. (We could have also just walked across the bridge; no one stops you on either side. But then that leads to uncomfortable questions once you try to board an airplane in Panama City.)

I gotta admit, I was pretty excited to leave Costa Rica. (Woops, did I just write that?) For some reason I feel evil talking badly about this little country that tries so hard and is so pretty. But it really didn’t do it for me. Most important of all, the weather is …uhm… difficult. The rain was to be expected and wasn’t too bad actually. It usually came in quick, strong showers. But the dampness that came with it was just too much. Starting in Dominical, our clothes were in a permanent state of semi-moist that of course brought with it a sensational smell of old, wet towel. Then we spent four days in Drake where the humidity was so high that my hair started curling and my shoes grew fungus. Costa Rica pretty much lost me after that.

But even ignoring the weather (that’s not the Ticos fault after all) there isn’t much that’s making me think I want to go back there anytime soon. Maybe we just travelled the wrong way around – going from Mexico to Costa Rica is like going from Italy to Luxembourg. We missed the food, the culture, the outgoing and interesting people. Even the music and the noise! The Ticos are very polite but everything, absolutely everything in the country is catered towards tourism. You can’t throw a dog (of which there is an overabundance) without hitting a canopy, ATV or horseback riding tour. While this is fun for a week or two, it gets very boring after that.
Surfing was the saving grace. The waves in Santa Teresa were excellent and we could have easily spent another week or two there. I would even consider going back although maybe not until they finish the tarred road (at the moment it’s all dirt road and the dust that gets thrown up by each passing ATV, car, bus and lorry is just incredible).

Leaving Costa Rica behind though, literally, let’s talk about Bocas del Toro where the music is on, the people are fun and nary an ATV tour in sight.

We accidentally took a tour to Bocas del Drago today with a Panamanian couple. Originally we just wanted to amble around town, see if we could find a book store and maybe take the bus over to Bocas del Drago which is on the other side of Isla Colon. (Bocas del Toro is an archipelago and Isla Colon is the main island.) But then one of the tour guides heard us talking about Bocas del Drago and made us such an appealing deal that we went for it. He took us to see Punta Caracol, a hotel built completely on stilts:

Starfish beach, which really earned its name:

And then on to Bocas del Drago which turned out to be just a regular beach. Nice but nothing too special. On our way back we rescued a shipwrecked American couple who were floundering around in a wannabe sail boat (it was really more of a row boat with a mast glued on). Their rudder had broken and apparently they were ready to tear each others’ heads off. We could have just thrown them some of our life jackets but I think they would have failed to see the humour: