Canal Lore

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Geo: 8.99427, -79.5188

We took an English speaking city tour today that included being hauled out to the Miraflores Locks to the Canal museum and dumped out by our surly non-communicative guide. We were totally unimpressed with her, but loved the museum and took a bunch of pictures trying to embed all that information in our feeble brains. There's so much to remember the more we put in the more falls out.

After that she took us to a chuchi area and said, get out here--you have 15 minutes. We told her we weren't really very interested in this area, could we see Casco Viejo, the old city, instead?

So she drove us to the old city, stopped at the church and said, you take picture here.

I kept asking her to tell us about what we were seeing, about the city, but she had no words. She said, throwing her hands in the air, I can't talk English any more. No more.

Excuse me? What did they tell you when they asked you to do this tour, we asked? Did they tell you we don't speak Spanish?

Oh my what an awful experience. We had her take us back to the hotel, where we complained to the desk staff. They were very sympathetic and refunded half of our cost, then promised to have their airport only shuttle take us to the train station for our trip on the canal train the next morning.

But since the next day was a holiday and the train wasn't running, we booked three more days here and they gave us a discount rate for our trouble.

They were just super people and really went out of their way to make our stay as comfortable and cheery as possible. I just can't say enough good about them.

But now back to the canal -- hands down the most impressive man made thing we've seen since Egypt.

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Photos

Schematic of Valve Locks
Shows placement of the drainage/fill chutes.

Captain Karen Stands Inside Valve
This life size backdrop shows how big the valves were that the water flowed through. With 20 of these per chamber ships could be raised or lowered in 8 minutes flat.