Day 37 The Canal

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Distance driven today: 14 miles / 22 km

Cumulative distance driven: 8,129 miles / 13,082 km

Today’s trip: Panama City to Miraflores Locks, Panama

Canals visited: 1

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No stay in Panama City is complete without a visit to the Panama Canal. It is hard to argue that there is any other attraction in this part of the world that is even remotely as impressive and iconic. Therefore, today we did what every other visitor to the country does, i.e. took a tour of the Panama Canal. The Pacific side Miraflores locks are located just 10 minutes out of Panama City, making them very accessible. From the balcony of the visitor center at the Miraflores locks, Zoe and I witnessed how enormous cargo ships passed through a series of interconnected locks at Miraflores. And all of this happened just 15m/50ft away from us. The ships felt as if they were so close to us, that we could almost jump onto them. The process of going through the Miraflores locks takes about 30min for a large ship. In total, along the entire length of the canal, there are three sets of locks between the Atlantic and the Pacific canal entrances and it takes on average, about 8 hours for a ship to pass from one ocean to the other.

No matter how you frame the Panama Canal, it is truly impressive, and calling it a modern engineering marvel is probably not an overstatement. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers has gone as far as to name the Panama Canal one of the seven wonders of the modern world. I haven’t seen the other six wonders of the world, but I can still easily imagine that the above description must be pretty true. I am not sure if it is the sheer size of the canal, the volume of boats that travel through every single day, the size of the ships, the construction history, or just its geopolitical importance that is the most impressive thing about the Panama Canal.

Perhaps the Canal becomes even more impressive, if you consider the fact that it had its Centennial anniversary last year, and that it was so robustly constructed in 1914 to last for 100 years. In addition, the amount of work that was put in during the construction phase, as well as, the amount of earth that has to be excavated and moved, is staggering even with today’s measurements. In fact, the dimension of the Panama Canal locks chambers has come to define shipbuilding dimensions for many decades. The modern mega container ships, which are too large to fit in the Panama Canal locks, are defined in relationship to the Canal, and thus bear the name post-Panamax sized vessels.



Today Zoe and I got to watch two large ships sails through the Miraflores locks and see how the whole process works. The skill of the highly trained Canal pilots, who command the ships while in the Canal, is amazing, if you consider the fact that they navigate 100,00 tones ships with a clearance of often leas that 1m/3ft of either side. Perhaps the most striking thing about the whole experience is the fact that these enormous ships move up and down the locks based on elementary physics and the principle of displacement.

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