Panama City and the Canal

We arrived in Panama City this week hoping to catch the Ferry Xpress, a notoriously unreliable vehicle ferry that plies the waters between Panama and Colombia. There is more than the usual amount of pointless paperwork involved in this border crossing. We arrived early on Monday morning to take care of business, and the Gladiator promptly broke down in the world's dodgiest neighbourhood. After warnings from well meaning passers-by about the dangers of the neighborhood, we found a friendly mechanic who toiled all day to get our compressor back online.

Panama City was a bit of a surprise. It is enormous for starters. There is a forest of modern skyscrapers to the south of the Canal. There are historic colonial neighborhoods. Also evident is a large gap between rich and poor with very poor downtown neighborhoods.

Of course, the Canal is what spawned this massive metropolis. We spent hours watching boats go by, and schooled ourselves up at an excellent museum on the history of the Canal. To summarize some key facts about the Canal:

• the Spaniards dreamed of an Atlantic to Pacific crossing ever since Vasco Nunez de Balboa was the first European to cross Panama and see the Pacific Ocean
• the French thought they would have a crack at building a sea level passage in the 1880s. They failed dismally, the engineering problems were too great and some 20,000 workers died of various jungle diseases
• the Americans then took over the project and successfully built a canal over 10 years, finally completing it in 1914 (still losing 6000-odd workers in the process)
• the Canal is 77 km long and saves ships a 20,000 km trip around the sketchy Cape Horn at the bottom of Argentina
• a series of locks raise and lower boats over 26m of terrain
• some 40 ships cross every day, and spend about 8 to 10 hours in the Canal
• the canal handles 4% of world shipping and 16% of US shipping
• a massive project is underway to double capacity of the Canal to accommodate the enormous ships we use these days