Day 8 - Weds 27th Mar 2024
Participants: Tam & Kev
Today is
primarily the reason that we booked this cruise, we are
transiting the Panama canal. We are up at 6.00 am and go straight
to the viewing deck on deck 15 overlooking the front of the ship.
There are already a number of people there as we sail under the
Puenta Atlantico bridge and head towards the first lock just
after 7.00 am. We are going through the new locks that were built
in 2016 as the Ruby Princess is too big to go through the old
locks. Tam and I had both read a book called The Path Between The
Seas before we left home and it certainly gives an appreciation
for the scale of the construction and the heartache that had to
be endured during the excavation of the canal. It was first
started by the French and ultimately completed by the US. Nobody
knows for sure, but a conservative estimate is that 25,000 people
lost their lives during the construction, mostly from diseases
such as malaria and yellow fever.
We meet up with Evelyn and Fern (from our tour group yesterday in Columbia) and enjoy their company as we go through the first flight of 3 locks before entering Gatun Lake. This lake was created by damming the Chagres River and covers over 160 square miles. We sail through just over 20 miles of it.
The route to the left takes you to the new locks while the old locks are on the right.
We don't have to duck, but it's a close run thing.
We are in the first lock while the container ship ahead prepares to exit the thrid lock.
This shows how little space there is to spare each side of the ship.
The last lock before we exit into Gatun Lake.
We get breakfast from the Horizon Food Court and watch from the back of the ship where you can see the old and new locks and the dam across the Chagres.
Back in the
stateroom we ring our attendant, Joseph, to ask for an ice bucket
as the girls have bought us a bottle of champagne and we decide
we will have it during our canal transit. I notice that the
attendants full name is Joseph Poison and decide against ordering
any food!
We get something from the buffet and have a light lunch with the
champagne as we cruise across Gatun Lake. It's much prettier and
more remote than I imagined. There are many small islands with
brightly coloured bushes.
This is the dam across the Chagres River.
Towards the end of the canal we go through the Calebra Cut. This is a terraced valley cut through the mountains and was probably the most difficult part of the canal construction. They literally had to cut a path through the mountains using dynamite and take away the resultant debris on a non-stop fleet of trains. The problem was that the mountains are a mixture of stone, limescale and clay and so very unstable. Every time they cleared a path the sides would cave in resulting in having to go deeper and wider than they ever thought. Even today there are landslides and this part of the canal is in a continuing state of dredging.
After the cut we pass under the Bridge of the Americas and into the last flight of 3 locks that lead to the Pacific Ocean. Going through these amazing feats of engineering is certainly something special and I would advise everybody to do it at least once in their lives if they can. As we exit there are many frigate birds diving into the water to catch their supper amongst the large number of ships moored up, presumably awaiting their turn through the locks.
There are some strange optical illusions when going through the locks. In this photo the lock we are in appears to be much wider than the last lock ahead. It isn't, it's the same width.
You can see in this photo that they're the same width.
We shower and
and are out by 5.45 pm. We go to the Wheelhouse Bar where I try a
Vesper (quite nice) and Tam has some fruity thing. We have found
that many cocktails can't really be trusted as they tend to be
too sweet or too fruity. It's better to stick to more well known
all alcohol cocktails. With that in mind we have a Negroni and
Sidecar while watching a duo singing.
Dinner tonight is in one of the main restaurants, Michaelangelo.
Overall it's not bad. I start with the Bruschetta which is soft
and Tam has the pot stickers. For main we both have the turkey
and both enjoy it. We decide to have dessert for once and I get
the Coconut Creme Brulee, which is far too big and pretty
average. Tam has the Apricot Flambe, again not great.
This is the only photo of the food tonight. Perhaps that's a good thing.
After dinner we get a drink from Crooners to take to the theatre. Tonight it's a chap called Jason Ostrowski who tells stories about his life on Broadway and sings songs at the piano. We both think he's pretty good and it's a nice way to finish off an informative and fun day. Bed at 11.00 pm as it's another early start for a tour in Panama City tomorrow.