PANAMA 3 -Panama City Tour, part 2

If you want to go through the Panama Canal you must make a reservation. We were told that reservations are made as much as a year in advance. If you aren't there when your time arrives, you are out of luck. That helps explain why there are big ships anchored out to the skyline, waiting their turn in the Canal. These views are on the Pacific Ocean side (outside the south approach to the Canal.) I tried to count the big ships but the air quality isn't clear enough to get a really good, clear view so you continue to get glimpses of more ships farther out until you lose track. The ships in these two photos are west of the entrance to the Canal. We thought

they are probably the ones near their time to transit the Canal, as opposed to the ships that are anchored east of the entrance and farther away from it. These photos were taken from the Amador Causeway. It was constructed with spoil from digging the Canal. Its purpose is to protect the entrance to the Canal from the currents that run east to west and were thought to probably cause navigation problems for ships entering the Canal.

The remaining photographs here were taken from the Causeway or the yacht basin at the ocean end of the Amador Causeway. On the day these were taken I didn't really notice the haze. Later, it was apparent that the air quality isn't great.

The photo on the left above shows the City skyline of the main part of panama City. The spiral building is just above the fly bridge of the small boat at the end of the dock in the center of the photo. It is actually about a mile away across the Bay. The photo on the right is of tall buildings on newly reclaimed land that was the City dump until recently. Many of the new, under construction buildings seem to be progressing very slowly. We were told there are 20 thousand new apartments being built. There was no estimate about the square feet of commercial space or hotel rooms.

The spiral building is visible in the photo above at the right. It is the last tall building on the left. The tallest building in the cluster of tall buildings at center right is the Donald Trump 4,500-room hotel and casino. We didn't see it up close but were told that it is serviced by just two minor city streets and that the sewerage, power, water, etc. were sized for lower density uses. Supposedly, there is great resistance building to opening it when it is completed.