CANAL TRANSIT, Part 9, Gatun Locks to the Atlantic

The Gatun Locks, at the Caribbean Sea (Atlantic Ocean) side of the Canal are at the head of a bay called Lago Limon (Lake Limon) which isn't really a lake at all but an ocean bay that has had a very long breakwater constructed across its mouth. The bay mouth is about five miles wide and the breakwater has an opening of about a half mile at roughly its center. It is about six miles from the breakwater to the Gatun Locks.

In the first photo, if you look in the very far distance you can see the tops of the container facility cranes that are located just beyond Colon, but inside the breakwater. Our little boat is entering the west side lock as its doors are opening in front of us. The long pier between the east and west locks is on the right. Beginning here at 84 feet elevation, we will go to sea level in three stages, in a distance of about 3,ooo feet, about 28 feet at each stage. It will take about 40 minutes.

The next two photos are, I think, the two best examples of what it's like to go through the locks. The first photo is with our boat still at the 84' level inside the top lock at its north (Ocean) end.

The water hasn't yet begun to go out of the lock. In the next photograph, we're in the middle lock at its north end. Even if you look back at the Pacific end when you're in the Miraflores Locks you don't get this great visual of how high you are relative to where you are going to be (or have been.)

There are many more photographs of going through the Gatun Locks in the album of extras on Facebook for this portion of the transit. If you go through them rapidly, you can get a better idea of what it's like than by viewing the few I am allowed here.

Finally, there are seemingly just as many ships waiting on the Atlantic side as on the Pacific side. These ships are all inside the breakwater. I thought I had several photos of the breakwater showing many ships on both sides and showing one very large "Post Panamax" container ship of the size that will go through the new locks. If I have them, they are hiding. (Edit: It turns out that if you enlarge the photo to full screen size you can see the breakwater. It doesn't rise veery far above the water line but it is there, in the distance.)

The last photograph of the Canal transit is of a portion of one of the two container terminals on the Atlantic side at Colon. Colon was built by some Americans at about the same time as the first railroad was built, in the 1850's. It is said that Colon is laid out exactly as is Philadelphia, with sixteen numbered streets and whatever number of cross streets with names. In 1886, while the French were digging and Colon was peopled mostly by workers imported from the West Indies, it was described thusly by James Froude, a British journalist, "In all the world there is not, perhaps, now concentrated in a single spot so much swindling and villainy, so much foul disease, such a hideous dung-heap of moral and physical abomination." Apparently not much has changed. A 2009 guide book says, "Visitors should exercise extreme caution when visiting the city of Colon. A baggage laden tourist makes an obvious target in this poverty-stricken community and Panamanians from other provinces make little secret of giving it a wide birth. Those arriving by car should lock all doors when driving through the city centre." We didn't see any of beautiful downtown Colon, only its outskirts. Apparently its 150,000 or so residents find enough other victims to keep themselves alive without prowling the part we visited.

We were told that one of the container facilities in Colon is owned by Evergreen, a South Korean company and the other by Maersk, I think a Danish company. I don't know which one this is. I'm surprised this photo is as bright as it is. We were under overcast skies and it was about dusk when we arrived in Colon. I purposely didn't try to take a photograph of a modern sailing cruise ship (Club Med 2) that was docked at the wharf at Colon 2000. It has five very modern looking masts and is apparently able to sail or motor or both. Colon 2000 is a new cruise ship dock and facility built to get tourists to the Colon Free Trade Zone and to house trinket shops on the Atlantic side of the Canal, perhaps so cruise ships could stop at Colon and let passengers off without them getting mugged. More about the Free Trade Zone and Colon 2000 later.

From here, at about 7:30 pm, we boarded a bus, one just like the one we boarded at 6:30 am in Panama City, and were driven back to our hotel. The entire ride was in the dark but, as it were, and lucky for those four (not one as I reported earlier) of you still following these posts, we re-traced about the same route by taxi during the daytime. I took about a hundred photos through the windshield and maybe I can find five to use in the posting about that trip. It will be two or three or more postings from now, after I finish with our walk along the Amador Causeway and our tour of Casco Veijo.

JCE