Panama Update #13
July 26, 2008
Today (Saturday) we took some time to see a few of the sights around Panama City. In the morning we went to what they call the Calzada (Causeway), which is near the Pacific entrance to the Canal. There is a 2 km long palm tree lined sidewalk for bicycles, joggers, walkers, which connects 4 small islands to the mainland. There are many restaurants along the way and the breeze coming off the ocean feels great. It reminded both of us of Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles. We rented 2 bikes for $5 total per hour and rode all the way to the end, where they have a big, fancy yacht club and an expensive store and hotel development.
After we returned the bikes we took a $6 dollar/25 minute taxi ride to the Miraflores locks. Our taxi driver was Jamaican and spoke English very well. His grandfather came from Jamaica in the early 1900s to work on the canal and married a woman from Panama so his family has been here since then. He has never been to Jamaica himself but you can hear the Jamaican accent when he talks. He asked us if we like to Salsa dance and told us about some night club that he likes. He also loves baseball and talked a lot about Rod Carew and how he was born in the canal zone. He also loves Obama and is very excited about him having a chance to be president.
The Miraflores locks are the easiest and best way to see the canal. It is the first set of locks after ships enter the Pacific side of the canal. It is a beautiful and modern visitor center with a film (in English or Spanish) about the history of the canal, a museum about the history of the canal, and several viewing platforms where you can watch shops come through the locks system. There is also a nice restaurant with an all-you-can-eat buffet and salad bar for about $11 each. We saw a Japanese ship go through as we were eating that was carrying airplane wings. The ships generally carry grains, petroleum, and containers with all sorts of other products. The principal trade routes that use the canal include: from the U.S. east coast to Asia; the U.S. east coast to west coast of South America; from Europe to the west coast of the U.S. and Canada. The United States, Chine, and Japan are the top 3 countries of origin and destination using the canal.
The canal covers 80 km and has 3 sets of locks with two lanes each. As part of the canal expansion they are adding a new, wider and more efficient lane to two of the sets of locks. They are also widening various other parts of the canal to accommodate bigger ships, which is where Nikki is gathering samples from. The canal opened officially to international trade on August 15, 1914 and since then more than 942,000 vessels have transited the waterway. The bigger ships pay over $200,000 dollars to go through the canal. In 1977, the U.S. and Panama signed an agreement to turn the canal over to the Panamanians and on December 31, 1999 the agreement took effect.
