Apparently there is absolutely no need to have an alarm clock in Panama so long as you need to wake up around 7am. Still exhausted from the previous night’s flights and unable to fully open my eyes I was woken by drumming and percussion. Completely confused I finally managed to force one eye open and check the watch only to realize that it was barely past 7 am compounding the confusion even more. Why would there be a marching band and a procession passing in front of a little quaint and peaceful neighborhood at 7 am? Apparently this is standard procedure here for the
local police department who performs marching band drills every morning at the same time.
With such a wakeup the day was off to a good start. Our first destination were the Miraflores Locks – the entrance gates to the Panama Canal. Located some 12 km outside of the city, they are nevertheless easily reachable by local transportation consisting of incredibly colorful old school buses decked out with mirrors, boas, pendants and charms, not to mention wheel frizzles, tuffs and lights. Why do our buses have to be so boring? Who really needs to see more than 15 inches of their front windshield?
The locks and the canal were, however, a surprise. I expected something like the Corinthian Canal or the Suez Canal – a narrow, fully cemented channel cutting right through the continent. In fact it ended up resembling more the locks I saw near Augustow than anything else and for good reason. Had the canal been simply dug through the continent the environmental results would have been disastrous. Although both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea are virtually at the same level, the tides are hugely different which would result in a continuous current through the channel. Secondly the temperatures of the two bodies of water as well as their salinity are very different. However, most importantly so is their ecology and biodiversity. Apparently there is one species of snake that is indigenous to the Pacific that could kill off nearly 60% of the marine life (plant?) in the Caribbean.
So instead of a massive channel, the Panama Canal works on the basis of locks that slowly raise the ships as their travel inland and eventually lower them as they near the other shore. The entire crossing takes approximately 8 hours and requires nearly 52 million gallons of water per ship. A large part of its feasibility is simply due to the shear amount of rain that Panama gets in the course of the year. Without the large rainfall, Gatun Lake, which is the main source of those 52 million gallons of water x 14000 ships per year, would be nearly dry.
After eventually returning back to Casco Viejo, we decided to check out a highly recommended restaurant above a fish market. After 20 minutes of walking it turned out the restaurant was closed so instead we decided to walk along the waterfront all the way to the new and modern part of town to check out another recommended restaurant. This proved to be our biggest mistake to date given that it was 1 pm, there was not an inkling of shade, and the waterfront walk continued on for 4 or 5 kilometers in the most insane heat. By the time we got to the street we needed, all we were praying for was air-conditioning. This proved to be too large of a request as this restaurant also proved to be closed as did the third one we decided to check out. Finally giving up we walked into the first place we found, which proved to be a fancy little place, with a table of suited business people with their personal purse hangers provided and what proved to be a $7US bottle of water. In our sweat stained dripping state we were not going to be picky and decided to remain to our chagrin. (btw – we later saw an ad at another restaurant for 6 beers for $10 to give you a bit of a reference)
The day finished with another stroll through Casco Viejo, a trip back to our accommodations and a fantastic dinner out on town with our Couch Surfing host.
Tomorrow it’s off to Boquette, the Napa Valley of coffee where the temperatures are to be a bit more reasonable.
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