Fuerte Amador [Balboa], Panama - Wednesday, February 21)

After a peaceful night at anchor, Pam & I were up early to catch a tender for shore to begin our tour. 

During the tender ride we passed this futuristic yacht - a (past?) entry in Race for Water.  Pam said I couldn't have one.

Today's Tour:  TWO OCEANS BY RAILROAD - DOME CAR

This completely unique tour could easily be the highlight of your trip. Just imagine traveling down the tracks of the first transcontinental railroad in a comfortable domed railcar, while viewing what is widely considered to be the 8th wonder of the world; the Panama Canal, as well as spectacular Gatun Lake and the extraordinarily beautiful flora and fauna of the surrounding countryside.  Adding to all of that, the unrivaled experience of traveling from one ocean to another, crossing the amazing continent of the Americas in just over one hour!

The Panama Railroad was the brainchild of a group of New York Financiers who wanted to create an easy passage for the increasing gold rush traffic. The railroad took five years and eight million dollars to build, and was completed in 1855. During its first 12 years of operation, the train carried over 750 million dollars worth of gold and silver, and collected one-quarter of one percent of each shipment as duty. The railroad was rebuilt in 1909 during the construction of the Panama Canal, and without it, the canal could not have been built.

Your journey will begin with a short coach transfer from the pier in Fuerte Amador to the Pacific side railroad station where you will board the train for your approximately 75-minute rail journey.  As you travel through the lush tropical rain forest, your location from high atop your glass-domed car will give you an outstanding panoramic view of the passing scenery and there is a good chance you'll sight some Howler monkeys, colorful toucans or other exotic wildlife. Crossing the Continental Divide, you'll find yourself on the Atlantic side, where you will disembark the train.

From here, it's a short coach transfer to Gatun Locks where upon arrival, you will have the choice of climbing the 78 steps to the observatory platform, or remaining at the lower viewing area, where you will still be able to view the passing ships and observe the functionality of the locks. It will truly seem as if the mammoth ships passing through the locks are a mere arm's length away.   Following your time at Gatun Locks, you will re-board your coach and transfer back to the pier in Fuerte Amador.

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Ashore, we boarded our bus.  The guide informed us that rather than travel by train to Colon at the Caribbean end of the Panama Canal, we would go by bus and return by train after visiting the new locks.

It was a nice drive along a route (identified with red arrows) east of the canal.  Once more we passed over the Continental Divide.  In general, the topography was more mountainous than we expected.  The trip took about an hour, most of it on a modern toll road.

We arrived at the visitors' center for the locks just in time to see a large tanker lifted to the level of Lake Gatun and the gates open.  Unlike the older locks, these gates roll into and out of  recesses rather than swing open and closed.

To give you an idea of how much bigger the new locks are, they can hold a ship stacked with nearly 14,000 shipping containers versus 5,500 for a ship transiting the old locks.  It is not containers, but oil and LNG tankers plus ships with cargoes not quickly or easily on/off-loaded (e.g. lumber) that presently make up the majority of the traffic.

In the second and fourth pictures above, you can see water saving basins where 60% of the water used by the lock is retained rather than being flushed into the Caribbean.

For more information on how this water is retained without using pumps, and for other information about these new locks, visit...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_project

The old Gatun Locks (i.e. the ones SIRENA used the previous day) were in the background.

We wandered around the visitors center until it was time to catch a train, leaving just in time to avoid hordes of arriving school children and busloads of sightseers from a large (think 2,000+ passenger) Princess cruise ship.

After a short bus ride, we arrived at the Colon station for the Panama Canal Railroad.  We boarded an old-fashioned vista-dome car.  We were given a snack pack and offered a variety of beverages.  Right on time at noon, we pulled out of the station.

Not an out-of-body experience; I took this yesterday from the deck of SIRENA.

The train circled the east end of Gatun Lake before it paralleled the canal on it's eastern bank.  We rolled past many familiar sites, this time seeing them from a different perspective and only briefly given the train's speed.  It was interesting to view traffic on the canal.  

About an hour after departing Colon, we rolled into Panama City, having yet again crossed the Continental Divide. 

While during the day the train transports tourists, it's primary function is to move morning executive commuters from Panama City to Colon and return them in the evening.  The primary function of the railroad is freight.  Every day it moves a huge number of containers from coast to coast between ships that do not transit the canal. 

For example, one freighter makes port calls on the Atlantic coast of North America and South America.  Another freighter makes post calls on the Pacific coast of those continents.  In Panama, each freighter can exchange the part of its cargo destined for ports on the opposite coast (i.e. a container coming from Boston headed for Lima).

On a smaller scale, similar transcontinental transfers are done by truck using the highway our bus traveled earlier today.   

We disembarked the train, bought some souvenirs and boarded our bus for the drive back to the pier. On the causeway, we passed the Biomuseo designed by Frank Gehry.  It's design lent credence to the speculation that Frank Gehry conceived its shape by crumpling up pieces of paper.

We caught a tender out to SIRENA. 

Once aboard, I tried several times to get a satisfactory picture of the impressive Panama City skyline - a skyline that continues to rise and extend.  Unfortunately, like yesterday while passing through the Panama Canal, there was a heavy haze.  All my attempts to capture it were condemned to the electronic wastebasket.

As the sun set, SIRENA weighed anchor and headed for Ecuador with a sea day on route.