The last significant attraction of the two-week Explore tour
was a stop at the Miraflores Locks visitor center and observation decks along
the Panama Canal, one of the country’s main sights for travelers as well as
Panama’s biggest foreign exchange earner . They overall statistics on the Panama
Canal are that 35 to 40 large ships pass through it daily and pay and average
of over $450,000 for the coast-to-coast passage, use of the locks, tugboat
guides through the channels, etc. My back of the envelope calculation puts total
revenue at between six and seven billion dollars annually for the country based
on those numbers, although that’s a figure I’d really need to check against
official statistics. While $450,000 seems like a lot of money to use a canal
for a day, the savings in fuel costs relative to going around Cape Horn in
South America or transporting things by truck or rail across North America are
enormous.

The canal was completed in 1914 so has operated for just
over a century. I recall when I was young the controversy over the 1979 treaty
that transferred the Panama Canal and the strip on land on both sides of the
canal from American control to Panamanian control, a transfer of sovereignty
that was completed in 1999. The treaty was a significant issue in the 1980
presidential race between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter just about when I
first started becoming interested in politics . As far as I can tell nothing terrible
has happened to the Panama Canal, to America’s use of it, or to world trade
since Panama regained control of its soil and the asset.

A century ago ships were much smaller than they are today,
so the biggest tankers and container ships of modern times are far too large to
use to original canal and its locks. No fear, though, Panama is undertaking a
massive project to build parallel locks and widen the canal to handle far
larger cargo ships, a project that is well behind schedule in typical
Panamanian fashion. The construction project, however, is big enough to have
been a major contributor to Panama’s economic statistics, including one of the
world’s fastest economic growth rates in many years over the last decade.

Our guide Christopher insisted we get an early start to be
first in line for the visitor center and observation decks when they open at
9:00 A.M. since a massive queue rapidly forms. He wasn’t kidding; where did
these massive mobs of tourists all come from? I haven’t seen them elsewhere in
Panama .

The existing canal has three sets of locks, one on the
Caribbean side called Gatun and two sets on the Pacific side. Miraflores is the
lower of those two and nearer to Panama City. In between the locks is most of
the distance of the canal, much of which is on Lake Gatun, the largest manmade
lake in Central America. The locks work 24 hours a day with traffic in both
directions during the night. During the morning hours the Miraflores locks take
only ships passing north from Pacific to Atlantic with traffic in the opposite
direction during the afternoon. Overall, Lake Gatun is only 25 meters (80 feet)
higher than the oceans, making the locks relatively small ones in terms of
height ships have to be raised or lowered to make the crossing.

I recall the first set of locks I saw along the Welland
Canal on the Saint Lawrence Seaway in Ontario on a family trip when I was about
ten. Those are the ones that enable ships to get to the four Great Lakes above
Niagara Falls by bypassing the falls, a rise of over 200 feet, one
significantly greater than that along the Panama Canal. My parents were much
more fascinated by the ships going up and down through the locks and being able
to talk with sailors from around the world on the ships from the observation
platform as the ships slowly rose or fell with the water level in the locks. The
Panama Canal is one of the few sights my homebody dad would likely have enjoyed
seeing if he had ever wanted to travel internationally . It seemed to take a
long time back then and there in Canada, so I was surprised to hear that it
only takes about 10 minutes to take them to the next level in the Miraflores
Locks. And one tidbit I found particularly interesting is that the gates still
in use on the locks are the original ones installed in 1914.

There was short nationalistic film in 3-D about the canal to
watch in the visitors’ center, as well as a small museum about the canal’s
construction and history, but the two hours we had there was plenty for me,
especially as it got continuously more crowded through the morning. Seeing the
canal made me think actually going through it on a cruise boat might be an interesting
experience, maybe a thought for the day sometime in the future when I decide to
take one.

Our bus took several miles away to meet the truck with our
bikes for our last easy ride of the trip. The itinerary listed that it would be
along the Amador Causeway, a road that connects several small islands near the
Pacific entrance to the canal from which it is possible to get a good view of
the ships waiting to enter the canal . The causeway is currently closed,
however, as part of the canal expansion project, o our alternative ride was on
the bike trail along the coast of Panama City from Maracana Soccer Stadium,
around the Old Town on the Cinta Costera Causeway, and then through the parks
along the harbor and beneath the skyscrapers of modern Panama City. I suspect
the ride we got to do was much more visually interesting than the one we missed
out on.

We then got to kiss our bikes goodbye and return to our
hotel. Christopher gave us a slew of statistics about our two week trip from
Granada to Panama City that are as follows:

Distance Travelled (as logged by the vehicles): 2,060
kilometers

Distance Cycled (including the optional parts I did): 406
kilometers

Time Cycling (excluding optional extras I did): 35 hours

Total Ascent (including optional parts I did): 6 .400 meters

Did I really do 6,400 meters of vertical scents on a bike
over the last two weeks? That’s about four miles uphill. I guess I’m fitter
than I think I am.