Across the Continental Divide

Garry anointed today as Geek’s Day as this morning we completed a partial transit of the Panama Canal. Our day began with a short bus trip to the small town of Gamboa which sits on the shores of Lake Gatun in central Panama. Lake Gatun makes up almost a third of the Panama Canal’s length (24.2 kilometers across the isthmus). It’s an artificial lake, constructed to hold the vast amount of water required to operate the canals locks.


From Gaboa a small passenger boat took us along the canal, through the Gaillard (Culebra) Cut and on towards two sets of locks that finally lower ships 26 metres to sea level and the Pacific coast. Our entire voyage took little more than 3.5 hours to complete, taking us almost 40 kilometres along the canal’s 77 kilometre length.

Without doubt the Gaillard Cut is the canal’s most spectacular engineering feat. This 12.6km waterway slices through the Continental Divide separating each coast of the Panama isthmus. It’s simply an enormous manmade valley, 540 metres wide at the top, with walls rising an impressive 52 metres above the canal itself. More than 76 million cubic metres m³ of rock and soil was removed over several decades before the cut was finally completed in 1913.


Today the cut boasts another spectacular engineering feat, the Centennial Bridge. This is a cable-stayed bridge spanning 1,052 metres across the canal at an attitude of 80 metres. The sight of a Panamax ship passing under this bridge through the Gaillard Cut gave us the best possible sense of how incredible an engineering feat the canal had been. We were told that the bridge’s West Tower had been built 50 metres inland to allow space for the future widening of the canal. Such forethought was wise as we soon past a massive excavation site where the canal is now being widened to accommodate post-Panamax sized ships – all part of the new expansion program due for completion in 2014.


Passing through the three locks that take you down to sea level was an amazing experience – even for a non-Geek like Garry. Two separate sets of locks lower each ship in three stages. The first, single-stage Pedro Miguel lock, takes you down 9.5 metres from the Gaillard Cut to Miraflores Lake. The second stage, is a twin set of locks at Miraflores that drop you 16.5 meters at mid-tide along a 1.7 kilometres course. Mid-tide is an important distinction as the Pacific Ocean coast boasts tides that rise and fall almost six metres. As a result the final set of lock gates at Miraflores are the tallest on the entire canal, rising an astonishing 25 metres from the bottom of the lock.


The experience of dropping 9 metres inside a water-tight concrete chamber is almost impossible to describe. One moment you’re at the level of the surrounding countryside. Within minutes you find yourself deep inside a giant concrete arena with slimy, wet walls towering above. It’s another moment that brings home the canal’s amazing engineering feats. Geeky or not, today's partial transit was a journey to remember.


Our next stop in Central America was Cancun and the Yucatan peninsular. Click here to travel with us.