Panama Canal

I spent most of today going through the Panama Canal!

I journey began an 6:30am-ish in the Pacific just outside of Panama City. We finished up around 5pm in the Atlantic! Pretty cool.

I'm glad I did it, but I was slightly surprised to discover that going through the Panama Canal is almost exactly like going through locks on the Mississippi River ... which I (along with Simon) did 37 times ... So the novelty of going through locks was completely lost on me - old news. But it was still cool to go through the Panama Canal. It's kind of big deal I guess - you know - in terms of world commerce and historic engineering feats.

Honestly though, the locks didn't even seem bigger than some of the locks on the Mississippi - I know for a fact that at a few locks on the Mississippi we raised or lowered significantly more than we did on the Canal. And the Panama Canal locks didn't seem wider (I just now did some google research and found out that many of the locks are the same width). And, just as I suspected, the Army Corp of Engineers had a hand in the Canal! Those guys are crazy.

It was really cool to see ocean liners going through the Canal - fully loaded they carry an insane amount of cargo. One of the liners we saw coming through was a car carrier called Indiana Highway. Evidently these car carriers have the capacity to hold 3,000 cars!

We even saw a cruise ship coming through!

These large ships are guided through by "mules." They're kind of like little locomotive engines (with electric motors) that run on tracks on either side of the canal. They tie off to the ships with ropes and ensure tat it stays in the middle of the canal. "Mules" is an interesting nickname because (unless Mom has woefully misinformed me) they used to use actual mules (or maybe horses?) to pull boats through some canal in southern Indiana. I'm guessing they used the same system in other canals as well, but I'm too sweaty to look it up right now.

So I was surprised to find that there were only about ten native English speakers on the tour and we were all Americans! I usually run into more Aussies and Brits than Americans. Most of the people on the tour were either Latino or German. There were lots and lots of Germans on the tour ... and in Panama in general I'm finding. Check out this German dude - slipped a little gin onto the boat to spice up his orange soda :)

Our trip ended in Colon, where buses picked us up and took us back to Panama City - only a one hour trip by bus. Turns out that Colon has the second largest free trade zone in the world - the largest is in Hong Kong.

I had the bus driver drop my off at Albrook which is Panama City's bus terminal ... which happens to be in front of the country's largest mall of the same name - I learned that from our boat's cook, Marie. She and I sat together on the bus on the ride home.

The mall is crazy massive - like really, really, really, ridiculously ... big (you thought I was going to say "good looking" didn't you?)

Anyway, I grabbed some dinner in one of the food courts. Taco Bell isn't as big a hit here as in Guatemala. There were people there, but McDonalds and KFC were far and away more popular. Still haven't had a Pitufo Sundae, but don't worry - I'll get to it!

So at my sketchy hostel, they don't turn on the A/C in the dorms until about 10pm. Therefore, my goal is to stay out of the hostel until 10pm. On one-and-a-half recommendations, I saw Quiero a Matar mi Jefe - in the States it's called Horrible Bosses. Couldn't help myself - I'm a big fan of Jason Bateman and Charlie Day.

So that's probably where I'll spend a lot of my day tomorrow and Monday. The only problem is I've seen most of the movies they're showing. The only ones I haven's seen are Captain America, Something Borrowed, and The Smurfs ... this could get ugly.