Panama Canal and Southern Caribbean – January 2023

Day 8 – Panama Canal

While there were MANY highlights to this cruise, the Panama Canal was the centerpiece – the original reason for this cruise – and it did not disappoint! It was a very full, fascinating, enlightening, and eventually exhausting day, but every minute was worth it.

For context, the “canal” is a series of artificial cuts that created a waterway connecting the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. When we first heard of the Panama Canal as children, we had imagined a big trench dug into the earth and filled with water to connect the oceans. That is not the case.

Until our visit, we did not understand that the key feature in the Panama Canal is Gatun Lake. Gatun is an artificial lake created by the Gatun Dam on the Chagres River, and the water level of the lake is a stunning 85 feet above sea level. Release of water from the lake in each direction through a series of locks allows ships to make the 51 mile trip from one ocean to the other, cutting shipping voyages by roughly 8,000 miles.

Our ship, the Caribbean Princess, approached the canal from the Atlantic side, and proceeded through the Gatun Locks to Gatun Lake.

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Approaching the first locks, Gatun Locks

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View of the last lock from the live cam on our cabin TV

We then traveled by ship's tender to the Gatun Yacht Club – a place with a much fancier name than the actual experience -- where we boarded a bus for a narrated drive through the isthmus to the small village of Gamboa. At Gamboa, we embarked on a ferry tour boat for a transit through the original, old canal. We went through the Pedro Miguel Locks to Miraflores Lake, then through the Miraflores Locks to the Pacific Ocean. From the port of Balboa in Panama City, we boarded a bus for the roughly hour-and-a-half drive back across to Cristobal, Panama where our cruise ship had moved to meet us. It was a very long day but worth it in every way!

We board the smaller boat to take the old locks to the Pacific Ocean

Now in the older, original locks

Notice that the water in the locks ahead is at the same level as ours. That will change soon.

Here the water in the locks ahead have fallen, and we move up to the edge

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Linda reaches for the wall and almost touches the Panama Canal. (We’ll say she touched it!)

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The train looking machine in this video is called a MULE. Contrary to popular belief, Despite popular belief, the mules do not actually pull the ship forward through the locks. Ships use their own power for propulsion. The mules use powerful electric winches and heavy steel cables to keep massive cargo vessels perfectly centered in the narrow lock chambers where ships often have only inches of clearance on either side and provide braking control to prevent crashes into other ships or the gates of the locks.

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