Today was the whole reason for going on this cruise, and it was everything I hoped and expected.
We got to see the ship go through all the locks and saw (at least from a distance) a lot of the work on the new locks that are due to open in 2014. They had a man onboard who commentated for most of the day on any point of interest.
It was just a great day - although it's the wet season and rain was forecast it didn't actually rain on us.
Paul set up the video camera on our balcony and filmed large parts of it from that perspective, but we also took photos from lots of different vantage points.
Bottom line is though, you'd need to come through here a few times to see everything you wanted to see. Much as I'd like to do that though, we're not likely to be back - there are so many other places in the world that we want to see!
I'm not going to write too much - there's just so much and regardless of how many photos you see, nothing is as good as seeing it first hand.
One thing I did find out though (actually at the talk yesterday) was that my assumption that there's "a fee" for going through the canal was a bit of an oversimplification. For our ship, there's certainly a fee based on the possible number of passengers (ie, counting all berths, whether or not they're actually occupied). That comes to around $407,000. There's also a fee for lodging an application to transit (around $35,000) and another fee for a guaranteed day-time transit (around $30,000). However, there are also stacks of other - sometimes much smaller fees, depending on whether or not you need the specific service - for example, ships with dangerous cargos are required to pay various safety related fees.
One fee which we weren't going to have to pay was the gangway fee, which you pay if you want to stop the ship in the lock and use a gangway to get people or goods on and off the ship. It's about $350 if I remember correctly, and we weren't going to need this one, but sadly we did. When we got to the first locks (the Gatun Locks), an ambulance was waiting and a person was taken off the ship and loaded onto it, and it then went off with siren blaring. They obviously didn't tell us anything about the person or their problem, but we assume it was a man, since an older lady and three younger people - presumably family - also got off the ship with their luggage and were taken away in a shuttle. That's a sad way for them to end their Panama Cruise.
Here are a few pictures, but no picture can really show just how incredibly impressive the whole thing is:
This small waterway is part of the original French attempt to build the Panama Canal.
Crocodile!
The Coral Princess is a Panamax ship, ie, the biggest size that can fit through the current locks. As you can see, there isn't much room!
There's a constant stream of ships going through the locks - you can see one here in the lock beside us, another one waiting to come into the lock we have just left, and others waiting in the background. Apparently you don't get to chose which one you go through, so for cruise ships you don't know until you get there which side of the ship is going to have the good views.
You can see a small roadway across the canal - this bridge kind of folds back out of the way when ships are coming through. I have no idea how this bus got down the roadway onto the bridge - there's a nasty bend and even cars seem to have trouble with it.
They're constantly dredging - this is the largest dipper dredge in the world.
Going through the Pedro Miguel locks (on the Pacific side) beside the bulk carrier Marichristina.
This is the Miraflores Locks Visitors Centre - you can come here from Panama City and see displays etc about the canal, and - obviously - stand on the viewing platforms and watch the ships going through the locks.
Another view from our balcony showing just how little clearance there is between ship and lock. You all know the guy in the striped shirt - he was down on deck 7 getting some pictures closer to the action!
Panama City - on our way out into the Pacific!
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