The first thing you’re struck by when you first look out the window during the transit of the Panama Canal is how close everything is. In some ways, the Canal reminded me of a green version of Glacier Bay National Park – everything is simply on a massive scale. Also, everything is so very lush, even the air feels like you could cut it with a butter knife. It’s hot and humid and the second you step outside the blessed AC of the ship everything you’re wearing sticks to you…but at the same time it’s something even beyond breathtaking.
In all honesty, the Panama evokes in me what I expected the Amazon to be like, what I was disappointed that the Amazon wasn’t like: miles and miles of incredible dense jungle as far as the eye can see – so close, or seemingly so close, that it feels like you could reach out and pluck a flower from it. The lake is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and you’re close enough to the shore that you can hear the birds and wildlife going about their business either completely ignoring you – or perhaps talking about you I suppose.
For those of you not familiar with how a canal works, it’s all based on a system of locks, which artificially raise and lower the water level (in this case down to sea level and up to the level of the central lake), and whatever ship or other seagoing craft might be in the lock at the time rises and lowers with it. A few years ago I was lucky enough to take a canal vacation in the UK with my family, and witnessed what really is a marvel of engineering first hand (literally! After you’ve worked a lock, your muscles ache, your hands are cramped, but you are at least where you wanted to go!). The Panama Canal is based on the same system that runs the narrow boat canals – only on a truly epic scale. When you think that this was built, that it was constructed, and the years – literally centuries – it took to do so.
The journey through the Canal is slow, very slow, and very very hot, we warn all our passengers to make sure that they don’t get so swept up in the wonder of what they’re seeing that they forget to drink water – least they get dehydrated and literally pass out from heat exhaustion. For myself, after only the briefest of stints outside to take pictures, I preferred to witness the jungle slipping by from inside the comparative coolness of the ship. At any rate, we boarded the pilot at 6am this morning, and were passing through the first lock at 7:15am after that it was just a matter of drifting along the canal watching the jungle slip by on either side of us like liquid emeralds – occasionally interrupted by actual cities that are along the canal itself (how strange it is to sail through the middle of a city!) – a remarkable peaceful day really (for my department at least, I doubt it was peaceful for beverage!), which we all needed.
There are some ships I’m sure that still go the long way around instead of taking the Canal, there are some that can’t fit through the Canal (which is frightening, because it’s not precisely small), but transiting the canal is something that everyone who travels by water should do at least once, If only to feel the oddity of temporarily being “at sea” well above sea level.