Panama Canal, Panama.

Normally, on Thursdays, I post my Lens-Artists challenge response from the previous Saturday. For the new year, however, all of the Lens-Artists team posted their favorite images of 2023. That left Thursday open for me to schedule something different.

In my Travel Tuesday post this week, I shared images from our most recent trip through the Panama Canal. Our main reason for the latest trip was to see the 21st-century locks capable of handling much larger ships. If you missed it, that post is here.

In 2013, we went on what we thought would be our once-in-a-lifetime canal transit. Well, things change and times change. We have since gone on two other canal trips, the second trip in 2019 happened when we were invited to travel along with family who got tired of hearing my stories of our trip through the canal and they wanted to see the canal for themselves. Click on the image above to visit that post and see the images captured then as we transited the original locks on the Norwegian Star.

In 2013, only a few months after starting our travel journeys blog, Lynn and I did our first transit via the Norwegian Pearl. The Pearl and the Sun transited the canal side-by-side, so we were able to see the process from both on our own ship and on the ship beside us. You can click on the image above to check out the post about that 2013 journey through the canal.

In two months, we’ll begin our 11th year of writing Journeys with Johnbo, and we are still traveling. Hopefully, there will be many more years of journeys to interesting places and photographic experiments to share.

John Steiner

Panama City, Panama.

One of my travel goals after retiring was to cross between two continents at the Panama Canal. In 2013, we made what we thought would be a once-in-a-lifetime trip for us. What was new for us on this, our third trip through the canal, is that part of the journey was at night, and we were on the Norwegian Bliss, a much larger ship that is required to use the new and larger locks that opened in 2015. My opening image is a snapshot of the bow camera as seen on our cabin’s television. We were escorted by a tug into the lock area but before we entered the lock, the tug moved out of the way.

I’m embarrassed at the quality of the images I shared in that 2013 post as I’d just started the blog and my education in digital photo editing and composition. At the time, we were on one of the largest ships that could fit through the canal, the Norwegian Pearl. We sailed from Miami to Los Angeles.

Then in 2018, my sister and her friend asked me about our Panama Canal journey. After telling them about the journey and the places we saw in addition to the trip through the canal, they asked us if we’d like to join them on their journey through the canal. In 2019, it became a family affair with several family members joining us on the Norwegian Star, a similar-sized ship to the Pearl. We sailed from Los Angeles to Miami and on that journey, we were still in the original locks that opened in 1914, but the canal opened new and larger locks in 2015 to accommodate larger ships. Click on the image above to revisit that post.

The entrance to the canal on the Pacific Ocean side is just past the Bridge of the Americas. Since the canal was built, until this bridge was built, there was only a ferry available to carry vehicles across the new chasm. This view of the bridge was captured on the afternoon before our late-night journey through the canal began.

We left the dock at Panama City around 9 PM but the ship waited in the Pacific Ocean until its scheduled canal transit would begin at around 1:45 AM. We went to bed early and set the alarm to wake us up in time for us to see the first set of locks.

Most of the images in this post were captured from the balcony of our cabin on deck 15. As you can see in the photo, our ship is much taller than the lights illuminating the lock area. Unlike the original locks, ships are not escorted by ropes using the mechanical “mules” and a Panama Canal pilot is responsible for helping the ship’s captain to enter the lock without damaging the ship or the lock.

The Colon locks raise the ship from sea level to about 85 feet (25 m) above sea level, the water level at Lake Gatun. Once we transited the three locks we entered the Culebra Cut, the largest section of man-made canal that is the entrance to Lake Gatun. We slept through this section of the canal so we would be awake and ready for more views early the next morning.

Several streams flow into the canal. Some are manmade, and some like this one, appear to be natural. The scenery along the canal is beautiful so it’s a shame that part of it was not visible on the nighttime portion of our journey.

Workers on a nearby barge were interested in the Norwegian Bliss. I zoomed in on the original high-resolution image to see that both of them had their cell phones in either photo or video mode capturing the ship as we sailed by.

As we entered Lake Gatun, we could see that the manmade lake created many islands in the channel that is part of the Chagres River on the Atlantic side.

Near the Atlantic Ocean entrance to the canal, there is a dam that created Lake Gatun. The large lake acts as storage for the water needed to operate the locks. One feature of the new locks is that storage lagoons store water to reuse within the locks to lower the fresh water loss with each change in lock levels. The older locks drain fresh water from Lake Gatun into the oceans with every lock operation.

This part of the canal was widened during the construction of the new locks to allow two-way traffic. Before the construction of the new locks, this part of the canal was much more narrow. In the distance, you can see the Centennial Bridge, one of only three bridges that cross the canal.

Going past the dam on the Chagres River that created Lake Gatun, we approached the Agua Clara locks, the set of three locks that will lower the Bliss to sea level. Locks, like airports, have control towers that keep an eye on all operations of the locks.

The giant lock gates are responsible for holding back many tons of water. Each lock is some 1400 feet (427 m) in length. The Agua Clara locks are in an entirely separate channel from the original locks.

After passing through the last lock, it’s a short sail to the Atlantic Ocean. You can see it in the view above if you look beyond the Atlantic Bridge in the background.

After passing through the Agua Clara locks, it’s only a short distance to the Bridge of the Atlantic and our entrance to the Atlantic Ocean. I have many more photos captured during the canal transit. You can find 2K HD versions of my entire library of Panama Canal transit images captured during this latest crossing on my Flickr site here.

John Steiner

Canal Zone, Panama.

This week, Erika V. suggests that we review the concept of change, transitions, and time passages. She writes, “…share a photograph that signifies transition and change to you.” You can read the entire challenge post here.  My immediate thought of change involves something pretty obvious. In my case, what came to mind was our trip through the Panama Canal some years back. Transitioning between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans involved a long, arduous journey around the southern tip of South America until the early 1900s when engineers were given the opportunity to design and build a system of locks and a canal through Central America that allows a vessel to be lifted above sea level in steps to transition via Lake Gatun which lies at 85 feet (26 m) above sea level.

In the image above, the Norwegian Sun is being raised in a lock to the next level as it transitions through three locks to be lifted up from the Atlantic Ocean to reach the surface of the lake. This cruise was one of the most fascinating trips we’ve taken over the years as we learned how the process worked through the system.

One more image involving transition from our canal trip is a panoramic view of the Bridge of the Americas. As a vessel passes from the last locks and into the Pacific Ocean, it goes under a bridge that reconnects the two American continents and allows vehicles to transition between North and South America. Click on each image, and if your browser supports it, a larger version will be presented.

John Steiner

On my bucket list for some time, I finally completed a cruise through the Panama Canal. Who would have guessed there might be an element of danger? While traveling through one of the lakes that make up part of the canal system, a barge pushing another barge caught my attention. I didn’t need a lesson in Spanish to understand the sign, or why the red building was on its own barge as far as possible away from the barge wheelhouse.

This week, Michelle W. asks us to share a photo that implies Danger! Per Michelle’s instructions, I will include italics and exclamation points! You can read the entire challenge post here.

Here’s a cropped closeup of the dangerous barge. Happy sailing!

John Steiner

Panama City, Panama

This week, Ben Huberman asks us to show how two or more things come together. You can read the entire challenge post here. My entry for this week’s challenge is at a crossroads, so to speak, of three major connection points.  The most visible connection in the photo is the waterway. The Panama Canal connects the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean via canals, a lake and several elevation changing locks. The other two connections are less visible in the photo.

The second connection in the image is the bridge in the distance. The Bridge of the Americas, on the Pacific Ocean side of the canal near Panama City, connects the continents of North America and South America by highway. Though the Bridge of the Americas is not the first bridge to connect the Americas, the preceding bridges use moveable designs and carry limited amounts of traffic. In 2004, the Centennial Bridge was completed to help alleviate traffic congestion at the Bridge of the Americas.

The Bridge of the Americas connects the Pan-American Highway, a network of roads some 30,000 miles (48,000 km) in length. The Pan American Highway connects almost all of the mainland nations of the Americas. With the exception of a 60-mile (100 km) gap through the rainforest, it is possible to drive from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, through Canada, across the continental United States into Mexico and through Central America to the rainforest in southern Panama. The highway resumes again in Colombia and makes its way southward to the southern tip of the continent at Ushuaia, Argentina.

In 2013, my wife and I traveled through the Panama Canal and made several stops along the way from Miami to Los Angeles. Pictures and more about crossing the Panama Canal by cruise ship can be found in my Canal crossing post here.

John Steiner

Colón, Panama

At the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal lays the sea port city of Colón. Originally founded as Aspinwall in 1850 as a terminal for the Panama Railroad, the second largest city in Panama was built by United States workers. The gold rush on the west coast of the United States drew many from the eastern states. Prospectors would sail to Panama, cross the Isthmus by rail and board a different ship to continue their journey westward. In 1890, the city was renamed Colón.

Early morning, at the entrance to the canal, ships sit at anchor awaiting their scheduled canal passage. I submit, hopefully for your approval, my entry for this week’s photo challenge, “Good Morning!”; a predawn view of Colón and the entrance to the Panama Canal.

John Steiner

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/photo-challenge-morning/

Canal Zone, Panama

My wife, Lynn, and I have just returned from a Panama Canal cruise. Over the next few weeks, I will share some photos and stories from the trip. After departing from Miami, we visited Colombia, Costa Rica, and several ports in Mexico. We disembarked from the Norwegian Pearl at Los Angeles. I will eventually focus one post specifically on our cruise ship experiences. In this week’s post, however, I will dwell on the Panama Canal itself.

The Panama Canal has been on my bucket list for some time. The engineering marvel, completed in 1914, has been saving shipping companies money and time ever since its completion. The canal, built to handle ships that were as large as the engineers could conceive at that time now has a limit on the size of modern ships that it can accommodate.

When a shipping company constructs a vessel, if the ship is ever expected to traverse the canal in its operating lifetime, the design constraints that cannot be exceeded are the length, width and draft (depth of the hull in water). Those design specs for container and passenger ships are 965 feet long, 106 feet wide, and 39.5 feet draft. The height of the superstructure (air draft) is limited to 190 feet to clear the Bridge of the Americas on the Pacific side. There are some exceptions to these numbers, and a quick “google” of the term “Panamax dimensions” will provide you with all the detail you might wish.

Suffice it to say, the cruise ship we sailed upon, the Norwegian Pearl, was completed in 2006, and is built within Panamax dimensions, specifically 965 ft, by 105 ft, by 27 ft. The Pearl, and her sister ship Norwegian Sun, departed Miami for Alaska, where the two ships will spend their summer doing Alaska cruises. In the fall, they will return via the canal to the Atlantic for their winter cruise season.

The Pearl had just come out of dry dock. We noticed new carpeting, and lots of touches that were not quite complete. We departed two hours late. It was not hard to understand why. Looking from the Promenade Deck (deck 7), over the side, we could see them loading pallet after pallet of bananas, lettuce and other foods, long after our scheduled departure time. The ship had been completely emptied for its dry dock experience, and it took longer than expected to accommodate the reloading. But I digress… this article is about the canal. I will save more details on the cruise ship for another post.

The Panama Canal, its design of utter simplicity, however its execution, let’s just say, not quite so simple. We think of the canal as bisecting the continent from east to west, but if you look at a map, you’ll see it really traverses north to south. They started with building a dam on the Chagres River to create Gatun Lake. The lake surface, some 85 feet above sea level, is the height that ships must reach by traveling through a series of locks. The ingenious design uses the water from Gatun Lake to fill and drain the locks. No pumps are needed as gravity does all the work.

Both cruise ships arrived at the north entrance to the canal around 7 AM. The ships were boarded by crews of employees from the canal authority. Ship captains are not allowed to maneuver their own ships through the canal. Pilots from the canal authority, trained in the operations on all manner of ships, are given control. It is the pilot’s responsibility to get the ship safely through the canal. For the next eight hours, a spokesman from the canal authority provided narration during important parts of the transition via the ship’s paging system.

Approaching Gatun Locks, canal authorities on the ship extend ropes that will be tied to eight “mules”, special train engines that will slowly pull the ship into the lock, secure it during the lift or descent, and then tow the ship safely out of the lock area.

After traversing the three Gatun Locks, we sailed on Gatun Lake. The lake is large, covering 21 of the over 50 miles through the canal.

Once in the lake, we sailed toward the Pedro Miguel Lock. We passed many ships and barges carrying cargo.

At the south end of Gatun Lake lies the “biggest dig” in the canal. The Culebra Cut arguably cost the most lives in construction of the canal. From the “natural” edge of Gatun Lake, a 12-mile cut into the Culebra Mountain Range was needed to link Gatun Lake with Miraflores Lake. The elevation at Miraflores Lake is 54 feet, necessitating another lock, the Pedro Miguel.

The Sun and the Pearl are considered to be “16-line ships” as they are secured by two lines to each of the eight mules. In the photo above, the four mules on the port (left) side of the ship are waiting for line attachment.

Once the mules have secured the ropes, automatic winches adjust the length of the ropes as the ships rise or fall within the lock chamber.

After Exiting Pedro Miguel Lock, we traversed Miraflores Lake and entered the final two Miraflores Locks.

By 2015, a third set of locks will be completed. Many of the mega-ships that currently must travel around Cape Horn will be able to travel through the expanded canal.

After leaving the last lock, we sailed under the Bridge of the Americas and into the Pacific Ocean.

A trip through the canal takes about eight hours, and must be scheduled several weeks in advance, canal fees paid in advance, thank you very much. I wondered as we went through the canal, how much a shipping company pays to bring a ship through the canal. After all, they save many hours and thousands of dollars in fuel and supplies by not having to sail around South America. I had heard several numbers, but the final number provided by the DVD documentary they played on the ship’s TVs after the transition turned out to be $520,000 for the Norwegian Pearl. Fees are paid on tonnage and the Pearl holds the record of the highest fees ever collected on a single trip through the canal. Doing the math, given an approximate maximum passenger load of 2300 people, Lynn and I each paid about $225 as part of our fare to traverse the canal.

Our next stop, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, where we would ride a 1910 vintage train and take a boat ride to view some of the most exotic birds I have ever seen in the wild. However, I can’t skip over Cartagena, Colombia, which was our first port on the trip. Next week, be ready for the Cartagena adventure.

John Steiner