I suppose we should have left a little earlier in the morning for the city than we did.  To be honest, the main purpose of heading out that morning was to find refills for our mini stove.  The butane cans for it are variably everywhere and nowhere to be found.  All over David I was coming across them in 3 paks, and now nothing.  The only place I can find them is in the Do It Center.

All this is to say that until I located replacements, nothing else was going to happen.

As luck would have it, we found two more in another Do It Center, grabbed them greedily … “Start the car!!!!!”  We were off to Panama.

You begin to get used to sights like these along the way.  For all you engineers out there, this defines a “live load”.  How they stay upright through the twists and turns is beyond me, but they do.

The first thing you come across (literally) is the Bridge of the Americas.  Traffic looks light, doesn’t it.  Har har.  For a millisecond.  Finding your way around in a city like this, with NO map but the screenshots on your laptop you took the night before from Google Maps, is a challenge.  What looks easy… isn’t… ever.  Period.

What tends to work, is getting to point A, getting off the road somehow, somewhere, and then getting your bearings.  Then, you can strike off again towards another point A, and see how you do.  Over time, you build a map in your head, but without a navigation system, you’re hooped until you know your way.

Signage in the city is AT the point of decision.  Not before, but AT.  If you are not in the right lane, if you don’t recognize road names, it’s  already too late.

As luck would have it, we pulled off the road right by this cool building, which was obviously some administration building for the canal, which overlooked the shipyards and gantry cranes.

After a breather, we asked for directions from there, were told we had to make our way around the airport via this huge bean shaped (lol) traffic “circle”, and made our way right there.   Ta dahhh!!

Yes, the Panama Canal.   Wooo.  So happy to be here.  Meh…
Honestly, the last time I was here, it was such a let down I really didn’t want to be here except I knew that Cass wasn’t going to let me live it down if we didn’t do our touristy duty.  So, I was happy that they had actually built something to look at for the $$$ they forced out of your pocket, and as it was, it was ok.  Cass was in heaven, of course.

Oh, lookie, it’s a ditch with water, and locks.

Yep, more water, another set of locks in the distance, and the boat we just missed going through.  Ohh great.  Contrary to popular belief, this is what the locks look like most of the time.  Empty.  I was trying to explain how international shipping rates were at all time lows, the world was on the brink of a recession, so shipping wasn’t really paramount at the time, etc…. when over the loudspeakers came the time the next ship was coming through.  Whew.  An hour and a half to wait.

Time enough to see the museum, which was actually partially interesting for a change.

It’s hard to imagine this is what many of the ships coming through used to look like at one point in time.

A little bit of deja vu for Cass.  Yes, the bugs here are big.  One of these landed on Cass in Torio, and when they land, they land with a thud (and a screech!).  Mother Nature is on steroids.

So, finally, along come a few little dinky boats, one of which is the tour boat that goes through every day, followed by a catamaran and a sailboat.  Just when you’re thinking that’s it for the day, they slide this thing into place.

 

As usual, we had the place to ourselves.  🙂  Accents were from all over.  Mostly ‘muricans though, with a gaggle of Jewish New York wives beside us.  Pleasant as can be, but like talking to cartoon characters.

Ok, so then they start draining the water from the locks into the other set.  This takes about 10 minutes.  You can watch things along the walls submerge to show some movement.

Otherwise, you’re just shifting your weight from foot to foot for a while as you wait for…..

the locks to open….

and things to start moving again.  The neat little electric trains guiding the larger vessels are sort of interesting.  This vessel had four on the front, and two at the rear, moving in tandem, and coordinated as they approached the drop-off to the lower level.  Sorry no pics of that because I would’ve had to fight my way through the throng of onlookers to get one.

You get a hint of the drop-off at ground level here.

After that, there really wasn’t much to see.  Gladly, with our own car, we beat the buses out of the parking lot, but as you can see…

we didn’t get too far ahead of anyone.  Traffic getting out of the city after 4:30 PM is … good business.  There were a dozen or so of these hucksters along the route onto the bridge again, and merge after merge after merge all going into two lanes over the bridge.

The camera got put away for a while until we got mobile again.  You went from standstill to moving, then from 5-20 km/hr for a while, then 20-60 for a bit, then to “every man for himself”.  Eventually, they opened up one lane from the opposite direction, which eased things considerably, but I’m glad I wasn’t in that lane….  Terrifying.

Eventually, our escape was secured, we stopped for some dinner/takeout, and were rolling into San Carlos just after sundown.