A Journal, with Pictures

Panama

by on Mar.17, 2018, under Flying

On Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 25th, we did the most demand­ing day of the trip. Because of the dri­ve from Antigua to Guatemala City and cus­toms uncer­tain­ty, plus a refu­el­ing stop for 12 air­planes we had to leave Antigua very ear­ly in the morn­ing (6:00am depar­ture). When we arrived in Guatemala City in the morn­ing we had to re-posi­tion our planes to cus­toms, clear cus­toms, then take off. We flew two and a half hours to Liberia, Cos­ta Rica, did the approach, had the nor­mal 30 knot gusts, land­ed, refu­eled and with the help of the great han­dlers were back in the air for the two hour and forty minute flight to Pana­ma City’s GA air­port. The FBO and cus­toms in Pana­ma were very good (cus­toms in the FBO) and we were off to our hotel in the cen­ter of the old city. The first full day we went to the canal exhi­bi­tion site to view the orig­i­nal canal Miraflo­res locks (first Pacif­ic side locks), in the dis­tance we could see the Pedro Miguel Locks (Lake lev­el). The exhi­bi­tion cen­ter includ­ed a muse­um that told the his­to­ry and the oper­a­tions as well as infor­ma­tion about the new larg­er locks that oper­ate in par­al­lel to the orig­i­nal canal. The his­to­ry is very inter­est­ing and the engi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion are clear­ly an amaz­ing human accom­plish­ment. The French tried and failed in the 1880’s and the US fin­ished in 1914. The orig­i­nal canal con­sists of three sets of locks, a man made lake (Lake Gaton) that span rough­ly 45 miles across the isth­mus of Pana­ma and some of the most inhos­pitable swamp, jun­gle and moun­tains in the world. There were over 25,000 lives lost between the French and Amer­i­can efforts, most­ly to yel­low fever and malaria.

Our sec­ond day we had sev­er­al choic­es for tours, one being tak­ing the train to the Caribbean side and vis­it­ing Colon and the one we choose which was to take a boat trip onto the lake. We got a taste of the jun­gle that bor­ders the lake and ships tran­sit­ing this part of the canal. An inter­est­ing fac­toid is the lake took sev­en years to form after com­ple­tion of the locks, sup­plied pri­mar­i­ly by the Cha­gres river.

We had a good time in Pana­ma with shop­ping near our hotel, and most every­one was sport­ing a new Pana­ma hat, we had group din­ners in local restau­rants in addi­tion to one night in the hotel, lunch on roof top restau­rants gave us a great view of the new sky­line. The last night after din­ner we enjoyed a show that fea­tured local dancers in local costumes.

Pana­ma was extreme­ly inter­est­ing and for those inter­est­ed David McCul­lough’s “Path between the Seas” is a must read. This was anoth­er stop on the trip that was worth the trip alone.  The next morn­ing we fly back to Liberia for an overnight then on to Tapachula.

No comments for this entry yet...

Comments are closed.

Looking for something?

Use the form below to search the site:

Still not finding what you're looking for? Drop a comment on a post or contact us so we can take care of it!

Visit our friends!

A few highly recommended friends...