The Panama Canal

February 22^nd-25^th, 2015

I left Santa Catalina on a local bus, it was time to stop wimping out by taking more expensive shuttles.  I switched to a larger coach in Sona and it was another 4 hours to reach Panama City.  The main public transportation in the capital also happens to be the largest mall in Central America called Albrook.  Due to the lack of Wi-Fi connectivity in Santa Catalina, I didn’t know the actual address for the hostel that I had booked, on recommendation from an Argentinian guy I had met in Boquete who was now living in Panama City.  So I entered the mall and tried to find a hotspot, and also a late lunch and I ended up at Friday’s (the chain previously known as TGI Fridays).

Inside the mall:

Not knowing the city I decided to hop in a taxi to get to Los Mostros hostel and I knew from asking the wait staff in the restaurant that it should only cost around $5 but the first cabbie tried to get 15 from me…cheeky bugger, but I got another taxi for $6 so that was alright.  The hostel was a converted residential home that must have been a pretty smokin’ house in its time.  There was a pool in the back, a large kitchen and living room and at least 6 dorm rooms.  It was a well-run place but just like cities versus towns, the larger the hostel, the less interactive people seem to be.

My first order of business, on my first full day in the city was to head out to the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal.  Having studied engineering in university, of course I had to head out to one of the engineering marvels of the world.  When I arrived I had just missed seeing a large container ship pass through the locks but a couple of tankers came in next so I was able to see the locks in action.  The two sets of locks there raise ships from sea level up about 55 feet.  Another lock further down takes the vessels to 85 feet where they sail across the massive man made lake called Gatun.  On the other end of the 77 kilometer canal they are lowered in another set of three locks.  It’s impressive to see how little clearance the big boats have on either side, maybe 2 feet.

The museum entrance:

Massive container ship just finishing passing through the locks:

The canal:

A tanker coming through next:

One of the little "helper locomotives"...they keep the ship in the middle of the channel:

Four to six locomotives keep the big ships in line:

On to the next lock:

Another container ship going by:

I returned to Albrook Mall by taxi and hopped on a bus to head to Panama Viejo, “Old Panama”.  This is the original site of the city founded over five hundred years ago and it was sacked by English privateer Henry Morgan so the city centre was then moved to a more protected spot a handful of kilometers away.  Unfortunately being a Monday, the museum and access to the area of the ruins of the old city were closed so I decided to get a bit of exercise and walked back to the hostel.  Panama City surprised me by the number of modern tall skyscrapers it had in its downtown core.  No other city I had seen in Latin America was even remotely close to this level of modernization apart from Mexico City, but Panama City was reaching higher than even that mega-tropolis. Luckily my hostel happened to be near the BBA Tower which is also known as the Tornado in the city.  It’s an easy to spot skyscraper and a super cool looking one.  After the first 8-10 storeys, each consecutive level is rotated about 30 degrees from the prior one so it looks like someone has twisted the whole building like a big Jenga tower.  So I had an easy beacon to home in on.

In the foreground is some of the remnants of the original city:

A random headless dragon:

Almost looks like Vegas:

The awesome tornado building:

Up close:

Nice pimped out bus:

On my second day in the capital I bussed to Casco Viejo, the old section of the relocated capital.  I first had to walk through a pretty dirty, dingy and poor part of town.  Crumbling old buildings, dirty streets, and uneven sidewalks with massive holes that could break your leg if you unknowingly stepped into them.  And I stuck out like a sore thumb with my dry fit t-shirt, tan shorts with many pockets and obviously gringo looking skin.  But no one hassled me and I even received the odd smile back.  Soon I stumbled into Casco Viejo and the change was dramatic, clean streets, refurbished and freshly painted buildings but still in the old historic style from a hundred and fifty years before, when the city was abuzz with the construction of the Panama Canal.

Entering the dirty part of town:

If you look carefully you'll see a chicken on the left side of the balcony:

Now into the nice part of the old town:

Do you like my hat?

Looking back at the new part of town:

The bridge in the distance is quite old, spanning the river near the entrance to the canal:

I found the main Independence Square where a museum about the canal was located.  It was surprisingly only $2 to enter and thankfully so as there were no English translations on any of the exhibits so after about half an hour I was out of there.  I wandered around the lovely neighborhood some more before sitting down for a beer in the Bolivar Square. What a beautiful spot for a cerveza.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs:

The Minister of Foreign Affairs:

Okay, just a nice balcony with plants...but note the mannequin's leg dangling out on the right side:

Here's the border of the nice, on the right, and not so nice on the left:

Back on the bus up to the Albrook Mall I caught a different one to cruise out to the causeway, a three to four kilometer land bridge linking up a few islands just southwest of the city.  I figured there might be a great view from out there of the Panama City skyline, and there was, but you couldn’t see it thanks to this massive temporary white wall that had been erected for some construction work of another set of lanes.  Oh well, it was still worth the 25 cent bus ride as on the opposite side of the causeway were thousands of pelicans, more than I’ve ever seen in my life, that were diving one after another into the water for some lunch.

The pelicans:

The Panama City skyline:

Along the waterfront:

Groovin' to downtown:

A 360 of downtown:

The next morning I was up early as I planned to catch the Panama Railway train at 7:15am up to Colon, on route to Portobello where I would be catching a sailboat to Colombia.  The railroad was constructed in the mid-1800s, before the canal, and was the first transportation link across the isthmus.  It actually served as the quickest way to get from the east coast of the US to the west coast so many gold prospectors took this route as the California gold rush started.

The railcar we (me and about a dozen other tourists…all who were older than me) rode in was a classic glass domed luxury coach which facilitated the feeling of following in the footsteps of all those who had ridden this line in the past, although it also looked like they hadn’t washed the windows since then.  After pulling out of the station we had a few glimpses of the canal around the Miraflores locks but then it was mostly jungle until we reached the man made Gatun Lake which serves as a large part of the waterway.

I felt like it was 1920 again...

So you know Knuffle Bunny...he's on the train with his new friend Flat Stanley.  So Knuffle is from my niece Paige's grade 2 class (she's now in grade 6) and another one of my niece's, Brenna, is reading about Flat Stanley and her teacher asked if anyone is travelling somewhere in the world and could take pictures of Stanley in interesting places...so here's his first cameo...

A ship cruising through the canal:

By the lake:

A quiet spot on Gatun Lake:

Enjoying the ride...

About an hour later we were in Colon, once a prosperous harbour city serving as the gateway to the Pacific, it is now a rundown place with rampant crime.  As an attempt to inject some life into the city a tax free zone, the second largest in the world, was set up for distributors of goods.  Before hopping off the train I asked the railcar attendant where the bus station was as I had read that it was nearby and I planned to head out to the Gatun Locks.  Another couple, Rob and Terry from Colorado, were asking the same and we decided to share a taxi together.  The awaiting cabbies wanted to charge us $2 each to get to the bus station which we knew was a rip off but they tried to impress upon us how dangerous Colon was and that as soon as we stepped beyond the steel fence a 100 meters away, we were prime targets for criminals, even though it wasn’t even yet 9am.  We didn’t quite believe their scare tactic and began to walk away when we were approached by a large black man with excellent English and in a New York accent he began to charm us into taking us on a tour to the Gatun Locks, to a secret place where we could view the construction of the new canal expansion without having to pay the exorbitant $15 entry fee and then return us to the bus station, all for ten bucks a head.  It sounded good to me but Rob enjoyed haggling with Dino for a while before we hopped in his big, yet slightly rundown van.  Dino was quite the character and he was full of information, even though the odd fact I didn’t agree with.

Our first stop was in what used to be a US military housing area up on a hill to give us a view of the construction for the expanded canal which had been slated to open this year but it looks like it is at least a year away from completion.  Next Dino took us to the Gatun Locks which turned out to be better than Miraflores as you could get right up close to the action.  An oil tanker and a dry material tanker were in the process of passing through the three stage locks and ironically the dry tanker was called the Right Honourable Paul E. Martin, after a former Canadian prime minister who wasn’t exactly a charismatic fellow.

 The new canal construction:

The doors of one of the Gatun locks:

The Paul E. Martin tanker entering the lock:

It was super tight, as this is a "panamax" ship, built just to fit in the canal.  It did sound like it scraped the side a bit...

Trains guiding the tanker:

Me and Paul:

Kick ass tub boats:

Dino's tour:

Returning to Colon we passed the train station and carried on to the bus station, which looked to be only about 800 meters away…what a joke with those taxi drivers earlier, just paying one dollar for all of us would have been more than plenty.  I bid adieu to Rob and Terry as they were heading back to the capital while I hopped on a “Red Diablo” (Panama’s version of the chicken bus) to head to the “beautiful port”: Portobello.

Whale Sharks at Coiba Island

February 19^th-21^st, 2015

If you scuba dive, which I do occasionally, one of the top specimens to see in the sea is a whale shark.  These massive docile plankton devourers slowly cruise through the ocean water and can grow to a size of 12 meters in length sporting a lovely black colour spotted skin with white dots that are surrounded by white interconnected boxes…incredible looking creatures.  When I had read that Coiba Island, a Panamanian National Park, was known for whale shark sightings, I had to give it a go….when in Rome…

I lucked out on my shuttle from Boquete to Santa Catalina, the location of the dive shops who operate in the Coiba waters, as there were only three other passengers, a young couple from Minnesota and a woman in her mid-twenties originally from Switzerland but living for the last five years in Israel.  Tali had enrolled in a diving course with the Coiba Dive Centre, the same company that I had made reservations with for three dives.  The van descended from the mountains into the city of David and then headed east through some lovely countryside with large hills partially covered in vegetation.  The further we went, the drier and hotter it became until we reached the seaside village of Santa Catalina.

After settling in at my hostel, Cabanas Rolo, I went for a wander to check out this spread out little enclave.  It was damn hot as I walked by the odd house, some converted into small but closed restaurants.  It was a super sleepy place with hardly any traffic on the road too.  Tourists come to Santa Catalina for either surfing, scuba diving or snorkelling but I got the impression that many of the locals didn’t seem to want these tourist dollars, or maybe they thought they just deserved them as there were many grumpy and unhappy restauranteurs or concierges.  More times than not I received slow, pathetic service at restaurants.  Santa Catalina itself had a bit of a strange vibe.  But I wasn’t here for the town…I was here for the whale sharks!  

The Santa Catalina beach:

Sunset on the first night:

Tali ended up staying in the same hostel room as me along with a couple of young Swedish women, Clara and Agnes.  The four of us headed out for dinner at a pizzeria and were joined by a couple of friends of the girls.  After dinner (which took a long time thanks to some of the previously mentioned slow service) the Swedes were speaking to each other in their native tongue when a Korean looking fellow on a nearby table shocked them by saying something to them in Swedish.  He was mildly scolding them for being rude and communicating to each other in their mother language and not in English, the common language at our “international table”.  The next morning, this guy Kim, would turn out to be my dive buddy.

There were six of us heading out to dive the following morning.  Two couples, Johannes and Johanna (how cute!) from Germany and Chantal and Stefan from Switzerland and the aforementioned Kim and myself.  The boat ride was over an hour long to get to our first dive site.  Our dive master, Luiz, gave us a briefing and then one by one we plunged backwards off of the side of the boat into the relatively warm water.  I told my buddy Kim that I had only 50 some dives under my belt (compared to his 1000s) and I would likely be an “air slut”, running out of oxygen long before him.  He was cool about it and reassured me that it was no big deal and to just relax down under.

A selfie:

A full boat selfie:

My last dive was eight months earlier with Naomi and some dolphins in the Red Sea but it was a shallow dive compared to what we would be doing.  Luiz had stated that there would be a chance of seeing a whale shark at this dive site so we were all pretty excited.  The dive was pretty decent and we did see a couple of white tipped reef sharks but the main attraction had not shown up and I was giving up hope of us seeing one when suddenly out of nowhere this enormous 5-6 meter long dark figure emerged and effortlessly cruised by, passing only a couple of meters away from me.  I was gobsmacked.  Wow, what a gorgeous creature!  The next two dives will just be bonus now…I’ve seen the impressive whale shark with my own eyes, and it did not disappoint.  Oh, and I definitely was an air hog, needing to breathe from Luiz’s spare regulator for the last five minutes as my tank was quite low.

A white tipped reef shark:

Our first whale shark:

After the dive we head to a lovely cove on a small island for a short break.  Chantal and Stefan stayed there as they were only doing two dives and the rest of us headed off to a new site.  Luiz told us that it wasn’t a spot for whale sharks but we might see turtles, sharks, sea horses and frogfish (I didn’t even know what a frogfish was!).  We ended up seeing all but the sea horse.  I loved the turtle.  He was just chillin’ on the bottom floor although he was checking us out.  The frogfish was a super bizarre looking creature, totally motionless while touching some rocks.  This one was yellow with various bumps on it to camouflage itself amongst the coral, waiting for its prey which it can snatch at in as quick as 6 milliseconds!

"Ninja Kim" after the first dive:

Our first break spot:

The chillin' turtle:

Mr. Pufferfish:

The crazy looking frogfish:

And the crazy looking diver:

We picked up Chantal and Stefan and headed to Coiba Island’s ranger station which is situated on a lovely beach with a couple of coves for a lunch break before heading back out for our third, and last dive of the day.

Heading into the ranger station:

It's hard to see, but there's a lizard on the base of the tree, with this vulture seemingly pestering him:

Some old bones...whale shark I assume:

What a nice spot:

This final one proved to be simply fantastic.  It started off slow but we were in an area filled with plankton and soon we had a glimpse of a whale shark swimming around.  Over the next twenty minutes we probably had 7-8 sightings which included seeing one opening up its huge mouth and sucking in some lunch, another passed right over me so I rolled onto my back to see its belly and some other really close passes.  One of them must have been 7-8 meters long…massive.  It was probably the same two or three whale sharks passing by us while our group just hung around in the same area, waiting for the show.  Truly amazing.

Kim took this photo (thankfully he had an underwater camera) and unfortunately it doesn't do what we saw justice..but it's well imprinted in my brain!

For some reason our dive master then led us off in a direction that was straight into a strong current.  I was kicking but barely making any forward progress.  I knew I could kick harder and faster but recalled an incident I had on my fifth or sixth dive back in Victoria, during my certification training.  We had finished our skills for the dive and then swam along the breakwater but on the return we fought a strong current.  I overexerted myself and was out of breath.  I remember vividly being on the bottom of the seafloor some 35 feet down, having caught up with the rest of the group, and just wanting to swim straight to the surface for some fresh air.  My eyes felt like they were almost popping out of my head.  I didn’t want to repeat this experience.

Kim stayed near me and I could tell that he didn’t understand why Luiz had headed off in that direction.  Due to the plankton, visibility was probably only 8-10 meters so we lost sight of the rest of the divers.  We did catch up with Chantal, and Kim signaled to her to stay with us.  A short time later we surfaced after doing our three minute safety stop at 5 meters.  The boat came to get us and once we were aboard we could see the other divers some 150 meters away.  Kim thought it was quite an irresponsible and not a safety conscious decision on the dive master’s part and I have to agree with him.

Back at the dive shop Kim decided to speak with the wife of the owner in private about the incident and she strangely stormed out of the office mumbling “I don’t have time for this shit” to herself.  A bit odd…but our group decided to not let this issue cloud the fact that we had had some truly amazing dives this day.  Something I’ll never forget.

And we were treated to another lovely sunset:

The next day was pretty chilled.  Kim and I rented some kayaks from my hostel and paddled over to an island with a nice beach and just hung out there for the afternoon, having a well-deserved snooze on the sand.  I finished my stay in Santa Catalina with a nice dinner with Kim and Johannes & Johanna.

It’s time to head off to the capital…Panama City.  I only have four days until I hop on a sailboat to Colombia!