The Panama Canal Cruise - Part 3 - The Transit

I rose even earlier than normal, the excitement of photographing the approach to the world-famous Panama Canal was just too much to sleep through. As I waited for an elevator to take me to the top deck, I was not alone. Many fellow passengers, most of them with cameras other than just their cell phones, had the same feelings I did. They were anxiously fiddling with their equipment or their clothes as we waited to arrive at the top. As we walked around the pool area headed for the staircases to the upper deck, we encounter the strangest decision I have ever seen by a cruise line in my seven previous cruises: the stairs to the observation area on the top deck, the sports deck, is chained off!

Here we are, on a not inexpensive, once in a lifetime cruise, taken specifically to see the Panama Canal, and the one viewing area that has been open the previous two days, this morning, with the city lights of Colon, Panama, shining brightly in the background, is inexplicably closed to passengers! The iconic Atlantic Bridge, the newest bridge over the canal, is tantalizingly illuminated in the distance, but we can see only portions of the view ahead from the lower decks. The growing, milling crowd begins to question the frustrating decision, but no one wants to test the omnipotent power of the cruise officers and no one crosses the chains. The canal draws closer to the entrance to the canal in the fading darkness, but the chains remain in place, then someone happens to notice someone leaning over the rail above us. “How did you get up there?” someone yells. The startled explorer yells back, “I don’t recall!” Through the Bar and Grill, because the doors exiting the restaurant to the sports deck are wide open! The sports deck is soon filled with passengers snapping unobstructed photos of the oddly purple sunrise with the gateway to the canal in front of them.

It is a marvelous time, waiting in the dim morning light to see something you have heard and read about your whole life, and yet I have a feeling of dissatisfaction or, more like a realization, that this is no big deal. There are many freighters and small ships of all sizes anchored at the mouth of the canal, all waiting for their clearances to enter. Some appear to have been waiting quite a while. A fleet of big, oval shaped ocean-going tugs race around the ship like over-sized water bugs as we slowly approach the Atlantic Bridge from Limón Bay, but none of them makes contact with our ship.

By the time we enter into the river-like waterway most of us have returned to our balcony cabins to watch the transit from well above the mechanical mules, the railroad like tractors that guide us through the locks. One look at the towering, iconic Gatun locks in front of us brings back the awe of the moment. A ship entering the locks from the other side is so high above us it doesn’t look like a ship at all.

We are moving so slowly it is hard to discern any movement. Only by looking down at the seawall can we see the perceptible, unbelievable closing between us and the walls of lock. We can’t be doing more than one or two miles an hour. I can easily walk faster than the ship is traveling as we enter the first lock. 

One reason we selected the Island Princess is she transverses the old, traditional locks at Gatun, Pedro Miguel, and Miraflores, the latter two located over on the other side of the isthmus, just before the canal empties into the Pacific Ocean. 

The new, wider and longer locks at Gatun are the Aqua Clara locks, out of sight to the left, farther east, as you enter from the Caribbean. They were only recently built to relieve the traffic through the 110 year old, 110 foot wide original Gatun locks. They both enter Gatun Lake and from there to the locks fifty miles away on the other side, and in a moment of unrestrained alliteration, ships share the same waterway. That is as close as I get to poetry.

By the time we get through the Gatun locks, we are tired of standing up and leaning on the railing. Time to take a break and stretch our legs as we enter Lake Gatun, the fresh water lake that supplies all the water to make this huge, ingenious system work. We were told that every ship's passage through the canal takes around 51 million gallons of water. Since water only flows out from the lake to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans on either side, no water flows between the two oceans. No water flows in from the sea. The lake is replenished by rivers and rainfall, and during droughts the canal authority restricts the number of ships that can use the canal as the water level in the lake begins to lower to seriously low levels. Salt water can't be pumped back into the lake as that would contaminate the country's drinking water supply.

In our struggle to take unobstructed photos and videos, we discover there are very few viewing areas on the Island Princess available. If what you want to see is on the same side as your cabin, you have no problem, but to see ahead or behind the ship leaves much to be desired. Up on top, the distorted, blue glass windscreen panels that surround all the public areas makes most photography futile. If you want to see something on the other side of the ship, there is little area that is suitable other than a small narrow section near the Bar and Grill. The stern isn’t much better so we return to our balcony cabin where we can at least have one unobstructed view of the transit.

Those problems fade away as we silently cruise past the hardwood jungle forest that comes right to the water's edge. We are captivated by the thick, lush foliage that reminds us of home. Not everyone sees it the way we do, of course, but we are still used to the last strands of mahogany hardwoods in the Florida keys and feel a strange tinge of longing for days gone by. There are few houses or buildings on the water, most tucked far away from the canal itself. Soon it is all forest as the lake begins to open up with small islands on the far shore. An occasional long, slender power boat passes us, but the canal is quiet. We have one other ship quite a ways behind us, but we don’t pass any other ships headed the other direction.

The next several hours are spent relaxing and watching the lake slowly turn into a river. We casually watch as hills in the distance grow larger and come closer to the water's edge. The visible scars on the landscape become more and more obvious as we head further south. Oddly, even though we are headed toward the Pacific Ocean, we are headed southeast approaching the ridge of mountains that runs the length of Panama. The exit from the canal into the Pacific at Panama City is further east than Colon, where we entered from the Caribbean. 

The thought that over 22,000 men died digging this canal is somberly personified by the terraced, rocky pass through the stone mountain just this side of the second bridge. For three years, all the dynamite manufactured in the United States, over 60 million pounds, was used to blast though the mountains to make this canal, and we blithely cruise through it looking at our cell phones.

We pass under the second bridge, the Centennial Bridge, opened in only 2004, and the locks at Pedro Miguel come into view. Again, I stand on our balcony for the entire passage even though the temperature outside in the blazing sunshine is now in the high 90's. 

We approach the Pedro Miguel locks slightly off center as wind slowly pushes us to the east in the canal. We all but stop as we lie off from the entrance to the last lock, obviously out of position, and watch in awe as two men climb down a ladder on the side of the lock and climb into a row boat. One man rows slowly toward our bow while the other handles a rope being strung out behind them. They disappear for a few moments beneath our overhang and reappear shortly, rowing almost nonchalantly back to the lock. A team on the lock attaches the line to a mule and within a few minutes of winding and pulling, we slowly, correctly, enter the lock. I'm absolutely astonished that in this day and age of marvelous, ingenious gadgets and mechanical tools, that this simple, inexpensive method that has been used now for over 110 years, still works just fine.

Schrödinger's Cats at Pedro Miguel

The last locks at Miraflores are not far from the exit of Pedro Miguel, but I'm startled when I watch the LPG tanker with its huge oversize on-deck storage tanks that has been behind us since we entered Lake Gatun, sail past above us to our right, still at the level before the Pedro Miguel lock. She is far wider than the Island Princess and is taking the route through the new locks. The new Miraflores West lock take the place of both the original Miraflores and the Pedro Miguel locks, but being 70 feet wider and 18 feet deeper, it requires far more water for a single-ship transit than the old locks. The old locks will be in use for many, many years to come.

We pass a staff member who steps out of his office onto the office balcony just as we glide by. Greetings are shouted back and forth from different parts of the boat, some in Spanish, all greeted with laughter and waves. 

We soon pass under the third and last Bridge, the old original Bridge of the Americas, and can see the skyscrapers of Panama City, home to two million people off to the east. 

The new fourth bridge over the canal is under way not far from the original, but the new massive integrated road and rail undertaking is still years from completion. From what we got to see on this trip, it should be a piece of cake.

It has taken just over eight hours to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. We stood for much of the trip, but we had lunch, walked several decks searching for good vantage points, at least ones not so crowded we could get to, and were quite sunburned by the time we went to dinner. A marvelous cruise, maybe we'll do it again some time. Maybe next time we'll start in L.A. 

Next: Puntarenas, Costa Rica - https://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-panama-canal-cruise-part-4.html

A 27 minute HD video of this blog is at: https://youtu.be/-ouMXldv7zY

Previous - Cartagena, Colombia - https://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-panama-canal-cruise-part-2-cartegena.html

The Panama Canal Cruise - Part 2 - Cartagena

 

Our Coast Guard companion with Cuba in the background

The sun hadn’t yet cracked the horizon when I walked out on deck the first morning at sea. I can not sleep late while on a cruise ship, do not ask me why because I don’t know. I usually wake up well before sunrise and I have been doing it on each and every cruise I’ve been on except one, when drinking heavily may have been involved. I’ve learned to lay out my shoes and clothes before bedtime so I can dress silently, grab my camera, and slip quietly out of the cabin without waking my wife. I have seen some remarkable sunrises and an occasional thunder storm or two, and sometimes just other early risers to chat with, but it is always worth it.

The twilight hour just before sunrise is one of my favorite times of the day. Well, when I’m on vacation, at any rate. The weather on our first full day at sea was warm, a nice change from the December weather in Georgia, which everybody tells me is mild. Being a relocated Florida boy I’ll just take their word for it. I look around to see a few other early risers milling about and the several people who are always jogging around the upper deck track that we now find on every cruise ship. There are a few photo takers against the rail and several people just walking and chatting. The weather is absolutely beautiful. Trundling along abeam of us, not too far away, is a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, silently picketing between us and the island of Cuba just behind it. She isn’t keeping up with us so we gradually pull ahead of her.

Today will be a sea day as we traverse the famed Windward passage between Cuba and Hispaniola on our way toward Cartagena, Colombia, our first port of call early tomorrow morning. The Windward passage connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Caribbean sea and is the straightest path from the Panama Canal to the eastern seaboard of the U.S. It’s almost 6,000 feet deep at the point where the seas always display how the passage got its name. Today turns out to be brisk and we get to see whitecaps again, but the ship is unfazed. Most passengers are blissfully unaware of the sea and enjoy a great first day of what we find out, is a three month long cruise around the world. We had no idea our short fifteen day leg was a part of a longer cruise. The Island Princess will be back to Ft Lauderdale sometime in late March.

We spend a day touring the decks, looking at art work – no, not the auction - and checking out the eateries. Of course we check again with the Customer Service desk. No word yet about the missing Kindle. We are beginning to accept the fact it has been permanently lost. The ship’s staff have been incredibly helpful and more than courteous, they have been very friendly. We decide to head to the main dining room for early dining after checking the shops and ship’s amenities and meet a friend from Florida who coincidentally happens to be on the world cruise. We form a group with her friends and the Maitre d’ arranges for us all to sit together at the biggest table in the dining room. My wife and I have our traditional bowls of French onion soup, and enjoy a really delicious dinner, a great omen for the dining ahead, and the great conversations about their upcoming three month adventure.

As we are eating and chatting, one of the officers from Customer Service approaches through the busy tables, a big smile on her face. She stops, and hands my wife her missing Kindle! The story of recovering the missing Kindle is worth a book of its own, but it is really inspiring to know how many people handled the forgotten tablet, from the hotel maid and the front desk staff, the shuttle bus personnel, the cruise port staff, the loading crew, and the ship’s customer service team, each doing the right thing to return the forgotten Kindle. A really great cruise became even better. We finish the evening with a show in the ship’s theater and then head to the cabin to charge our batteries for the day tomorrow in Cartagena.

Cartagena

I'm on deck as the predawn twilight slowly breaks to our right, looking for the best spot to catch images of the rising sun against the city that sprawls before our silently arriving behemoth. An odd feeling as I thought we were sailing south and expected the sunrise on my left, but we are actually sailing north after entering the Bahia de Cartagena. The city surprises me with its contrasts, with high-rise apartments and condominiums that rival Miami Beach on the left, while small, working fishing boats heading out on the other side exemplify the working port that extends out in front of the orange ball of fire rising behind the hills on the horizon. 

Within an hour, we are docked and the gangplank is open. While the passengers who have scheduled on-shore tours rush down the gangplank as soon as the hatch opens toward the massive row of waiting, air conditioned tour buses, we go and have a relaxed breakfast. I count twenty five buses when we dock, but by the time we disembark the number is down to just a handful.

Cartagena has a really nice welcome garden at the end of the dock with exotic birds and flowers and is a great introduction to the city. After spending time feeding monkeys and trying to remember names of all the exotic plants, my wife and I decide to walk into the old town and just take it easy and see what we can see.

We always stay in safe areas when we walk in strange cities, the dangerous areas are well publicized on social media and the Internet. We are no longer young and fleet of foot, so to speak, and we make sure we look where we walk. Figuratively and literally. Pedestrian infrastructure is notoriously below the ADA compliant USA standards in most other countries, especially in the Caribbean islands. We have seen holes next to broken sidewalks that a horse would fit into in several port cities we have visited. Nevertheless, there is no better way to see a city than walking it, so after studying maps for several hours, we start off toward old town, just a mile or so away.

Just outside the gate of the port welcome center, we run into another couple, Del and Cynthia, laden with back packs and water bottles who are far more prepared than we are to hoof it in the heat of the day. We join forces and end up an hour or so later walking over the Puenta Roman bridge into Old Town.

The walk through the suburb is more than interesting as we pass an above-ground cemetery ala Key West, a sure sign high water here is not unexpected.

A quick summary: Yes, we would like to come back. The people we met are friendly and several helped answer questions and give directions. We visited the Convention Center which was hosting a native arts and crafts fair at the suggestion of a gentleman we met at a bayside park. 

After visiting the modern convention center and walking through town, the four of us caught a taxi back to the port. The taxi driver spoke perfect English, and it turned out was an off duty police officer. We had another great meal back on board ship, and enjoyed another really well done show by the ship’s entertainers although they did have one piano player do a one man show who was just plain awful.

Other than that, it has been a great use so far and we can’t wait until tomorrow when we traverse the Panama Canal.

Video:  A 26 minute video of this blog, including Cartagena, is at  https://youtu.be/MeKFr8bPaFs

Next: The Panama Canal transit: 

https://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-panama-canal-cruise-part-3-transit.html

Previous: The Love Boat  

https://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-panama-canal-cruise-part-1-love-boat.html

The Panama Canal Cruise - Part - 1 - The Love Boat

 

Our return to cruising back in December of 2021 was a marvelous experience, not just because of the ship, the Celebrity Millennium, or our itinerary in the eastern Leeward Islands of the Caribbean, but also because we had the classic, spotless ship practically to ourselves. COVID restrictions were being slowly lifted and cruising had just resumed following the industry-wide shutdown caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. We happened to pick the second cruise of the Millennium’s return to full service. There were only several hundred passengers on a fully staffed ship designed to carry over two thousand. There were as many crew as there were passengers, and needless to say, the service was outstanding.

We concluded the ten day cruise following the mask and cleanliness requirements, especially when in the many ports of call and did not suffer any illness of any kind. There were several passengers confined to their staterooms who apparently had tested positive for the infection and we found later one deck had been assigned as a restricted area for those who fell ill to COVID, but the affect of the precautions on the cruise was unnoticed by most of us. 

The cruise was so enjoyable we visited the future cruise office on board the Millennium after the mid-point of the sailing and booked our dream cruise, a full transit of the Panama Canal. The Millennium was being repositioned from Ft. Lauderdale to Los Angeles early next year and the timing was perfect for us. We excitedly made our cruise deposit and began planning even before our cruise was over. We disembarked in Ft Lauderdale full of enthusiasm, thrilled that our return to cruising had reaffirmed our memories of our past cruises. We began planning about visiting friends in California as we incorporated the upcoming Panama Canal cruise into an extended adventure. We were back! Cruising was great again.

Unfortunately, after months of planning and anticipation of our “bucket-list” cruise, Celebrity Cruise line abruptly informed us of a major change in plans and within days, the highly anticipated cruise faded into the mist of disillusionment. We were offered a similar cruise on a different ship, and at a different time, but no option for a refund. The new schedule was impossible for us to accommodate, so we had to settle for “ship’s credit” for some future cruise. Ship’s credit has become the new refund in the industry, and we grudgingly accepted that resolution, feeling as if we would really be surprised to ever recover our down payment. And then life got in the way, or more specifically, Hurricane Ian, and we began to wonder if we would ever get back to sea.

We did. After a two year hiatus – mainly spent spending three months cleaning up after Hurricane Ian and then pulling up our Florida roots and moving to Athens, Georgia – we decided to try again, and this time we pulled yet another rabbit out of the hat – the Love Boat.

After settling in our new home in Athens, Georgia, and facing the prospect of our first “cold” winter, we decided to find a cruise that included a full transit of the iconic Panama Canal. We needed a respite from our moving and resettling chores and the foreboding winter weather as well. Princess Cruises, which we have sailed with twice before, offered the Island Princess with 2200 passengers and a crew of 900, a perfect size cruise ship for us. It was scheduled to depart from Ft. Lauderdale just after New Years and arrive in Los Angeles fifteen days later. We booked the cruise and started packing. We resumed our plans for an extended vacation in California as well.

We were thrilled to book a cruise on the ship, which we were told, is the namesake of one of the two ships used in the television series of long ago. Technically, it is the “other” Love Boat, the Island Princess, not the Pacific Princess, and it’s not the original ship used in the series either, but rather it’s namesake, a specifically designed Panamax for Panama Canal passage, launched in 2003. The original Love Boat has already met its ignominious end on the beaches at Alang, India, as did the marvelous SS Norway, both cut up for scrap after setting the standards for cruising that evolved past them. We were fortunate to sail on the SS Norway years ago, and this was a unique opportunity to sail yet on another iconic ship. We would soon find out the Island Princess, as pristine as it is, like the Millennium of our last cruise, is also approaching the end of its service life in mainstream cruising.

Step 1 - Get to the port! 

For the first time in our cruising experience, we can not simply drive to the port of embarkation. Not trusting airline delays, we book a flight a day early so as to minimize the possibility of missing the boat. That’s not an idiom, we really didn’t want to miss the boat. We fly from busy Atlanta, the busiest in the world, to Ft Lauderdale – a modest, under two hour flight – and stay in one of the several well-known chain hotels not far from Port Everglades. The cruise port, less than three miles from the International airport, has become a thriving, modern passenger cruise terminal, complete with parking garage for those who drive to the port. It now rivals its nearby neighbor, Dodge Island, the Port of Miami less than thirty miles away. Arriving a day early also gave us the opportunity to have dinner that evening with great friends, Bob and Patricia, who drove up from Miami. We enjoyed a great Cuban dinner, something we dearly miss up in Georgia, and reminisced about old times. The dinner set the tone for the entire cruise.

Port Everglades

The hotel, while spotlessly clean, showed it’s primary business is the constant flow of one night guests departing the next day on cruise ships and appears to have no interest in investing in maintenance or upkeep as that would be apparently an unnecessary expense. They had shuttle bus service to the cruise port, for an additional fee of course, that ran multiple trips beginning fairly early the next morning and each was filled with excited, shuffling passengers, all with various carry-ons strapped over shoulders and every possible color and size of four wheeled luggage made on planet earth.

Step 2 - Boarding - A short wait

One feature of Princess cruising I really like is their medallion. It was mailed to us at home a week or so before the cruise and even though I now know how my dog feels when the vet scans him for an implanted chip, I really found it to be a time saver. The medallion is a small disc with an RF chip containing your pertinent information. Lost your wife? Just ask the closest staff member to locate her. Piece of cake. After presenting our passports and scanning our medallions, we were soon on board and since we didn’t have to wait on checked in luggage, dropped our backpacks and carry-ons in our stateroom and headed for the food on the upper deck. 

We made the mandatory stop by our assigned lifeboat station, scanned our medallions yet again, and reminisced about the pushing and shoving of the old days. It isn’t really nostalgia because I don’t miss the old Parade of New Shoes, also formerly known as the mandatory life boat drill. It now takes a few seconds to complete the safety requirements and you are free to do whatever you want.

The open buffet is extensive and well replenished, and while we were sitting, looking over the other ships and boats around the port, my wife got a cellphone call from our overnight hotel. The maid found a tablet under her pillow when she made the bed. Normally, my wife, who always reads at night, would have put it on the top shelf of the headboard as the sandman slipped in, but not having a headboard, she had simply slipped her Kindle electronic reader beneath her pillow. Out of sight, out of mind, and we simply forgot it was there.

The next four hours, right up to casting off, were intense, with phone calls to the hotel, the shuttle company staff, drivers, and of course, on board customer service. I used my phone to deactivate her Kindle in case it couldn’t be recovered, and when we finally got a photo from the driver who delivered the forgotten tablet to the port showing who he had handed it to - it was of the back of an unidentifiable woman, dressed in a blue suit, taken as she walked away.

We shoved off almost immediately after, and once again pleaded our case to the sympathetic staff at customer service, but alas, there was no word or information about the lost Kindle. They checked again with the boarding crew, to no avail, and said simply they would do their best to find it. While they were helping us, they copied my DD214 to prove my military service. Most cruise lines offer a small discount to veterans, but I hadn’t submitted the required form ahead of time so I brought a copy with me. A few keystrokes and the document was on its way to corporate headquarters. My approval was received early the next day.

Leaving Port Everglades

The first night dinner is always informal as many suitcases have yet to be delivered to the staterooms and cabins, but we passed on the dining room and ended up in the Horizon Court, a great open food service area forward on deck 14 offering something for everyone. 

It was a gray, overcast sky by the time Ft Lauderdale was but a bright spot on the distant evening horizon. When we finally retired to the cabin, tired but excited, Ilse began to realize how much she missed her Kindle.

An old fashioned Kindle. 

Next:  Cartagena - https://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-panama-canal-cruise-part-2-cartegena.html

Video:  A 26 minute video of this blog, including Cartagena, is at  https://youtu.be/MeKFr8bPaFs