The biggest jacuzzi on the American continent

When I found out I would be spending three weeks in Panama, visiting the Canal was probably the least of my priorities. This big money-maker has been the center of attraction for Panama since its inaguration in 1914, and honestly, I could think of 1000 better ways to spend my afternoon than watching a cargo ship slowly go from bathtub to bathtub. To clarify: learning about the canal's history was not at all a problem, it's just that I have high expectations for human-designed infrastructure.

Alas, after three weeks of being let loose in the tropical forests, islands, and cities of Panama, we were scheduled to visit the locks. By this point, my apathy toward the canal had diminished, but my skepticism about the entertainment of the locks was still running high. In the afternoon, we were finally driven to the infamous Miraflores locks where we began our tour with an informational video (in English) about the canal's history and engineering. I thought the end of the video meant a ship would be patiently waiting for us to step outside so it could begin 'the show'. Instead, we waited, and waited, and waited enough that we had more than enough time to make our way through the three story museum and to entertain ourselves with a miriad of pictures.

Well over an hour after we initially expected the ship, it slowly (and I mean SLOWLY) made its way through the first lock. And, not at all to my surprise, if I know Latin American culture, a gentleman began to MC as if on a TV show. If you had been a fly on the wall, you might have heard him make comments alluding to: retirement, selling houses to come to the canal, taking photographs, not dangling children over the ledge, the terrible winters that are coming (ehem, climate change), and the canal being the show of a lifetime.

Hard as he tried, 30 minutes after the ship started going in, and water had filled from one tub to the other, I was still unimpressed. Okay, I lie -- I was a little impressed, but mainly because the locks (or gates) are the EXACT parts that were there in 1914. Roosevelt did well with carrying out the 1500 'dream'.

1914

2010

After an entire afternoon out, and a quick visit to the Smithsonian Tupper Center (yes, as in Tupper from TupperWare), we crashed in our guesthouse to think about our next and last days in Panama.