This post is extremely overdue so I apologize ahead of time.
Towards the end of 2010 I reached a point where I realized that I had not traveled as much as I had always hoped. I had visited a handful of countries and had not experienced much during those visits due to the people that accompanied me. Fate would have it that my realization came around the same time a college friend was planning a trip south of the border. Syed invited me to join him on the trip and with an opportunity like that thrown into your lap, who would have said no. I agreed to travel with him to Costa Rica via Panama. Our trip lacked one more person to make the journey affordable and enjoyable. In our search, I was able to find a close friend of mine who was also looking for a similar adventure. So began my journey to Costa Rica with Omar and Syed.
Our flight to Costa Rica included an 8 hour layover in Panama City, in both directions. What kind of tourists would we be if we did not go to Panama Canal during this visit. After landing at the airport in Panama City, we rented a car and made our way towards the canal's visitor center. After arriving at the visitor center, we were told that we needed to hurry and make our way to the viewing deck since there were ships in the canal locks that were being transported. We bought our tickets and ran out to the viewing balcony and saw a huge tanker in the first canal lock. In front of the tanker was a much smaller vessel that was also waiting to enter the canal.
As we looked on, all but the top level of the large tanker disappeared into the first lock as the water level was lowered to the same level as the second lock. At this time, the smaller vessel had completely disappeared into the first lock and we did not see it until it reappeared in the next section. To move the tanker from one section to the next, small cars that ran on tracks lining the edge of the canal were used. These cars had hooked cables into various parts of the tanker and kept the tanker from floating side to side. These cars guided the tanker through each lock until the tanker had entered the canal and used its own engine to move forward out of the locks and towards its destination in the Atlantic Ocean.
After watching the tanker and the smaller vessel move from the Pacific side into the canal and on towards the Atlantic side of the canal, we went back into the visitors center. The center included a museum about the history of the canal. We looked at various models of ships and equipment that was used during the creation of the canal. It was fascinating to see the technology that was used to achieve such an enormous feat. There were descriptions of the conditions and the hardship that the workers had to go through to accomplish their task and it really humbles me to realize how I complain about the smallest inconveniences.
We concluded our stay by stopping off at a restaurant that we had done some research about. We enjoyed a nice lunch there before heading back to the airport. What we did not realize was that Panama City dealt with the same problem that us NYers, and surely anyone from a major city, deals with: Rush Hour Traffic. It took us two hours to do the same drive that took us half hour earlier in the day but we were fortunate enough to have made it back in time to get on our flight to Costa Rica.
Thus concluded the first day of our journey to Costa Rica via Panama.
Here are some of the pictures that we took at the canal and the visitors center:
Towards the end of 2010 I reached a point where I realized that I had not traveled as much as I had always hoped. I had visited a handful of countries and had not experienced much during those visits due to the people that accompanied me. Fate would have it that my realization came around the same time a college friend was planning a trip south of the border. Syed invited me to join him on the trip and with an opportunity like that thrown into your lap, who would have said no. I agreed to travel with him to Costa Rica via Panama. Our trip lacked one more person to make the journey affordable and enjoyable. In our search, I was able to find a close friend of mine who was also looking for a similar adventure. So began my journey to Costa Rica with Omar and Syed.
Our flight to Costa Rica included an 8 hour layover in Panama City, in both directions. What kind of tourists would we be if we did not go to Panama Canal during this visit. After landing at the airport in Panama City, we rented a car and made our way towards the canal's visitor center. After arriving at the visitor center, we were told that we needed to hurry and make our way to the viewing deck since there were ships in the canal locks that were being transported. We bought our tickets and ran out to the viewing balcony and saw a huge tanker in the first canal lock. In front of the tanker was a much smaller vessel that was also waiting to enter the canal.
As we looked on, all but the top level of the large tanker disappeared into the first lock as the water level was lowered to the same level as the second lock. At this time, the smaller vessel had completely disappeared into the first lock and we did not see it until it reappeared in the next section. To move the tanker from one section to the next, small cars that ran on tracks lining the edge of the canal were used. These cars had hooked cables into various parts of the tanker and kept the tanker from floating side to side. These cars guided the tanker through each lock until the tanker had entered the canal and used its own engine to move forward out of the locks and towards its destination in the Atlantic Ocean.
After watching the tanker and the smaller vessel move from the Pacific side into the canal and on towards the Atlantic side of the canal, we went back into the visitors center. The center included a museum about the history of the canal. We looked at various models of ships and equipment that was used during the creation of the canal. It was fascinating to see the technology that was used to achieve such an enormous feat. There were descriptions of the conditions and the hardship that the workers had to go through to accomplish their task and it really humbles me to realize how I complain about the smallest inconveniences.
We concluded our stay by stopping off at a restaurant that we had done some research about. We enjoyed a nice lunch there before heading back to the airport. What we did not realize was that Panama City dealt with the same problem that us NYers, and surely anyone from a major city, deals with: Rush Hour Traffic. It took us two hours to do the same drive that took us half hour earlier in the day but we were fortunate enough to have made it back in time to get on our flight to Costa Rica.
Thus concluded the first day of our journey to Costa Rica via Panama.
Here are some of the pictures that we took at the canal and the visitors center:
No comments:
Post a Comment