Panama Canal, Gatun Locks, Panama

Today we transit the Panama Canal to Gatun Lake where we will disembark for our tour to Panama City.  The night before, like most passengers, we went to bed early; I was eager to wake up around 4am to enjoy our journey through the Panama Canal.

I was up early to get the place I had scoped out to take my time lapsed pictures as we travel through the locks.  When I said early I mean 3:30am.  After speaking to someone who has been on a Panama Canal trip, they said to get up a couple of hours before to get to where you want to stand, hence the original 4:00 am early rise.  However, after reading someone’s travel blog about going through the canal (in this case west to east) they indicated they got to the front of the ship two hours before starting to enter the canal.  Only they found there were already many people already packed along the rails with coffee and pastry.

So I get up at 3:30 am and head to where I want to watch and take pictures.  No one is there and the door is roped off.  So I wait and go to the buffet area and get my own coffee and pastry.  I return to the front deck several times and finally by 5:00 am and still no one there I go under the rope barrier and through the door.  It is still dark, but I set up my camera and equipment, by flashlight, to take my time-lapse pictures of going through the Gatun Locks.  The sun is rising on our left before we enter the locks.  

As we begin to enter the beginning of the locks, we come to a "V" in the river.  Our route will take us to the right.  The left route is for the new wider locks that are in the process of being built.  The new locks will allow much larger and wider ships to pass through the canal.  The gates in the new locks are roller type while the older locks are a two gate "valve" that shuts and the water pressure holds it closed.  The newer locks will open soon.

Accompanying us is a cargo ship on our side of the locks, in the lock in front of us and a container ship in the locks to our right.  As we enter the locks, it seems that we barely fit within the lock walls.  We hook up to the "mules" which are train engines that will keep tension on the ropes to ensure we stay in the center of the lock.  You can see one traveling with us on the left side of the ship in the video.

As we leave the last lock, I stopped taking my time-lapse pictures and quickly go to our room to unload the pictures (over 700) to the computer and get ready to leave for our excursion.  I also have to get ready for our excursion.  After reaching the lake we anchored off shore, in the cue area for the ship to return through the locks.  Here we will disembark the ship via a launch to reach shore where we will begin our tour.

The 24 second time-lapse movie representing the 2 hours it took us to go through the locks.