Where's Andrew

SANTA CATALINA & PANAMA CITY, PANAMA - JUL 3 - JUL 12

On the morning of Tuesday July 3rd, I head to Santa Catalina on the southern Pacific Coast. Santa Catalina is one of the best known surfing towns in Panama and is also really well known for diving at the nearby Isla de Coiba. It takes me about 7 hours to get from David to Santa Catalina and I have to change buses in Santiago and Sona. I meet a guy named Ivan from Norway on the last bus and we share a 4 person dorm room at a nice hostel in the centre of town called Cabana Rolo. The town is really tiny, it is only a single road about 2 blocks long with a few more hotels spread out along the beach to the east of town. The main surfing spot is on a nice break right in front of town. The surfing is only good a couple of hours either side of high tide and the waves are usually in the 3 to 4 metre range. But I didn't come for the surfing, I came to dive at Isla de Coiba which will be my first dive in the Pacific. The first available dive is on Friday morning. Diving is a bit more costly here, a 2 tank dive, some snorkelling and a trip to the ranger station on Coiba is $145.00. A couple from Australia had dived the day I arrived and they saw lots of White Tipped Sharks and huge quantities of fish so I am excited about the prospects. There is even a good chance of seeing Manta Rays which would be awesome as well.



Beach East of Santa Catalina

 The next day Ivan and I hike east down the coast exploring the local beaches. We come to one huge sandy beach about 5km from town. It's a beautiful beach but a bit challenging to swim there as the surf is pretty high. While swimming, we find that there is a pretty good rip tide so we have to be very careful and not venture far from shore or we will get swept into some rocks. Some distant thunder chases us back to town just after lunch and it starts raining just a few minutes before we get back and it pours for the rest of the afternoon. I spend the afternoon being entertained by the hostel owner's pet Parrot named Lola and working on my blog.

On Thursday Ivan goes on a fishing and snorkelling tour to Coiba and I spend the day with a Swiss guy who has been staying at the hostel for a couple weeks. He has a set daily walking tour with lots of stops for drinks and food long the way at little restaurants and surfing hotels. The hostel's dog follows us the whole day and gets into a fight at almost every stop. Well fight isn't exactly the right word, it's more like he gets beat up at every stop by other dogs. It's a great way to spend a relaxing day other than the dog fights. We get back to the hostel just before 5:00PM and the rains starts shortly after and this time it is a wicked storm. The power soon goes and everything in town including all the restaurants quickly close. The only thing that stays open is a small store where I buy some buns, canned tuna and fruit for dinner.



1st Dive Site at Coiba

 The storm is still raging when I go to bed and I'm starting to worry about my dive trip in the morning but it's nice and sunny and calm when I wake up. Coiba is about a 2 hour boat ride away and there are 4 of us diving. There are 2 young English guys who are taking their first Open Water dive as part of their certification course and a guy from the US who dived with me. The currents in this part of the Pacific are very strong so we do a drift dive on both dives. This means the boat drops us off at one end of the reef and then picks us up at the other and we literally drift along just a few metres of the reef. We probably had 7 or 8kms of tide with us. The visibility was not quite as good as the Caribbean but was still about 15 to 20 metres. The first thing I notice is the quantity of fish, there are not as many different species or as many real colourful fish but the size of the schools is impressive. The fish all seem to be bigger with lots of Barracuda and even a few Mahi Mahi. Then we start to see sharks and not just Nurse Sharks, there are White Tip sharks cruising around and they are curious and come very close to check us out. They are quite small and I don't find them menacing at all. I don't think my heart rate hardly changed a beat. There are also dozens of Green Moray Eels and lots of Toad Fish that blend right into the reef.


Ranger Station

 We head to a beach on Coiba itself for lunch between the 2 dives. There is a fairly large ranger station and even a few basic cabins that people stay at. This area used to be part of a large prison complex on the island but the prison has been closed for over 20 years and the jungle has claimed back most of the rest of the prison. Apparently this prison was unique as there were no bars on cells except special cells for punishment. There were also no fences or guard towers. The jungle, the tides, the distance to the mainland and the sharks were all the security that was needed to keep the convicts in the prison. There are lots of Bull Sharks around the island but we did not see any.

Snorkelling Beach Near Coiba

After lunch and before the 2nd dive, we snorkel around one shallow reef which was also excellent for quantity of fish and there was a great variety of fish as well. After the 2nd dive, we head back to Santa Catalina while racing some incoming storms and we get to the beach about the same time as the storm but this night it only lasts an hour or so. Overall, the diving was great and I finally saw some nice reef sharks up close and personal but no Manta Rays and the snorkelling was good too. I'm not sure where I will dive again, maybe in Ecuador.

The next morning I'm off on a bus to Sona which is only 1.5 hours and then onto an express bus to Panama City which is another 6 hours. Saturday can be a bad day to travel because hostels and hotels seem to be busy on weekends. So, my first couple of hostel choices are completely full and I finally settle on a budget hotel in the Caledonia district after making reservations in Mamallenas Hostel for Monday. I spend that evening planning some site seeing and I'm annoyed to find only boat tours of the canal on Saturdays listed on the internet. That means I will be in Panama City for at least a week and I also need to book my sailboat to Cartegena but I don't want to do this until I am sure about the canal boat tour. So, I decide to go to the Miraflores Locks Visitor Centre the next morning.



Miraflores Lock & Pacific in Background

 Miraflores is the best land location to see the locks in action and is a set of 2 locks closest to the Pacific. I arrive around 11:00AM and have just missed the last north bound ship heading to the Caribbean. I find out that all ships head north from midnight to noon and then all ships head south from noon to midnight. This reduces the chance of a collision in the narrow confines of the man made lakes that the ships travel through while crossing the 50 mile wide Ismuth of Panama. There are only 3 locks at the Pacific coast and 3 more at the Caribbean coast, the boats are lifted a total of 57 feet above sea level and then travel through a man made lake the rest of the trip. I had 3 hours to explore the exhibits in the visitor centre before the 1st ship arrived, can you tell? One thing the visitor centre needs is better Audio Video in the exhibits although the theatre AV system for the video presentation was pretty good.


Panamax Container Ship

The most amazing thing about the locks is there are no pumps. The water levels within the locks are only raised and lowered by gravity. Each time a ship exits the locks into either the Pacific or the Caribbean, 27 million gallons of fresh water goes into the ocean with the ship. The locks are 1050 feet long and 110 feet wide. A Panamax Class ship is the largest size ships built specifically to just fit into the canal and are up to 975 feet long and 105 feet wide. The new locks presently being built will be 1400feet long and 180feet wide and will allow new Super Panamax ships to transit the canal more than doubling the present capacity. Pumps will be used on the new locks ensuring no additional strain on the fresh water supplies of the lake since there is not enough fresh water to accommodate them using a gravity based system.

By the time the ships start coming the viewing area is packed. I stay and watch 3 or 4 Panamax ships get lowered into the Pacific from a couple of different viewing locations. I really enjoyed my day at Miraflores Locks as reflected in my gallery by the number of pictures I took.

On Monday I check into Mamallenas at 11:00AM and am pleased to find my room is ready. They have a travel agent across the street so I head over to book a boat for a half tour of the canal and I am really happy to find out that one boat goes every Tuesday so I book it for $135.00. That afternoon I head down to the Calzada de Amador which is a long causeway built when the canal was built.


Calzada de Amador

 This causeway joins 4 islands to the mainland and is about 3kms long. It protects the exit point of the canal from the tides and the silt that the tides carry as well as being a strategic military location protecting the canal entrance/exit during the early years of the canal. It is a nice walk along the causeway with beautiful views of the modern downtown city centre and of the Bridge of the Americas that spans the 2 sides of the canal.




Panama City Skyline

 Tuesday is the canal boat tour day. I'm not going to get to travel the whole canal but the boat leaves from the Calzada de Amador, heads under the Bridge of the Americas, goes through the Miraflores and Pedro Miguel Locks and finally goes through the Galliard Cut. It's a beautiful day and the boat is a old100 foot long wooden ship originally built for an American millionaire named JP Getty around 1912 and was later owned by John Wayne. It has been touring the canal for many years and holds the record for the most times passing thrugh the canal of any ship. 


Bridge of the Americas

 We soon cross under the bridge and are only minutes away from Miraflores. We enter the locks along with a small freighter and are tied along side a large tug. A nice 45 foot sailboat heading from Peru to the Virgin Islands then rafts onto us. It takes 10 minutes for the first lock to fill, then we move into the 2nd lock and then it's just a couple of hundred metres to the Pedro Miguel Locks.





Entering Miraflores Locks

 Finally after about 2 hours, we are into the lake and the start of the Galliard Cut. This is where the largest portion of the canal work took place. The Galliard Cut is where the mountains of the continental divide had to be notched out. Over a billion tons of rock was removed, much of this rock was used to build the Calzada de Amador and used to create all the cement required to build the canal locks, retaining walls, and dams. The boat tour started at 9:00AM and finished at about 4:00PM. Again, by the number of pictures that are posted in my gallery, you can probably tell I enjoyed the tour.



Galliard Cut

 A lot of the construction of the new canal locks was visible particularly just west of the Miraflores locks. There was a non stop stream of the mega size dump trucks heading in and out of the site and there were dozens of dredgers particularly along the Galliard Cut which is the narrowest part of the canal. The opening of the new locks is scheduled to coincide with the 100 year anniversary of the opening of the canal in 2014. Presently the canal generates over 12 millions dollars in revenue from ships every day and that total will more than double once the canal is complete.



Dredger at Galliard Gap

 The relationship between the US and Panama is a bit strained to this day. Many residents forget that the US support of the Panama government which was part of the canal negotiations in 1903 was instrumental on Panama successfully separating from Columbia without a civil war. As a result, the US got control of the canal and a 10 mile buffer zone either side of the canal when the canal treaty was signed right after independence. In the mid sixties, there were large demonstrations throughout Panama against the US as there was no timeline in the treaty to turn the canal over to the Panama government which culminated in demonstrators with flags forcibly moving into the US controlled canal zone with numerous Panamanians casualties. Finally in the 70ies, US president Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with Panama giving up control of the canal and the resulting revenues, which occurred in 1999. In 1989, the US invasion of Panama to oust Panamanian President Noriega inflamed tensions between the US and average Panamanian people. Even today throughout Panama no US flags fly on any government owned lands or buildings. It's absence is particularly noticeable in the Plaza of Flags in Panama City.



That night after my tour, I booked a sailboat to Cartagena Columbia via the San Blas Islands. It's a 43 foot Beneteau called Corto and it had some great reviews in the Lonely Planet and Trip Advisors website. It leaves on Thursday July 12th and I can't wait. On Wednesday, I visit the very modern downtown core of the city but a huge thunder storm moves in in the early afternoon forcing me back to the hostel during torrential rains. It is rainy season for 9 months of the year in this part of Panama making the present Panama Canal a possibility without the use of pumps.
Well I only have a few more days left in Panama and Central America. On the morning of the 12th, I leave early on a shuttle to the San Blas Islands to meet up with Corto. We will have 3 leisure days in the islands before the 2 day crossing to Cartagena. I wonder how many other travellers will be on the boat and what they will be like? I wonder how many of them will get sea sick?

Until next time:)