Around The World In 80 Waves

The Panama Canal will be 100 years old next year and truly is an engineering marvel. It allows massive ships to cut across the continent instead of sailing all the way around the treacherous southern end of the Americas, saving days on transportation and a huge amount on fuel too. it is one of the times when mankind has refused to be held back by the simple fact that an entire country with hostile geography was in its way.

Saying that though it took nearly 30,000 lives to build it, the dam which holds back the huge artificial Lake Gatun and all the associated infrastructure used to guide the massive ocean going vessels through the locks.

A second larger set of locks to accommodate the modern massive shipping freighters is currently under construction and should be finished in time for its centenary. However I went to the Miraflores locks near the Pacific end of the canal and watched a few of the mighty vessels going through. The science and method for getting ships through the waterway is no different to that of the narrow boat canals in Great Britain, but the scale of the undertaking here is staggering.

The little things you can see alongside this container vessel are actually deisel locomotives known as Mules.

Rather than pull the vessels through the canal they are used to limit the amount of banging around that the ships do once inside the locks. If you can imagine a wrecking ball with that much weight you can understand it wouldn’t take long for it to smash almost anything up.

Nothing I can say will do justice to it, and the slow pace pace at which things traverse seems to take away somehow from the magnitude of the undertaking, but it is still an awesome sight.