Peru: A One-Month Itinerary

      Diversity is Peru's prime attraction.  It has the Western Hemisphere's most intriguing Pre-Columbian ruins, it has a bustling cosmopolitan capital, it has trackless rain forests along the Amazon and its tributaries, it has oceanfront resorts, and it has mountains and volcanoes that ascend to (literally) breath-taking heights. It has areas where it rains daily while other parts of the country get less than a quarter-inch of rain a year.

A street of stairs connects Barranco, Lima's most 
bohemian neighborhood, with its Pacific beach.

      It is an intensely Catholic country that prizes its sun temples and other aspects of its non-Christian past. It is a country with 2,000 kinds of potatoes, at least 40 of which are widely cultivated and eaten.
It's the home of quinoa, the world's trendiest grain. It and Bolivia are the only places on the planet where coca (an essential ingredient of cocaine) is legally grown; coca leaves and edible products made with coca leaves are widely sold and coca tea is a fixture at every tourist buffet. Its native brandy, Pisco, is finding an international market as visitors return home with a taste for Pisco sours. Its llamas, alpacas and vicuna produce some of the finest wools in the world along with being among the most photogenic of animals.  In short, it's a great place for a long vacation. And, if you've traveled much in the Third World, you'll be pleased by the level of cleanliness throughout the country. Restaurants, hotel rooms and bathrooms were spotless wherever we were. Although there was some trash along roads in the mountains and along streams in towns, overall there's very little litter -- Lima's streets and sidewalks were as clean as those in most American cities if not cleaner.

The Hilton in Miraflores, one of Lima's most
affluent neighborhoods, offers a rooftop pool.

       In planning a trip to Peru, the most important consideration is its climates.  Note the plural. When the weather is ideal in one place, it's likely to be terrible at another.  Peru is said to have more micro-climates than any other nation on earth. So we decided to go when it was convenient for us and take our chances. Our trip, Nov. 6 to Dec. 6, 2014, put us in Peru in spring, which we knew would be the beginning of the rainy season at Machu Picchu.  We had a lovely and dry morning at the ruins, and we didn't get rained on until around 2 p.m. as we were waiting among a horde of people for shuttle buses to take us back down the mountain to Aguas Calientes.

     In the Amazon, we were twice out on little skiffs in late-afternoon rainstorms (the rain is quite warm) and were hit by heavy rains a couple of times aboard our cruise boat, La Estrella Amazonica. Arequipa, Cusco, Ollantaytambo, the Colca Canyon, Paracas and Lima were all without rain -- indeed, it hardly rains at all ever in some of these places -- but it could get quite cold in the evenings, even in seaside Paracas.  (All of these destinations are discussed in other posts. Click on links below or go to the contents page.)   

We ate twice here at Canta Rana
in Lima's Barranco district. 

    We didn't rent a car in Peru. We flew when we could , took a bus when we couldn't fly, and used taxis and car services as needed.  Taxis in Lima are inexpensive, but mostly we walked. All flights within Peru were on Lan.  Click HERE for its easy-to-use website.

      We flew from Baltimore to Atlanta to Lima on Delta, no one's favorite airline, because it offered the best deal, though it meant a six-hour layover in Atlanta on the way home, making what was already an intolerably long travel day even longer. Most U.S.-bound flights leave Lima after midnight (Peru time is the same as Eastern Standard Time in the U.S.), meaning that you check out of your hotel room that morning, kill the day somehow and get to the airport bone-tired.   The trip down, however was much better.
       November 6  We left  Baltimore at 1:55 p.m., had a short layover in Atlanta and arrived in Lima just after midnight.  It cost 50 U.S. dollars to take a cab to our hotel, the new Hilton Miraflores (click HERE for website).  This is a very pleasant hotel -- professional but friendly staff, supremely comfortable beds, great location in the heart of Miraflores -- but it doesn't offer ocean views like the nearby Marriott, which is where most American visitors seem to stay.  We were on the fourth floor, so we had only a modest city view.  Click HERE for my posting about Lima.
  November  9 We left Lima at 12:15 for the hour-and-a-half flight southeast to Arequipa. Here we stayed at Casa Arequipa (click HERE for website), a small hotel within walking distance of the city's main square, the Plaza de Armas.   Situated in an old mansion, the guest rooms tend to be small and rather dark, but the breakfast room on the roof is bright and airy with views of the surrounding volcanos.  Click HERE for my posting about Arequipa.

A soaking pool warmed by natural hot
springs at Colca Lodge & Spa.

       November  11 Casa Arequipa arranged a Colca Valley and Colca Canyon overnight tour for us. We were in a van with an English-speaking guide and seven other tourists (three French, two Canadian, one Peruvian and one Italian).  Everyone could choose from a list of hotels where they wanted to spend the night. We chose the Colca Lodge and Spa (click HERE for its website), where we were first placed in an older second-floor room far from the main building. We complained and were moved to a much more deluxe room with a terrace and lounge chairs. We enjoyed the lodge's hot-springs-fed soaking pools and its excellent restaurant.  As for the valley and canyon tour itself, click HERE for my earlier posting.

Rooms at El Albergue in Ollantaytambo
have garden and mountain views.

 November  12 We returned for one more night at Casa Arequipa.
     November  13 We left Arequipa at 10:05 a.m. on a one-hour flight to Cusco. We had arranged for El Albergue, our hotel in Ollantaytambo, about 60 miles away and at a lower elevation, to pick us up at the airport. We'd been told that the best strategy for altitude sickness in Cusco is to stay first for a few days at slightly lower elevations. The drive to Ollantaytambo took about two hours, mostly on two-lane roads along the Urubamba River in what Peru promotes as "the Sacred Valley" because of its many Pre-Columbian ruins. Oddly, though there are trains from Cusco that pass through Ollantaytambo en route to Machu Picchu (and trains that run between Machu Picchu and Ollantaytambo), there is no Cusco-Ollantaytambo service. El Albergue (click HERE for website) has its entrance literally on the platform at the train station. The main building houses a coffee bar, a fine-dining restaurant, the hotel desk and, upstairs, a few guest rooms. Most of the rooms are out back in separate buildings in a garden where we were hardly aware of the trains nearby. Our room, No. 10, was on the ground level, furnished with alpaca blankets and a portable heater to fight the nighttime mountain chill.  For our final night there we were in a upstairs room that had a heated bathroom floor. I would say this is THE place to stay in Ollantaytambo. A 10-minute walk took us into the town's main square and to the fortress ruins that are the reason to stop here.  The only minor drawback is that the restaurant's small dinner menu becomes monotonous. Click HERE for my posting on Ollantaytambo.

Lively Aguas Calientes teems with tourists headed
to or from Machu Picchu. 

 November  15 We took the 12:28 Peru Rail train (click HERE for website and then go to timetables) to Aguas Calientes, the tourist town at the foot of  Machu Picchu. The two-hour train ride is punctuated by fashion shows put on by the stewards who are selling expensive Peru-made clothing and accessories. I almost but didn't buy a Peru Rail baseball cap. Aguas Calientes, which has no cars because no road connects it with the world, only hiking trails and the rail line, has loads of places to stay and eat. It serves as the base for many of the 2,500 people (the maximum allowed) who tour Machu Picchu every day.  We stayed a night at RupaWasi (click HERE for website), a small inn hidden up a tiny alley composed of steep stairs.  It was at RupaWasi's restaurant that I for the first -- and so far only -- time tried the local delicacy of guinea pig, called cuy.  I had cuy confit, which seemed to be prepared along the lines of French duck confit. It was exceedingly greasy; I thought it tasted a bit like duck or goose. Jane had ribs that she described as perfect. Click HERE for posting about Machu Picchu and Aguas Calientes.

    November  16 We got up early and took the 20-minute ride on a shuttle bus to Machu Picchu. We bought our tickets in advance through RupaWasi. We first tried to buy tickets through the official website (click HERE for it), but we couldn't make it work. After touring the ruins we returned to town in plenty of time for our 5:23 p.m. train back to Ollantaytambo, where we again stayed at El Albergue.

The courtyard at Andenes al Cielo
in Cusco, conveniently located but
its dark and sparsely furnished rooms
were a turnoff. 

This first door on the right leads to the lobby
of Casa Cartagena, a small hotel in Cusco. 

Our balcony at Casa Cartagena overlooked
its two-level courtyard. 

   November  17  The driver who had brought us to Ollantaytambo now drove us back to Cusco, where we had reservations at Andenes al Cielo (click HERE for website), a small inn conveniently located between the Plaza de Armas and the trendy San Blas neighborhood.  While the public areas of this hotel are pretty -- a multi-level courtyard with flowers and a fountain, a bright rooftop breakfast room -- the rooms themselves are dark because the only windows are on walkways used to reach all the other rooms. So you keep your shutters closed. Also, our room had a double bed, a single bed, a straight-back chair, a small desk and no other furniture. A tiny TV was mounted on the wall. Although we had reserved for four nights, we stayed only one. The hotel was cooperative about our changing the number of nights and I'd recommend it for its location, low price and decent breakfast -- with the caveat about the quality of the rooms themselves.  We used our first day in Cusco to scout out another hotel.
    November  18 After visiting several hotels, we finally chose Casa Cartagena, a boutique hotel one street over from Andenes al Cielo.  It was more expensive, but what we got for the money was a huge room with a balcony overlooking a courtyard. It's housed partially in what was once a jail, and there are signs everywhere of the age of its buildings. Unlike the other hotels we saw, which were furnished with antique or at least very traditional pieces, Casa Cartagena has very modern (or Mid-Century Modern) furnishings.  Its very traditional courtyard surrounds a very untraditional lighted white sphere.  It offered one of the best breakfast buffets of our trip, and in the evening there were Pisco sour lessons for those who want to learn to make their own drinks. Click HERE for the hotel's website,  Click HERE for my posting on Cusco, my favorite of all the places we visited in Peru.

            November 21 We left Cusco at 12:45 for the hour-and-a-half flight to Lima, where we were met at the airport by International Expeditions.  Its Amazon cruise package includes airport pickup in Lima, a Friday night stay at the Swissotel Lima, and flights to and from Iquitos, the Amazon city where its cruise boat is based. (Click HERE for International Expedition's Amazon website.) We found the Swissotel (click HERE for website) nice but dated. Nothing was shopworn or in bad repair, but it looked as if its furnishings could have come from Ethan Allen a few decades ago. The lobby concierge desk was very good in helping us purchase Lima-to-Paracas bus tickets that we would need after our Amazon trip. The bus company's website wasn't working properly, but the two gentlemen at the desk persevered, finally calling the company and arranging to have the tickets sent to the Swissotel by messenger. Our fifth-floor room had a huge bathroom and a view of the roof of another part of the hotel.

Our home for a week, La Estrella
Amazonica. Each guest cabin had its
own balcony and an ever-changing
view of the jungles along the river.

     November 22 International Expeditions took us all on a bus tour of central Lima before lunch and a 5:05 p.m. two-hour flight to Iquitos. After a bus ride through Iquitos, we arrived at International Expedition's river dock and its boat, La Estrella Amazonica, the Amazon Star. We had dinner on the boat and slept as it motored upstream. Click HERE for my posting about the cruise. Click HERE for a video made by Dick Greenberg, a fellow passenger, who did an excellent job of capturing the experience.
      November 29 After a last breakfast on the boat, we disembarked, took a bus tour of Iquitos and had lunch at the Hotel El Dorado. Part of the package included afternoon use of a room at the hotel where we could recharge our electronics and ourselves before a 5:25 p.m. flight back to Lima, where we parted ways with International Expeditions.  We were met at the airport by a driver sent by Second Home Peru (click HERE for website), a bed and breakfast in the home of the artist Victor Delfin. For this one-night stay, we had an ocean-view room in the main house, a half-timbered mansion overlooking walled gardens at the top of a bluff with the Pacific Ocean below.  This was the best place we stayed in Lima by far. It's in a neighborhood filled with art galleries, good restaurants  (want braised beef heart on skewers? delicious!), high-quality handicrafts shops, and sidewalks filled with young people and young families.

A mostly glass bar separates one of Hotel
Paracas's two pools from the Pacific Ocean.
Rooms were in multi-unit villas scattered around
the sprawling property.

    November 30 We took a Cruz del Sur bus (click HERE for website) for the four-hour ride from Lima to Paracas. We bought "first class" tickets, which put us in two of about 16 seats in the lower section of a double-decker bus. The seats reclined, had footrests and had video screens through which you could watch movies or access the Internet.  A "meal" came with the first-class passage -- some sort of chicken dish. We should have eaten before we got on the bus.  In Paracas, we stayed three nights at Hotel Paracas (click HERE for website).  It's a full-service resort and we didn't leave the grounds except for excursions. In fact, if you want to leave, there's really nowhere to go -- Paracas is little more than a collection of oceanfront hotels -- unless you have a car.  We did three excursions, a trip to two Pisco distilleries in Ica, about an hour's drive away; a two-hour trip to the Ballestas Islands; and a four-hour tour of the Paracas National Reserve.  All were arranged through T'ikariy, a tour service that has a desk at the hotel (click HERE for website). Click HERE for my posting on Paracas.

The bath in our first room (in the main
house) at Second Home Peru.

    December 3 We took the bus back to Lima.  This time at Second Home Peru we had a room in a building that clung to the cliff high above a major highway and the Pacific.  From the main building you cross a lawn to the edge of the cliff. Once there you can see a set of steps going down.  They take you to a short open-air corridor off of which are our room and two others. Continue down the steps to Victor Delfin's studio and residence, and down more steps to a beautiful swimming pool with a lion's head fountain. Everywhere are sculptures -- some whimsical, some stately, some odd and all interesting -- by Delfin.  The main house exhibits his paintings and sells his lithographs. Look at the paintings. Most of the centaurs and men, particularly in the erotic works, may be self-portraits done at different times in his life. Click HERE for his own website (in Spanish) to see more of his work.
     Entering our room, we found ourselves on a landing with a bathroom. The bathroom was open to and overlooked the lower sleeping area, off of which was a narrow balcony with a wonderful view of the curving shoreline and its beaches. The room was considerably smaller than our previous room in the main house, but the view made up for the lack of space. Whether or not one enjoys art -- and I'd characterize Delfin's work as an accessible but testosterone-infused blend of Inca imagery and European modernism of the first half of the 20th century -- this is a comfortable, convenient and friendly place to stay. Lilian Delfin is a gracious hostess ready to offer advice about Lima, and the breakfast, served in a kitchen building with a gigantic wood-burning stove, is simple but satisfying. Wine can be purchased in the office in the main house.  
    December 5 We checked out of the hotel in late morning, left our luggage in the office and went out to soak up as much of Barranco as we could before leaving for the airport at 9 p.m.
    December 6  We flew out of Lima at 1:35 a.m. and were back at our home on Tilghman Island in Maryland by 7 p.m.  A long, tiring end to an amazing trip.

The view from our room during our second
stay at Second Home Peru. The sculpture,
"El Beso," was the inspiration for the Park
of Love, about an hour's walk north along
the coastal bluff. To the left is Victor Delfin's
art studio.  Below the steep cliff you can see
the work on a major roadway that had traffic 
in knots during our time in Barranco.

At Second Home Peru, you can
swim in a sculpture garden. 

One of Victor Delfin's sculptures at the
edge of his garden overlooking the Pacific. The
roof is above three Second Home Peru mirador rooms,
including ours, that clung to the side of a cliff.

   

     
     
   
 

Peru: Lima is for (Art) Lovers

"El Beso" ("The Kiss") by Victor Delfin dominates Lima's
oceanfront Parque del Amor (Love Park).

"El Beso" is basically a copy of a sculpture at Delfin's home. 

We were told by Delfin's daughter, Lilian Delfin, that the mayor of

 Lima asked Delfin to make a larger version and to design a park around it.

 Delfin modeled the small park on Antonio Gaudi's Park Guell in

 Barcelona, complete with curving concrete walls decorated with mosaics.

 We got to meet Delfin , still very active in his 80s, and to see his

 studio when we stayed at his oceanfront Barranco home, part of which Lilian
 has turned into an art-filled bed and breakfast called Second Home Peru.

 Click HERE for its website. 

You may notice that the mayor gets more credit for
the park than the artist who designed it.

Lima was not the point of our month-long fall 2014 trip to Peru, which began with curiosity about touring Peru's part of  the Amazon aboard a riverboat.  But you cannot go to Peru without passing through Lima, and a bit of research convinced us that it deserved at least a few days. As it turned out, we had four distinct stays in Lima, starting with three nights at the new Hilton Miraflores (click HERE for website) when we first arrived in the country.  After 12 days in the Andes and elsewhere, we returned for one night at the Swissotel (click HERE for website) arranged by International Expeditions prior to our seven-night Amazon cruise.  The Swissotel is in the San Isidro financial district in a gated compound that must date back to when Peru was dealing with the Shining Path terrorists. After the cruise, we were back in Lima for one night at Second Home Peru, in the somewhat bohemian Barranco district, before going to the beach town Paracas for three nights, after which we returned to Second Home Peru. This B and B is mentioned in a photo caption above as sharing the home of the artist Victor Delfin.
       During our first stay we found our way to the Museo Larco, a museum devoted mainly to Pre-Columbia pottery (click HERE for earlier posting).  This is the one must-see destination in Lima.
       That evening, a Friday, we walked a few blocks from the Hilton to Jazz Zone, a second-floor music club (click HERE for website) where a ten-member band cranked out loud and lively salsa. It was amazing to see how dancers of all ages could practically twirl their rear ends.

Lima's Chinatown. 

      The next day we sought out a recommended "Chifa" (the Peruvian term for Chinese cuisine) restaurant in Lima's bustling Chinatown. The streets leading to it were lined with bazaar-like complexes selling everything from motorcycle parts to quinoa to toys and clothes. And the streets themselves were packed with vendors, too, so it seemed to take forever to walk to the restaurant, Salon Capon.  The expansive menu was entirely in Spanish, and when we asked if there was an English menu, we were given one in Chinese.  Nonetheless we managed to have a splendid meal.  Most of the other diners appeared to be members of Lima's sizable Asian community; they were almost all having Inca Cola with their meals. Inca Cola, the best-selling soft drink in Peru, is a very sweet bubblegum-flavored yellow carbonated drink.  I thought it was awful.
    Another highlight of our first stay in Lima was a visit to Huaca Pucllana, a huge adobe pyramid in Miraflores built by what is called the Lima culture between 200 and 700 A.D. You can tour the structure, which is in the process of being restored or at least preserved, only with a guide (included in the entrance fee; click HERE for website).  There's a similar but smaller pyramid in the San Isidro district called Huaca Huallamarca. The guide explained that in the Lima culture, whenever a new ruler took over, the previous center of government would be covered with soil and a new citadel built atop it. Each ruler wanted to be closer to the heavens than the previous ruler, leaving today's archaeologists a layer cake that traces the history of the people there.  The guide also explained that Lima's original residents didn't put roofs on their homes -- with less than an inch of rain a year, there was no need. Although Lima can experience humidity and even misty conditions, it's essentially a city without rain. Things can get kind of dusty, but ancient adobe structures are not likely to disappear due to erosion, either.
    When we were next in Lima, almost two weeks later, International Expeditions took our riverboat group on a tour of Central Lima and its Plaza Major, home of the city's cathedral and the nation's presidential palace (not open to visitors), before we flew northeast to the Amazon.  The cathedral is the burial place of Franciso Pizzaro, the Spaniard who made the Incas cough up a room full of gold to ransom their emperor and then killed him. (Pizzaro himself was eventually assassinated by one of his countrymen.) We also visited the 1500s convent San Franciso (no photography allowed) and its bone-filled catacombs, similar to but smaller than the catacombs in Paris.

This is a detail of a very large work at MAC.
It consisted entirely of white men in military
uniforms and other costumes that conveyed
authority throughout Peruvian history,
 all saying "Tomorrow." 

    During our final stay in Lima we were based in Barranco.  We walked north toward Miraflores along the mirador (a promenade overlooking the Pacific) from our B and B for about an hour to reach the Love Park. It's near Larcomar, a shopping mall built into the side of the cliff below the Marriott Hotel, which seems to be where most Americans stay in Lima, Larcomar has a lot of American businesses -- TGI Fridays, KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Chilli's, Nine West, Gap -- along with the top retailers of Peruvian alpaca and llama goods.
     On the walk back, at the border between Miraflores and Barranco we visited the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, known as MAC (click HERE for website).  There was more humor and joy de vivre in the works we saw there than we see in contemporary galleries in the U.S.  The next day, back in Barranco, we visited a very small museum called MATE (click HERE for website), set up by the Peruvian fashion photographer Mario Testino and devoted entirely to his work, including photos he took of Princess Diana in what turned out to be her last photo shoot. One of the gowns she wore is also on display.
    What else to say about Lima?  There are a number of good handicraft shops in Barranco, higher-end shops are in Miraflores, taxis are cheap, you don't need Yelp to find a decent meal, and you're not likely to feel unsafe in the evening walking in Miraflores or Barranco.  Even with a population of 10 million, Lima is not a "world city" like New York or Paris or Buenos Aires, but it is a vibrant, sophisticated urban center with a lot to offer visitors.

A cascade of flowers leads to the gift shop at the Museo Larco.

A man works on preservation at Huaca
Pucllana, an adobe pyramid in Lima built
between 200 and 700 A.D,

The gleaming new glass-covered medical center on the left offers a

contrast with the nearly 2,000-year-old Huaca Pucllana,

These are reproductions of mummies that
 have been found throughout the pyramid. The dishes
represent foods and other goods that would be needed
in the afterlife. Some of the mummies have been
those of babies, apparently sacrificed to guide adults
to the afterlife. 

The pyramid is made of thin adobe bricks arranged loosely in rows

 like books on a shelf. Our guide explained that the bricks were 

given space to move during earthquakes without collapsing, a neat 

solution to building in an area that has some 

sort of tremor almost daily.

The Basilica Cathedral of Lima dominates  the city's main square,

the Plaza Major.  Inside is the tomb of Francisco Pizzaro,

A painting in the Lima cathedral depicts the
Spanish dominating the naked indigenous people.

We caught a glimpse of a wedding in a chapel
at the Basilica Cathedral.

One of many ornate side chapels in the cathedral.

This sculpture is Victor Delfin's original  "El Beso." It
is on a terrace outside his art studio window and just below our
room's deck at Second Home Peru, the B and B at his
 oceanfront home in the Barranco district of Lima.

   

Panama: Ocean to Ocean, 11 Hours on the Canal

 

A Pacific-bound chemical tanker enters the Miraflores locks.  This is the view from the Miraflores Visitors Center.

I’ve always been interested in the Panama Canal – in how the United States created the country of Panama so it could build the canal, how tropical diseases were conquered so that workers could live long enough to get the job done, how the United States agreed in 1977 to turn the canal over to Panama, and, mostly, how the canal gently lifts giant ships over the continental divide. 

 Now, in 2014, the canal’s 100^th year¸ Panama is trying mightily to expand it with new locks for ships that are too large for a canal designed over a century ago.  The actual anniversary will be in August. The Ancon, an American steamship, made the first official transit of the canal on August 15, 1914, though ships used in the canal’s construction had been making the transit since January of that year.  


  A mid-winter vacation to Panama offered a chance to see the canal up close. A few years ago, we rented a narrow boat and traveled canals in England and northern Wales with another couple, which involved getting out and using hand cranks to  open and close gates to go up and down locks. In Panama, my wife and I booked a full transit, traveling north-northwest from the Pacific to the Caribbean, for a canal experience on a larger scale. Our excursion boat, operated by Canal and Bay Tours (click HERE for its website), offers full transits – including breakfast and lunch buffets – only on the first Saturday of each month.  Half-transits, from Panama City to Gamboa, are offered every Saturday.

5:45 a.m.  Pick up at hotel. (Click HERE for my New York Times review of our hotel, the Waldorf Astoria Panama.)

       Way too early to be awake in Panama City, we boarded a bus that was collecting people from various downtown hotels. It took us to the Amador Causeway, where my wife, Jane, and I had bicycled the day before.  The mile-and-a-half causeway, built over a century ago with rocks and soil excavated during construction of the canal, links the mainland with three small islands at the Pacific entrance to the canal. 

6:55 a.m. Board boat at an Amador Causeway marina.

      After a bit of a wait, we’re given wrist bands that identify us as full-transit passengers – about half the people starting out with us are going only halfway.  The boat is the Tuira II, with two decks of open-air seating.  Its capacity is listed at 450 passengers, but it looks as if our fellow canal enthusiasts are perhaps only half that number.  Almost all the passengers are speaking Spanish, though German, French and English can also be heard. A couple of people are carrying copies of David McCullough’s 1977 book “The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870 – 1914,” appropriate reading for this trip.

Melvyn Oller, our boat's guide.

7:40 a.m.  Boat leaves marina.

      Our bilingual guide introduces himself over the P.A. system: Melvyn Oller. He tells me later that he’s been a guide with Canal & Bay Tours for 12 years, but that it’s been eight years since he’s made a complete transit. You’d never know it from the wealth of canal statistics, trivia and other information that he has at the tip of his tongue.

7:50 a.m.  Idling in Panama Bay, waiting for a canal pilot.

     Captains do not take their own ships though the canal, not even a relatively small boat like ours. Every craft is commanded by a canal pilot. Melvyn says there are 298 canal pilots, two of whom are women. 

A canal pilot jumps onto our boat.

7:55 a.m. Canal pilot jumps from a launch onto our boat. We move into the canal channel.

     Boats do not go through the canal for free.  Fees for a one-way transit start at $800 for boats less than 50 feet.  Our 117-foot excursion boat is charged $3,200, Melvyn says, and the fees go up to at least $429,000, which he says is what the 965-foot-long, 105-foot-wide cruise ship Norwegian Pearl pays.  There are additional charges for the use of tugboats and for lines that keep ships from scraping the sides of the locks. (The lowest fee ever was 36 cents in 1928, paid by the American adventurer Richard Halliburton when he swam the canal.)   The Panama Canal Authority reports that it contributed over $1 billion to the national treasury in 2011.

We approach the Bridge of the Americas.

8:30 a.m. We pass under the Bridge of the Americas.

      We’re cruising past the port of Balboa, with docked ships, shipping containers and cranes lining the shore, when we encounter this mile-long, four-lane bridge.  When it opened in 1962, it was the first fixed bridge over the canal, and today it’s one of only two fixed bridges.  (There’s still a moveable bridge at the Gatun locks.) The bridge’s clearance, 201 feet at high tide, sets a height limit for ships going through the canal. A third bridge is planned near the Caribbean entrance.

9:35 a.m. Approaching the Miraflores locks. We wait for a Caribbean-bound freighter to clear the first starboard lock so we can enter.

       All ships use their own power to move through the canal, even entering and leaving the locks.  We see thick cables connecting ships with locomotives, called mules, on the sides of the locks. These cables keep ships centered in the locks and away from the concrete sides; they do not pull the ships through.  There’s no way for us to know why the freighter isn’t advancing into the next lock.

Wind Spirit precedes us into a lock at Miraflores.

9:55 a.m. We head instead for the first port lock, following Wind Spirit, a sailing cruise ship out of Nassau.

       Melvyn says the pilot has been told to move to the other set of locks – all the canal’s original locks are parallel twins that operate separately, so two large ships can advance at the same time or pass each other. The canal operators try to maximize traffic in the locks to save energy and water – a full transit uses all three Pacific and all three Atlantic locks and releases 52 million gallons of fresh water to the sea – so our boat and the 440-foot Wind Spirit, one of the Windstar line’s cruising yachts, will share locks all the way through to the Caribbean.  The locks are 1,050 feet long and 110 feet wide and can handle ships up to 965 feet long and 106 feet wide.  A lot of large birds hover over the water just below the gate, the point at which the fresh water of the canal abruptly meets the salt water of the sea, sending fresh-water fish into distress and making them easy picking for egrets, herons, hawks and pelicans.

Gates close behind us so that our chamber can fill with water.

10:10 a.m.  Gates close behind us and chutes in the bottom fill the lock with water. The concrete walls appear to slide down as our boat calmly rises about 27 feet.

      We’ll be moving through fresh water from now until we leave the last lock at the Caribbean end. Our boat is not connected to the mules – guide ropes tied to the sides of the lock are used instead. As it is, we’re so close to one side of the lock that I can reach out and touch the concrete wall. Melvyn says that all the concrete walls are original and were made using Portland cement from the United States.  He also tells us that all the gates on the canal are original, made more than a century ago in Pittsburgh, though temporary gates are installed from time to time when the original gates are removed for maintenance.  Mom was right – take care of your things and they’ll last a long time.

10:21 a.m. The lock's first chamber is full and we're waiting for the gate ahead to open so we can follow Wind Star into the next chamber, which happens at 10:23.

        The gates open when the water level of our lock is the same as the level of the lock or channel we’re moving into. The gates resemble giant double doors that swing open. Closed, they from a shallow “V” shape with the point facing upstream. Watching us is a crowd at the Miraflores Visitors Center, which is a short cab ride from Panama City and which Jane and I visited a couple of days earlier.  It has great views of the locks, a good restaurant, and a three-level museum that explains the history and construction of the canal.  There’s also a distant view of new, larger locks being built to handle “New Panamax” ships.  “Panamax” is the term for the largest ships that can be handled by the original locks.  “Post-Panamax” is the term for any ship that exceeds those dimensions, and “New Panamax” is the term for ships that will fit into the new locks, which will be 1,400 feet long and 180 feet wide, allowing passage of ships 1,200 feet long and 161 feet wide. Tugs will accompany every ship into the new locks, which will recycle much of the fresh water they use.

10:50 a.m.  We leave the Miraflores Locks and enter Miraflores Lake. 

     The two locks at Miraflores have put us 54 feet above sea level.  Miraflores Lake is one of two artificial lakes created in the construction of the canal.  Ships using the new locks will take a new channel from the new three-stage Miraflores Locks to the Culebra Cut, bypassing Miraflores Lake and the Pedro Miguel Lock. 

The century-old concrete walls of the Pedro Miguel Lock are close enough for us to reach out and touch.

11:25 a.m. We reach the Pedro Miguel Lock, follow Wind Spirit into the chamber and are lifted about 31 feet.

        Pedro Miquel raises us another 31 feet, putting us 85 feet above sea level, high enough for us to cross the continental divide.

See how the mountain was carved away for the Culebra Cut.

11:45 a.m. We leave Pedro Miguel and enter the Culebra Cut. 

        This 8.5-mile section, also known as the Gaillard Cut, is too narrow in places for ships going in opposite directions to pass each other.  Trying to cut a channel through Culebra Ridge was the stopping point in the late 1800s for the French effort to build the canal.  The American accomplishment – using labor mainly from the West Indies – in dynamiting and digging the channel remains one of the world’s great feats of engineering.  The cut was lowered from 194 feet above sea level to 39 feet before it was flooded. More than 100 million cubic yards of rock and soil were removed (remember the Amador Causeway?).  Edward Berger, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Virginia, regularly takes students to Panama to study the canal and its effects on politics, economics, culture and the environment.  “Nobody ever appreciates how big the canal is, or how narrow the Culebra Cut is, until they see it in person,” he says. Steep stony hillsides still show how rock was cut in the creation of the canal.  The Culebra Cut’s channel is being deepened and widened as part of the current expansion project. 

Wind Spirit motors beneath the Centennial Bridge.

Noon. We pass under the Centennial Bridge.

     Spanning the Culebra Cut is the Centennial Bridge, completed in 2004 and named in honor of the Panama’s 1903 proclamation of independence from Colombia.  The bridge is part of the Pan-American Highway.

12:51 p.m. We meet our first Pacific-bound ship, a freighter. 

        Ships enter the canal from each end in the mornings, pass each other during the day and exit in the evenings. There are about 40 complete transits each day, roughly 20 in each direction.  We’ll see several more freighters, tankers and car carriers over the afternoon.

   

El Renacer prison, as seen from the canal.

12:54 p.m. We pass the penitentiary where Manuel Noriega is incarcerated.

       Melvyn tells us we can’t see the specific building at El Renacer prison, where Noriega, 80, has been serving a sentence since 2011 for human rights violations dating to his rule in Panama.  This follows almost two decades in American and French prisons. 

 12:55 p.m. We pass where the Chagres River feeds into the Culebra Cut and Gatun Lake.

     The Chagres River – born in a jungle that gets over 100 inches of rain a year – once flowed only into the Caribbean.  United States engineers built a dam to control that flow and form Gatun Lake, and created the Culebra Cut to divert some of the Chargres’s flow to the Pacific.  It’s the only river in the world whose waters flow, albeit though artificial channels and locks, into two oceans. Its flow not only keeps Gatun Lake filled, it supplies the water that makes the locks possible – and it supplies drinking water to both Colón and Panama City, the cities at each end of the canal.  For decades, there was virtually no development in the 10-mile-wide Canal Zone controlled by the United States, which had the happy effect of preserving much of the Chagres River’s watershed. 

A canal tugboat docked at Gamboa.

1 p.m. We tie up at a pier in Gamboa so the people who were doing half-transits can disembark.

      We stop at a Panama Canal Authority pier alongside several of its 36 tugboats.  Our half-transit passengers leave the boat here and immediately board buses for the return to Panama City, completely missing what makes Gamboa a popular destination.  The Gamboa Rainforest Resort, which welcomes day-trippers from Panama City, offers a variety of wildlife and birding tours, an aerial tram through a forest canopy and a variety of exhibitions on jungle creatures and plants. Of course, we miss all of this, too, seeing only the jungle’s edge from the canal

1:15 p.m. We enter Gatun Lake.

Gatun Lake accounts for 21 of the canal’s total 50 miles. When it was built, it was the world’s largest artificial lake at 164 square miles.  It’s at the same elevation – 85 feet above sea level – as the Culebra Cut. Plenty of room here for giant ships to pass each other.    

A Pacific-bound car carrier passes Barro Colorado.

2:30 p.m. We pass Barro Colorado, a 5,000-acre island that is home to the Smithsonian's Tropical Research station. 

What were once hills became islands when Gatun Lake filled with water.  One of these is Barro Colorado, a biological reserve administered by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.  Like Gamboa, it’s a popular daytrip out of Panama City.  There are trails to hike and an interactive loop that takes about three hours. Talk about biodiversity. The island boasts 480 species of trees, 70 kinds of bats, 384 species of birds, and so on.  From the boat, we see only its heavily wooded shore. This juxtaposition of primal wilderness, artificial waterways and giant ships intrigued one of our fellow passengers on the Tuira II.  “What I most looked forward to in the canal transit was the sense of the balance between this huge project and the landscape,” says David William Foster, a professor of Latin American studies at Arizona State.  “I’m fascinated by how the nature of the region seems to have absorbed the canal and by the sense of serenity as we traverse the man-made Gatun Lake.”

Cranes at the site of the new, larger Gatun Locks.

3:37 p.m.  We pass the new Gatun Locks Visitors' Center, which overlooks the huge construction site of the new Gatun Locks.

     The expansion project is in the news during our trip to Panama.  The contractor, a consortium of Spanish, Italian, Belgian and Panamanian companies¸ is claiming cost overruns of $1.6 billion.  The Panama Canal Authority has balked at paying that amount, and its public relations office has been cranking out press releases assuring that the expansion is still on track, even when work is temporarily halted.  The project is about two-thirds complete, and Edward Berger at the University of Virginia is optimistic about it. “The expansion will be completed, and it's fascinating and impressive work,” he says. “The vision is absolutely audacious. We drove down into the project to see the scale of the locks – it’s an astounding amount of concrete to manufacture and pour, and seeing it first-hand made a huge impact on my students.  A project like this is bound to run a little bit late, but it's exciting to think it's only a year or so from completion.”

Gigantic gates for the new locks await installation.

3:45 p.m. We enter the first of the three Gatun Locks; this time a canal tugboat and Wind Spirit are behind us in the lock. At 4:58 we leave Gatun’s third lock and enter the Caribbean.

     The three locks have taken us down 85 feet and we’re again at sea level. We pass the Caribbean entrance to the new channel that eventually will take ships to the new Gatun locks.  On the shore we see four huge gates, made in Italy,that will be used in the new locks.  These gates – 189 feet long, almost 33 feet thick, 99 feet high and 3,100 tons – will slide in and out of the canal walls. I can’t help but wonder if they will last a century or more.   

The Celebrity Equinox is too big for the original canal.

5:18 p.m.  We pass the Caribbean entrance to the new channel that will eventually take New Panamax ships to the new Gatun Locks, and by 5:50 we’re in Colón harbor.

   We dock near a cruise ship, the Celebrity Equinox, which at 1,033 feet long and 121 feet wide is too large for the current canal  but will fit comfortably in the expanded canal.  

6:15 p.m.  We dock and board buses, and by 8 p.m. we’re back at our hotel.

      We’ve been in two oceans, crossed a continental divide – and traveled between 1914 and 2014.