The Calebra Cut
Standing on Deck 11 put us in the direct sun and couple with the high humidity this meant that at times we were pretty uncomfortable. The solution was to go and get bottles of water and wash cloths soaked in cold water from our cabin.
Just as when we were crossing the lake and the reach there were markers on hills to help pilots and captains navigate their way through, the Cut also had markers. This one even had gained some graffiti.
This part of the canal was steeped in history as the excavations had removed millions of tonnes of material and cut straight through hills. The cut was at least 100 foot deep in places. We learnt about the issues between the rival nationalities of workers, the mass suicide of the Chinese labourers and the many deaths caused by landslides.
The hills had names that reflected some of the accidents such as Contractors Hill. We could see the tiered hillsides that were made rather simple slopes to try and stop more landslides. The steepest hillsides had been bored into and had metal braces to try and stabilise them. Some even had been sprayed with concrete but as we passed we could see that these efforts had not been entirely successful as the hills still kept sliding into the cut.
The Continental Drift between two tectonic plates cut right through the area of the highest sides and this contributed to making the sides even more unstable.
14.05 pm Centennial Bridge
After the deepest part of the cut and the Continental Drift we passed under Centennial Bridge. This spanned the cut taking traffic directly over the canal.
Under the bridge a ship was moored. This was the only ship that we passed in the cut.
Further down the cut we spotted one of the Panama Canal workers in the jungle that now lined the canal.
The cut began to widen and there ahead of us we could see the next set of locks, the Pedro Miguel Locks.
After the cut, the canal again divided with the new bigger locks away on our starboard side. We were taking the old route through and turned to port to the Pedro Miguel Locks.
Pedro Miguel Lock
This was where we would start our descent into the Pacific. The new canal locks make the descent in a set of three locks but we had these locks, a lake and the a last set of locks to traverse on our way West. Both sides of the Pedro Miguel Lock were in use for ships descending to the Pacific.
We had a great view as we approached the locks. Being up on Deck 11 meant we didn’t have the experience of seeing the extreme changes in height as we’d seen on Deck 7. But we did get tremendous views down the locks themselves.
Look carefully, there’s a big green arrow reminding the pilots which side of the locks to use. The mules were waiting for us as before at the other locks.
On the port side of the locks were lots of buildings and =here we saw lots of people and vehicles.
From our vantage point we had great views as the lock gates opened and the water surged out in the lake. These lock gates were doubled just in case of failure the lake and ultimately downstream Panama City were protected.
This shows the force of the water flowing out of the last lock into the lake.
Along the sides of this lock were fire hoses mounted into towers.
As Coral Princess left the last lock and entered the Miraflores Lake there were our waiting tugs.
Miraflores Lake
After the Pedro Migual lock the canal took us into another man made lake, the Miraflores Lake. This was our staging point before the final set of locks.
Coral Princess was met by a couple of tugs to shepherd her across the lake to the Miraflores Locks. Behind us was another ship that was now following us through this final part of the transit and beyond that was the Millennium Bridge.
In front of us there were other ships and we told to expect a delay as we slowly made our way across the lake.
This was our signal to go back to our cabin to refresh our sun tan protection and to have one of the beers in our ‘fridge. This was about 3.30 pm.
From our balcony we could see a ship in the approach channel to the new locks. It was the red LPG ship that we had seen in Gatum Lake.
Once back outside, from the port side we could just see the tops of the skyscrapers of Panama City.
