07/12/2009, Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island
We are not having a lot of luck uploading our galapagos photos from the Galapagos. The band width here can be painfully slow at times and the blog hosting computer frequently times out before our pics get uploaded. Hopefully we can get some of them uploaded before we leave but even if we do it is doubtful we will be able to get the captions added.
We are leaving the Galapagos for Easter Island on the 14th. It will be a 2000 mile passage (12 to 15 days) and there is no reason to expect the satellite email will be any better there than it is here. After we leave Easter Island we will be heading to Lima which is another 2000 mile leg but the current will be with us on that one.
The net result is that we are unlikely to be able to update our blog, with anything more than brief reports while underway, until we get to Peru in late August.
Once we get good internet access we will have a lot of stuff to upload.
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07/05/2009
For some reason the captions for the photos of our tour of the panama canal spontaneously disappeared. I waited a couple of weeks before doing anything about it as the fellow who runs this service said he though he could find them again. I have not heard back so Ill start adding the captions back to the photos.
We are in Puero Ayora in the Galapagos now and have just finished a tour of several other islands. We got a ton of photos and will post those and some of the details of our trip soon. Internet is all by satellite here in the Galapagos so its a sloooow process.
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06/07/2009, Panama
The picture attached to this blog entry is a Google earth image where I have drawn in the approximate route of the canal. Most people think of the canal as connection the eastern ocean (The Atlantic) with the western ocean (The Pacific) so we, naturally, assume it runs east to west. This is not the case. It actually runs more north-south because of the route across the isthmus that made the project possible. The height of the continental divide was lowest along the chosen route and the Chagres River provided water for Lake Gatun. The lake provides the water needed to operate the locks. Without this lake (largest man made lake in the world) the locks could not operate. Around 28 million gallons of fresh water from the lake ends up in the ocean for each transit. The new locks they are building to increase the capacity of the canal will have water conservation reservoirs incorporated as part of their design.
In general we have not found Panama to be a very charming place. They have a mentality here they call "juego vida" or game of life. Basically whatever you can get for yourself is OK regardless of at whose expense you get it.
Panama is the only country where we have been hit up for bribes (I managed to negotiate a $25 bribe down to $10) and are frequently scammed by taxi drivers who try to overcharge us.
The slums in Panama city are pretty bad and there are neighborhoods where the cab drivers tell you to lock the doors because of bandidos.
Colon, on the Atlantic side, is supposed to be even worse but we did not feel the need to find out first hand.
The thing that makes Panama special is the Panama Canal which represents one of the great engineering achievements of all time. The builders had to move enough earth to circle the earth 4 times in railroad flat cars. Another way to look at it is that they say the volume of earth is equal to the volume of 27 of the great Egyptian Pyramids, or enough enough material was moved to build the equivalent of the great wall of China across the United States. I hope that last comment does not give the republicans any ideas about the Mexican border.
Aside from the massive earth moving effort there were major medical problems that had to be overcome (malaria, yellow fever, cholera, etc) and the locks had to be designed and built.
Few people realize that the canal came in ahead of schedule and under budget, so much for the cynics who don't have confidence in the government's ability to get things done. But one of the head engineers quit when congress refused to up the budget a little to build wider and longer locks. The navy overruled him because they did not need bigger locks at the time. If the project had come in slightly later and at a slightly higher cost the current multi billion dollar expansion plan would not have been necessary. Cheaper is not always better, even when building Panama Canals.
I just finished up a book by David McCullough (also wrote John Adams) called "The Path Between the Seas". Although Im just starting to get into it I think it is going to turn out to beThis is an incredible book. It covers the entire effort to build a canal from 1870 to the successful completion of the project in 1914.
We will not be going through the canal on Active Transport unless we end up going all the way around the world and want to get back to the west coast of North America. So, we took advantage of an opportunity to go through the canal as line handlers for Hank and Betsy Martin on their Island Packet yacht "Equinox". All yachts transiting the canal must have 4 line handlers (in addition to the captain) on board to tend the mooring lines as the boat rises of falls in the locks. It is common for cruisers to volunteer to do this on other people's boats. Some do it as preparation for their own passage through the canal but Shawn and I just did it for fun.
We uploaded a gallery of pictures of our passage through the canal along with captions that flesh out what we learned about its construction and operation.
We also had a very special privilege of a VIP tour of the MIraflores Locks courtesy of our friend, Captain Jim Guy, of the motor vessel Ocean Dance, who we initially met in Zihautanejo several months ago. Jim has a friend who has been a guide at the locks for almost 40 years. Jim's friend, Paul, gave us a tour we will never forget. We got to walk across the locks while they were closed, tour the control room of the locks, and descend into the tunnels under the locks where access to the machinery can be viewed in operation. We posted a completely separate album in the gallery about this tour.
We used Panama as a place to catch up on deferred maintenance on the boat. Things like replacing our dingy, replacing a shroud with a broken wire, and receiving shipments of gear and supplies from the US are much easier in Panama than in most central American countries. They are very used to the concept of boats in transit here and are very reasonable about not charging us taxes on items that are leaving the country with the boat.
We have just about finished all of our projects (including a new crown on one of Shawn's root canals) and are hoping to get on our way by next Thursday (June 11). We will be heading first to Isla Cebaco, on the other side of Punta Mala, where there is a ship that refuels a sport fishing fleet and also sells fuel to yachts. We will leave there with a full tank and head for Isla Cocos off the coast of Costa Rica. We will stop for a couple of days of, what we hear is, incredible snorkeling, very high quality nature hikes, and just plain rest. This stop breaks up the trip to the Galapagos. Although it adds a few miles to the total.
We are scheduled to arrive in the Galapagos on the 24th and have booked a cabin on one of the motor yachts that provides tours of the various Islands with licensed naturalists aboard.
Once we get to the Galapagos we will add a posting on our planned route from there which involves Easter Island as a stop on our way to Lima, Peru.
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