The Panama Canal: Round Three

According to the travel guide Lonely Planet (LP) your best chance of seeing a ship go through the Panama Canal is between 9 and 11am at the Miraflores Locks.  I had seen the engineering marvel last summer, but not in its full glory.  Even after our late night of karaoke and beverages I was determined to get up early to see a boat cross the canal.  In order to coheres the rest of the group out of bed I made a batch of banana pancakes before any wake up calls.  We managed to get everyone out of bed, fed, and ready to go by 10am.  

I was a little overzealous at making sure we got the correct cap fare, but even after a tiff with the cab driver we made it to the canal before 11am.  However this proved to be pointless.  We were immediately met with the news that there would be no ships until 2pm.  After contemplating if we wanted to kill more than three hours we decided we had nothing better to do with our day and could wait.  After a quick consultation of LP we learned there was a botanical garden/zoo only 10km down the road.  As we made our way down to the bus stop we met two sisters from the Dominican Republic who were staying at our hostel and invited them to join.

Although the bus stop was covered, it was hot and humid.  Nevertheless it was a great time.  In a weird backpacking phenomenon Americans made up the majority of our group.  Although Bora is originally from Cambodia and the sisters from the Dominican Republic, they all currently live in New York.  Thus Vincezo became an honorary member of Team America for the day.  After over an hour of waiting and consistently being honked at we were still stranded at the bus stop.  Many buses refused to stop and those that did said we needed a different bus.  Admitting defeat we made our way back to the air conditioned Miraflores for lunch.  Panamanian Public Transport System: 1, Americans: 0.

In the end it all worked out.  The ships started passing through the canal at 1pm and we managed to see two, long after the novelty had wore out.  It was somewhat anticlimactic but I was still excited I finally got to see the canal in action, even if it took three tries.