Day 12.
Today we were in Panama which in a surprise move is actually a country not just a canal or a hat. It was also the day I got my birthday present which was a ride along the Panama Canal Railway in a glass domed carriage. The next best thing to doing a transit in a ship. I was very excited.
The first fly in the ointment was that the port building had no electricity. So far on this trip we hadn’t had our passports stamped once. This was extremely disappointing. Now Panama of course did want to check and stamp everyone's passport but they had no power, by that I mean electricity in the port building. This meant that everyone had to hand over their passport to the crew of the ship with the promise that we'd get them back... eventually.
There was an awful disembarkation process partly because of the whole passport thing and partly due to the fact that they were supposed to disembark people by groups except they neglected to tell people what groups they were in and how to find out. Eventually we got on a coach and took a short ride to the train station. The domed carriage was in two parts with a lower area/bar and an upper deck. We went to the upper deck in the hope of getting better views. And the views were spectacular. Rather than what you'd traditionally think of as a 'canal' a lot of it looks more like they've flooded half the country.
The views from one side of the train was a little better then the other and of course we'd sat on the side that wasn't quite as good. It didn't concern us as we thought we'd be returning on the train because at £150 per ticket why wouldn't you. Our guide also neglected to tell us (until way too late) that attached to our carriage was an outdoor viewing area which was way better for seeing stuff. By the time he mentioned it we'd passed the best bits. We did get a little picnic on the train which we decided to keep and use the following day. Also the conductors, they were all ladies as far as I could see, sang a little song. No idea why it was about, probably something like;
🎵Money, money, money, please give me money🎵
The whole Panama Canal transit is about 50 miles, the train ride itself is probably only about 40. Surprisingly when we got to the station at the other end the coach that had dropped us off was waiting for us. We thought that once we got to Panama City we'd get free time in the city itself to look around and shop. This didn’t happen. We were driven miles outside the city to a chain of islands and told we had 25 minutes to piss and have a look around. There was one shop which, by the time you'd queued for the toilet, we didn't get time to look in. We were then told we'd stay on the coach and driven straight back to the Atlantic coast. No return train ride!
The last part of the tour was a visit to Agua Clara Locks Visitor Centre. Now don't get me wrong this is a very impressive feat of engineering and we were lucky enough to see a cruise ship in the locks. However once you've seen it there's nothing else to do. The whole place takes about 10 minutes to walk around. There's a 10 minute film about how the locks were built so 20 minutes for the whole thing, maybe 30 if your'e very slow. We were left here for 1 hour! It might of been better if the little 'wildlife trail' was open but of course this was shut. To kill time and to scratch the shopping urge we had a look in the overpriced gift shop and Lyn bought a stuffed toy sloth. She's named it Skippy. This is after my fish sandwich in the Cayman Islands as I couldn't remember that the fish was a snapper and so kept calling it a skippy sandwich much to her amusement. Loved the train ride which was the main part but a bit disappointing overall and definitely not money well spent.
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