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Panama Canal is a very interesting piece of technology. This 80km water track connecting Atlantic and Pacific consists of a canal and a huge artificial lake 26m above the sea level. The ships are lifted to the lake level with the help of huge locks (“sluza” in Polish) – simple yet powerful technique. The locks are 32m wide, 300m long, 12m deep. Many so called “Panamax” ships are designed to fit precisely these dimensions, especially the width. They look as if they were squeezed in a vise from both sides, and they almost scratch the lock walls when inside. It was really cool to observe these monsters slowly passing by our restaurant. The big daddy carrying cars paid 192’000 USD for the transit. Sounds a lot, but going around South America would have cost way more.

There was a strong need for this canal since the XVI century, when the Spanish started bringing gold, silver and other goods from Peru and others. They actually used Panama to cross to Atlantic, either completely on foot, or partially on a local river and only about 30km walking. Later, Panama was often crossed by people traveling between both coasts of the North America – the direct land route was too dangerous due to the natives. In 1850 or so the railway was constructed, just in time for the gold rush.

The idea of building a canal was around for some time. The French tried to achieve it towards the end of the 19th century. They failed miserably. Mainly because they wanted to build the entire canal at the sea level. The Americans took over, and quickly realized that locks are a must. They built two big dams on one river, to create the world’s largest artificial lake at the time. Next followed the locks and the canal. Even though this trick saved a lot of work, the venture was tremendous. If you put on a cargo train all the soil that was excavated during the construction, the length of this train would be…? four times round the world!!!

Panama Canal was officially opened in 1914. Soon afterwards, with no more land connection, the two continents started drifting away from each other. The engineers quickly solved this problem by building the spectacular Bridge of the Americas that holds the two continents together until today.

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