The Panama Canal - A Wonder of the Modern World

A  visit to the Panama Canal is a visit to one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

The Panama Canal, a 77 km long waterway joining the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean together, was first constructed by the French in the late 1880's.  But they had to stop due to high mortality rate during the construction period. In 1904, the Americans took ove the project and it took them a decade to complete this huge project.  The canal was opened in 1914.

In Panama, I saw this painting titled" The Kiss of the Oceans 1915" a few times and thought it nicely depicted the significance and romantic notion  of the Panama Canal to the people of the world at the time.
( Source of picture - Google )

 

The Panama Canal is open  and operates 24 hours a day,  and about 18,000 vessels go through this waterway each year.











 The buildings in the background used to be the residences of the American personnel when they were in Panama decades ago.

We were lucky enough to witness the crossing of one of the many ships going through the Panama Canal. This ship came in from the Carribean sea going out to the Pacific Ocean in the background.
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 The Panama Canal – its 7 story tall gate is opening for ships to pass through. It was built by Americans but was handed back to Panama around year 2000.
The tolls charged for vessels using the Canal are based on weight. It could cost as much as $450,000.00 to pass through the canal and about 10 hours to complete the entire crossing into the Pacific Ocean.

The electric cars seen here are guiding the ship to go through the canal safely without it hitting the sides of the canal which only had a clearance of a little more than a foot.

 It is quite a feat to have  40-50  vessels a day passing through the canal so precisely without any of them hitting part of the canal.

I was glad that I had the chance of visiting and learning about this modern wonder!

R.T.
Panama

Note: We were here with the previous mission team and we visited the Canal in 2011.I took the above pictures and notes during that visit.