Keyswench After BLUE MAX ADVENTURES: 2005/06

Balboa, the final stop on the trip. We're at an almost total loss as to where we went; what days we stayed there-(thinking 3-4); names of places we did go to. So I thought, no problem, my pictures always tell the story. NOT this time. For some unknown reason, none of my pictures were dated or labeled. ??? I'm usually so obsesive about doing that. I know we arrived on 6/3. I know we walked around town by the hotel we stayed at; I know, somehow, we found a property for sale on the water in about 2 hrs from the hotel; I know we rented a car to go see the property; I know I got terribly sick while over there & remained sick all the way back to the hotel-so sick, I almost went to a local hospital; I know we didn't go on any guided tours nor did we go into Panama City...but that's about it. SO, this blog will have lots of pictures & the only known information is that the pictures were taken in Panama & from Wikipedia.

"The town of Balboa, founded by the United States during the construction of the Panama Canal, was named after Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the Spanish conquistador credited with discovering the Pacific Ocean. The name was suggested to the Canal Zone authorities by the Peruvian ambassador to Panama. Prior to being drained, filled and leveled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the hilly area north of Panama City was home to a few subsistence ranches and unused marshlands.
The town of Balboa, like most towns in the Canal Zone, was served by Canal Zone Government–operated schools, post office, police and fire stations, commissary, cafeteria, yacht club, service center, and recreational facilities. There were several schools in the area, including Balboa Elementary School, Balboa High School, and the private St. Mary's School. The town was also home to two private banks, a credit union, a Jewish Welfare Board, several Christian denomination churches, civic clubs, a masonic temple, and a YMCA."
" Port of Balboa... Balboa is the Pacific-side port of the Panama Canal. The port has a dry dock in Panamax size (even the gates have a similar construction as the Panama canal locks). It has a multimodal (ship-to-train) terminal, called Pacific Terminal, with the PCRC connection to Colón. This allows transportation of containers by train across the isthmus. The railway also runs a passenger service between Panama City and Colón, one way, once a day. In 2012 was ranked #1 in Latin America in the category of world's busiest container ports."

We left the canal & entered the area under the Bridge of the Americas.
"The Bridge of the Americas crosses the Pacific approach to the Panama Canal at Balboa, near Panama City. It was built between 1959 and 1962 by the United States at a cost of 20 million U.S. dollars. From its completion in 1962 until the opening of the Centennial Bridge in 2004, the Bridge of the Americas was a key part of the Pan-American Highway. The Bridge of the Americas greatly increased road traffic capacity across the canal. There are two earlier bridges which cross the canal, but they use moveable designs and have limited traffic capacity. The earlier spans include a small swinging road bridge (built into the lock structure at Gatún) and a swinging road/rail bridge (constructed in 1942 at Miraflores.) The Centennial Bridge was constructed to eliminate this bottleneck and reduce traffic congestion on the Bridge of the Americas."


Bridge of the Americas

Climate data for Balboa
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Average high °C (°F)	31 (87)	32 (89)	32 (89)	32 (89)	31 (87)	30 (86)	30 (86)	31 (87)	30 (86)	30 (86)	30 (86)	30 (86)	30.8 (87)
Average low °C (°F)	22 (71)	22 (71)	23 (73)	23 (73)	24 (75)	23 (73)	23 (73)	23 (73)	23 (73)	23 (73)	23 (73)	23 (73)	22.9 (72.8)
Precipitation mm (inches)	33 (1.3)	18 (0.7)	13 (0.5)	74 (2.9)	201 (7.9)	200 (8)	180 (7)	198 (7.8)	198 (7.8)	262 (10.3)	250 (10)	137 (5.4)	1,764 (69.6)

Our hotel & view from the room:

Bridge of the Americas in the back ground

Sights as we walked around this interesting town. You can see it was overcast with showers now & then:

Unidentified bird housed in a government building

That's Wayne

Waitin for the rain to quit

Interesting choice of symbols - some I 'get', others ??


Looks well worn

GQ cop - Now that's what I'm talkin about!!

Very nice apartments

Then, there are these apartments

"Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno, born February 11, 1934, (he's now 80)is a former Panamanian politician and soldier. He was military dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989. In the 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States he was removed from power, captured, detained as a prisoner of war, and flown to the United States. Noriega was tried on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering in April 1992.

Obviously, I didn't take this picture...from the web- ?year?

Noriega's U.S. prison sentence ended in September 2007; pending the outcome of extradition requests by both Panama and France, for convictions in absentia for murder in 1995 and money laundering in 1999. France was granted its extradition request in April 2010. He arrived in Paris on April 27, 2010, and after a re-trial as a condition of the extradition, he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in jail in July 2010. A conditional release was granted on September 23, 2011, for Noriega to be extradited to serve 20 years in Panama. He arrived in Panama on December 11, 2011."


Walked the front of his house

Beach side that you can't see from the street. Not much left of it-shame (from the web)

Somehow, we always find a comfy place to get refreshed

Panama City

It was probably the next day when we rented the car...I did some research in hopes to jog my memory of where we went.
It was Portobelo.

Interesting ride...shame we didn't have enough time to stop at various places. We checked out the house that was for sale but didn't pursue it. We don't remember how we got to the Port of Portobelo but we're glad we happened upon it...Here's some history taken off the web.
"Portobelo is located in Panama’s Colon Province about a 35 minute drive east of the main Colon-Panama road, and a little over 2 hours from Panama City."
"Portobelo itself today is nothing but a tiny dot on the map. Still it remains important to Panama’s tourism offerings. Portobelo is even listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Why? Think 400-year-old Spanish fort ruins, a Black Christ and Isla Grande.
The port of Portobelo Panama was founded in 1597 by Francisco Velarde y Mercado. The port’s purpose was to receive gold and silver that the Spanish had taken from South America and delivered to what then was Panama City. The treasure was then ported across the Panamanian Isthmus by mule by way of the Las Cruces – Camino de Cruces – Trail. At Portobelo it was loaded on Gallions for delivery of the mother country. This function led to a violent history. Maritime legends such as Sir Francis Drake, Henry Morgan and English Admiral Edward Vernon, all attacked the port. But somehow, Portobelo always returned to its position as part of the Spanish Main..."

"For those of you who follow religions, Portobelo has the mysterious Black Christ, which is famous worldwide. No one seems to know exactly how the statue arrived in Portobelo. Two stories are most accepted. The first is that the Christ was on a ship bound south. A storm hit and the ship was stranded. This continued for days until the sailors threw the statue overboard. The weather then cleared and they were on there way. (The statue is also reputed to have cured an epidemic of smallpox in Portobelo the next day.) The other story is that an Indian found the Christ in its crate and towed it back to the port. Method aside the accepted arrival date of the Christ in in Portobelo is October 21, 1658."

We also came across a bunch of kids dressed up for some sort of ceremony or party. However, this is about the time I started to not feel well.

The building the kids were in

An amazing trip on the AMAZING GRACE. They played the song"Amazing Grace" everytime we left port. We bought the CD & often play it on BLUE MAX - we also play taps & blow the conch shell at sunset.

This is the final chapter on this adventure.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

We entered Limón Bay from the Atlantic & docked in Colón at the Colón Free Trade Zone. Most of the women were excited about the duty free shopping - actually, just to shop. Wayne bought an expensive pair of sunglasses for almost nothing...I'm wondering why I don't have any pictures??

There's an enormous amount of interesting information about the Panama Canal so, if interested, I suggest you check it out on Wikkipedia.
"The Panama Canal...is a 77.1-kilometre (48 mi) ship canal in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean (via the Caribbean Sea) to the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. There are locks at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal, 26 metres (85 ft) above sea level. The current locks are 33.5 metres (110 ft) wide. A third, wider lane of locks is currently under construction and is due to open in 2015.
France began work on the canal in 1881, but had to stop because of engineering problems and high mortality due to disease. The United States took over the project in 1904, and took a decade to complete the canal, which was officially opened on August 15, 1914.

1908 - Steam shovel

One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, the Panama Canal shortcut greatly reduced the time for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, enabling them to avoid the lengthy, hazardous Cape Horn route around the southernmost tip of South America via the Drake Passage or Strait of Magellan.

1910 - Construction of the locks

The shorter, faster, and safer route to the U.S. West Coast and to nations in and around the Pacific Ocean allowed those places to become more integrated with the world economy. It takes between 20 and 30 hours to traverse the canal. The Panama Canal had its 100-year anniversary on August 15, 2014."

Interesting, Wayne went through the canal in 1998 on a trawler named CHART WELL. He was part of a delivery crew taking the boat from Miami & the final destination was to be China. However, Wayne got off in San Diago as an El Niño was churning up the Pacific. He doesn't think it ever made it to China as we saw the same boat a few years ago in Sarasota. So Wayne has gone through the canal twice - both in the same direction.

One of the "Mules"

"A Panama Canal "mule" is a locomotive used to keep ships in the proper position in the locks. The mules run on tow tracks along the walls of the locks from one end to the other. They don't pull the ships, but they help guide it and act as a safeguard to mitigate accidents."

Mule at work - notice the dinky line from the Mule to the GRACE- It might be a wire??

"From the formal marking line of the Atlantic Entrance, one enters Limón Bay (Bahía Limón), a large natural harbour. The entrance runs 5.4 mi. It provides a deepwater port (Cristóbal), with facilities like multimodal cargo exchange (to and from train) and the Colón Free Trade Zone (a free port).

A 2.0 mi channel forms the approach to the locks from the Atlantic side.
The Gatun locks, a three-stage flight of locks 1.2 mi long, lifts ships to the Gatun Lake level, some 87 ft above sea level.
Gatun Lake, an artificial lake formed by the building of the Gatun Dam, carries vessels 15 mi across the isthmus. It is the summit canal stretch, fed by the Gatun river and emptied by basic lock operations.
From the lake, the Chagres River, a natural waterway enhanced by the damming of Gatun Lake, runs about 5.3 mi. Here the upper Chagres river feeds the high level canal stretch.
The Culebra Cut slices 7.8 mi through the mountain ridge, crosses the continental divide and passes under the Centennial Bridge.
The single-stage Pedro Miguel lock, which is 0.87 mi long, is the first part of the descent with a lift of 31 ft.
The artificial Miraflores Lake, 1.1 mi long, and 54 ft above sea level.
The two-stage Miraflores locks, is 1.1 mi long, with a total descent of 54 ft at mid-tide.
From the Miraflores locks one reaches Balboa harbour, again with multimodal exchange provision (here the railway meets the shipping route again). Nearby is Panama City.
From this harbour an entrance/exit channel leads to the Pacific Ocean (Gulf of Panama), 8.2 mi from the Miraflores locks, passing under the Bridge of the Americas.