On first impressions…
Thank goodness we have actually arrived! After leaving the Guatemala City airport, we flew 1 hr 40 min south to arrive in San Jose, Costa Rica, with a 3 hour stop over. We then flew 1 hr and 15 min north, arriving in El Salvador where we had a 2 hour stop over and were significantly closer to Guatemala. Our final flight was 2 hours south to Panama City. After a whole day of flying we were exhausted and were so pleased to arrive at our accommodation where the Venezuelan owners were extremely accommodating and couldn't have done more for us. We were using Panama as a transit destination to Colombia so had no expectations of what was to come.

On further examination…
Exhausted from our ridiculous flight schedule the day before, we attempted an early start but arrived at the Panama Canal too late to see the ships travel through the locks. We instead watched the ‘Making of’ movie and spent some time learning about this outstanding engineering feat in the museum.

The canal is a man made 77 km waterway that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. Its initial conception was born in attempt to fasten the journey for maritime transport vessels moving international goods huge distances around the South Americas.
The history is rich and extremely interesting. The earliest mention of the canals inception was way back in 1534. Over the years, there were many set-backs and huge periods of time where the idea of the canal was completely abandoned. The engineering model was adapted and commandeered by many pioneering countries and engineers and it was in 1914 that the canal was finally opened by the US. It is thought that in the process of building the canal, over 25,000 workers died from complications of the Panamanian heat and tropical diseases that arose from cutting through the dense jungle between the oceans. An amazing feat that came at an exceptional cost.
Knowing the history and actually seeing the locks was pretty cool (you can say it, nerds!). Once the ships enter the locks, they are lifted 26 mt above sea level at Gutan Lake, and then lowered back to sea level at the other end. That is tons of weight that seamlessly gets lifted and lowered 26 METERS, amazing!

Happy with the knowledge gained, we convinced ourselves we were satisfied with not seeing the ships pass through, and we headed back into town to the fish market. Wading our way through the many persistent restaurateurs, we finally found a seat in the open-air market and had ceviche of black clams and fried fish. An instance where choosing a local dish did not work in our favour!
A quick visit to the upper class old town and a lack of other tourist spots to investigate, our curiosity got the better of us and we decided to head back to the Canals in peak hour traffic to see the ships passing through the locks at 4pm! We did not regret it, it was awesome. There was live commentary and large crowds gathered and we watched as ships carrying thousands of shipping containers weighing over 50,000 tons were effortlessly lowered through the locks. It was so worth it!

That night being desperate for some home style comida, I selected an apparently cheap Japanese restaurant around the corner for a low-key dinner. Arriving in havi’s and worn out travel get ups we were embarrassed to find a hip, roof top restaurant with beautiful people everywhere and a restaurant that matched… them, certainly not us! We apologised for our attire and were surprisingly happily led to a table overlooking the city lights and had the most delightful dinner for much more that a travel budget should allow! We loved every minute and I am no longer allowed to choose where we eat!

In the end…
Total engineering nerds, we loved the canals!