Colón

We docked in Colon Panama at about 7 AM. I was up early because I had some work to get done.
Our excursion for today, History Railway by Domed Train, was another long one clocking in at 8 hours in length. We were bused to the railway through the City of Colon. To say that the City of Colon is a bit rundown would be a major understatement. Our guide explained that the government was in the process of "refurbishing" the city. We saw a new baseball field under construction. But what we saw mostly were derielict buildings. We were informed that the government was in the process of relocating all the residents in the downtown area to the suburbs. The future plans for the city is to make it into a tourist zone by removing all the buildings and building shopping venues and hotels. I believe that the government is trying to reinvent Colon to resemble Panama City on the Pacific Coast.
I have included photos of the Domed Train car along with photos taken through the bus window of Colon. It should be noted that the buildings that I was able to capture were not the most dilapidated.
The train runs along the locks on both the Caribbean Ocean side and the Pacific Oceans side of the canal in addition to the shores of Gatun Lake. Due to the lack of rainfall, the lake's water level is low enough that measures are in place to conserve water in the lake. These measures include restricting the number of ships transiting the canal and also restricting the number of containers that a ship can carry. This necessitates ships to unload some of their containers on one side of the canal, the containers are transported via the railway, and finally the containers are reloaded once the ship has completed its journey through the canal.
We were lectured at length about the canal as we passed by the locks and Gatun Lake.
We disembarked the train on the Pacific Ocean side of the canal and boarded a bus for the rest of the tour.
We had lunch at a restaurant which overlooked both Panama City and a causeway which was built to protect the canal's entrance. The causeway had meticulously manicured grounds.
It occurred to us that not only were Colon and Panama City located on opposite ends of the canal but they also are on opposite ends of the cleanliness spectrum.
It is with great pleasure that I can announce (Especially for my sister) that it rained in Panama City today.
After lunch, we went to view an 3D IMAX movie on the Panama Canal.
The theater is located directly next an extremely crowded observation area where one can get an up close view of the locks if one doesn't mind being a bit pushy. Since we knew that we were going to be getting a much better view of the locks when we sailed through them tomorrow, we didn't spend much time at the observation area.
We then drove by bus back to our ship in the Port of Colon.
When we got back to the ship, Bob went to dinner and I called our General Contractor, Chris Abbey, to discuss the final disbursements for Thymes2. Bob managed to join in on end of the call
Since they were serving both Foie Gras and Lobster 🦞, We headed back to the World Cafe when we finished our call.Read more