We flew out of EM Airport on Friday 5th
March, arriving in Acapulco, via a re-fuelling stop at Sanford in
Orlando (Florida) 14 hours later. Our awaiting coach then
transported us through the enormous, but fascinating city of Acapulco
to this year's cruise ship, P&O's Oceana. The first
port of call was San Juan Del Sur in Nicaragua, then Puntarenas
in Costa Rica and finally Balboa at the Pacific end of the Panama
Canal. The highlight of the cruise started early the following
day (Friday 12th March). It was
barely daylight when the pilot boarded, shortly afterwards we sailed
under the Bridge of Americas and into the first chamber of the lock
at Miraflores. We cleared the second chamber and made way into
the third and final climb at Pedro Miguel. This was followed
by a pleasant days cruising on Gatun Lake through the mountainous
Panamanian jungle.
Gatun Lake was formed by damming
Chagres River to collect water to feed the locks and much is required.
Each lock is 110 feet wide by 1,000 feet long and takes 8
minutes for 55 million gallons of water to fill their chambers.
The full transit of each ship through the canal uses 110 million
gallons of fresh water from the lake.
Clearing Panama
Canal, we headed for our first Caribbean port, Curaçao, then
on to Antigua, St Lucia, St Vincent and finally Barbados for our
flight home.
Cruise 2010
(2) This was the evening view of Acapulco from our cabin on Oceana
Seven miles up over Greenland
(3) Overlooking Acapulco bay, this pic was taken by our taxi driver
(4) Acapulco bay
(5) San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua
(6) Puerto Caldera in Costa Rica
(7) It's extremely misty and humid but you can just
make out Panama City on the sky line
(8) A ship enters Miraflores lock on her night time transit
(9) We make an early start in the opposite direction. The pilot
boarded at 05:38, we passed under the Bridge Of Americas at 07:00
and entered the first chamber at Miraflores shortly afterwards.
(10) The ships lines are collected by the men in the rowing boat
and taken to the side
(11) They are then connected to the mechanical mule and
drawn tight to guide the ship through the canal.
(12) One set of lock gates at Miraflores
(13) Drill boats. They drill into the canal bed and the bores are
filled with an explosive which is detonated. When the rubble has
been cleared the water capacity of the canal is increased.
(14) These are spillways, to unload excess water back into the
River Chagres during the rainy season.
(15) The water from the spillways drives the hydro electric
power station
(16) The local bus driver gives us a blast from his horn as he passes
(17) The waterfront at Curaçao
(18) A night pic of Oceana in Curaçao
(19) Curaçao at night
(20) St Lucia