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Beyond Europe trip report- Panama Canal

Transiting the Panama Canal has been on my “I’d love to do list” for quite awhile. This week I was able to do the transit on the Coral Princess through the old locks. We went from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the entire transit took about 12 hours.

Going through locks was definitely the highlight and the ship went through 3 locks to raise 88 feet in elevation to the Gatun Lake. Hours later, three locks lowered us down to sea level again.

The scenery was beautiful and the history behind the canal is amazing. Very excited to see another location on my “list”.

Posted by
8131 posts

Panama was a tremendous experience for me as well, just before Covid struck.
I was lucky enough to get a day of blue skies and barely any insects around. For me I was up from when we cast off from Colon at 2am, to join the queue out in the Bay until we cleared Panama City just before 6pm.
But as I had 9 days Trans Pacific to Nuku Hiva after exiting the Canal there was plenty of time to catch up on sleep.

Panama completed the big three for me- Suez (southbound, on New Years Day one year on a French flagged container ship), Panama and the Kiel Canal.

Kiel is the hardest to get because of height restrictions at the various bridges.

I think Panama was actually better on a cruise ship than on the break bulker I was originally meant to transit on (before that company went bankrupt). Higher up and having 1,000 other passengers and a commentary made it more of an occasion than with 11 others as originally planned.

Posted by
1022 posts

That has been one of our traveling highlights except for getting up at 4:00 AM as that was our scheduled time to start entering the first lock.

Posted by
2329 posts

Thank you Carol Now Retired

Love your trip report.

As you know, I always sail Norwegian and have been looking at the Panama Canal for the future (among a whole lot of others)

But I have also looked at Plum Cruses or whatever site you recommended. I know there is a Plum in there.

You inspire me.

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