The Panama Canal with Princess Cruises

Article by guest author Peter Brooker

When you dock in the Panama cruise port, Port Fuerte Amador you'll get heckled by vendors promising you tours of the old and the historic parts of Panama City. There is nothing going on in the new town so just get an Uber ride to the Historic Quarter.

Leave your fancy watches on the ship, because we felt very uneasy walking through parts of the old quarter. Especially on the way up to the infamous Coca Cola Cafe. This is a historic building, protected by UNESCO and has boasted patrons such as Pierce Brosnan when he filmed The Tailor From Panama and Daniel Craig when he filmed Quantum of Solace. (No photos of this exist).

Most of the filming locations for Quantum of Solace happened in Colon on the other side of Panama, which is very rundown and I'm told even more dangerous, so we didn't venture out there. Instead I poked my head into the Ministry of Culture down by France Plaza, which doubled for the Andrean Hotel where Bond took Strawberry Fields for an upgrade.

Afterwards, we went in search of a Panama Hat, and Google pointed us to the best Panama Hat shop in town. This didn't disappoint and Anastasia and I picked up one each. We paid roughly 120 and 220 respectively but we got a free travelling case that fits both hats, and you can pay silly money for other hats in the VIP room should you prefer.

Not far from the shop is the Panama Canal Museum which is £15 per entry ticket. (Come on London, let's start charging foreigners to use the museums, yeah?) Inside the Museum there is more emphasis in the political divisions surrounding the canal, as opposed to the construction of the canal itself. Oddly I took a video of Jimmy Carter signing away the Canal to the Panamanian government, when I got back to the ship I heard he passed away.

Lastly we got a steak from XXX and got an Uber ride to the Gehry Building, a colourful asymmetrical building that looks like discarded post-it notes. It's a Biomuseo, a museum focused on the natural history of Panama, whose isthmus was formed very recently in geologic time, with major impact on the ecology of the Western Hemisphere.

Inside are a couple of laboratories, a Lepidoptera tent, but really we just wanted to see the sloths like everyone else. Luckily we caught one sheltering from the rain in a nook just overlooking the causeway.

GOING THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL

It's bizarre to me that Americans prefer to slug in hot tubs on cruise ships than see the marvel of modern engineering. The creation of the Panama Canal is perhaps one of the biggest achievements of mankind, outside of the moon landing.

The French had a go originally at digging the canal, but they ran out of funds and had no answer for the diseases at the time that were wiping out the workforce. Malaria, Yellow Fever etc, they just had no answer to it. When the Americans came in and took over the project, it wasn't without its fair share of obstacles. Mainly landslides. But they figured out that it was mosquitos that were carrying malaria that was killing the workers, so they embarked on huge fumigation exercises to try and mitigate that.

If you're lucky, your cruise ship will go through the old Panama Locks. The old locks have the romance, the new locks opened in 2016 allow the bigger Panamax monstrosities through.

Can you get off the boat?

Unsure if other boats offer this, but on Princess Cruises you're not getting off the boat going through the locks. The locks and lakes are a combined 50 miles and it will take the best part of 8-10 hours to get through to the Red Sea/ Caribbean side.

At the time of writing this, early Jan 2025, people may have become more aware of the Panama Canal because of the noise Donald Trump is making about taking it back. Why this might be seen as a contentious issue is that the Americans built it, as a present to the world. They made no profit on it, with ships being able to trade at cost going through the canal. If you think that 300 million tonnes of goods pass through that canal every year.

Since the Panamanians have taken over the lease in the late 70s, they now charge cruise ships close to $500,000 to simply pass through the canal once. Can you imagine the amount of money that Panama is making?

From an American stand point, I can understand the chagrin, why should they be paying a penny to pass through the canal they built? Or at the very least, be paying the same as other countries, namely China that have never contributed a penny to the cause?

Thoughts. Willing to be challenged. Next stop, Cartagena.