May sound a little borish but today i went to the panama canal and checked out the locks.They were pretty crazy and an amazing idea let alone feat to build it considering they are nearly 100 years old.
The basic jist of it is that it conects the pacific ocean to the Atlantic.Allowing container ships (among all other boats) to cross from places like Japan,China,Korea,Oz and New Zealand to the other side of the world Africa,Europe and the eastern side of the States(where most us goods are shipped to) without going all the extra and dangerous way around the cape of South America.
The US are the major users of the canal with 69% of the traffic.These guys built it and owned it for the most of time but on new years eve 2000 it was completely handed over to Panama,the rightfull owners.I think they gave it up as it is now at its maximum use with more demand and is near the end of its teather,apparently at the moment ships have to book up to a year in advance.Water shortage is a huge concern as an astonishing 52 million gallons of fresh water is lost into the ocean for each ship.
Last year 14,000 ships passed through here and they pay on weight and for the average big container ship its about $70,000 and apparently it has to be paid in cash.Last year they made $847 million dollars on the tollgates,not bad for the country's economy.I can´t imagine why the yanks would give that up.
At one point of the canal there is a 14km long cut through a mountain,half of it is manmade and the other half natural waterways,probably deepened for the ships.Contstruction was a huge mission with crazy landslides frequenly occurring and also yellow fever and malaria killed 20,000 workers.Crazy shit for thirty years of construction spanning from 1880 to 1914 when it opened.
So there are three sets of locks and they change the water level along the way so ships gofrom sea level,up then back again.The locks are perfectly wide enough for the ships.Most ships in the world are built according to these widths just so they can get through here,there is two feet at either side for clearance.The locks i saw were in three stages and the ship had to drop 27 meters,thats a big distance in water and especially for a small floating city.But the water is just let out like i was hoping,it is pumped underground by what i can only imaging to be the biggest water valve pumps ever.The scale of this operatoin is mindblowing.
Anyway after all those amazing facts and mind blowing history i watched a few ships go throuh and do their thing,took about 45 mins per ship,but after that it was pretty damn boring.But still it took nothing away from the feat accomplished here.Check it out on the web if your even a little interested.
