CRUISE VIGNETTES 08 Golden Odyssey

GOLDEN ODYSSEY
In 1978 or ‘79, while Jimmy Carter was President and was in the process of giving away the Panama Canal, we took a cruise ship vacation that included a trip through the Canal.

Our DC 10 flew from Los Angeles to the southeastern part of the Caribbean Sea, to Oranjestad on the Island of Aruba, near South America. As buses took us from the airport to the “Golden Odyssey,” other buses took people from the ship to the airport for their ride back to Los Angeles on that same airplane. A very efficient operation.

ARUBA, CARTAGENA
We spent a day enjoying Aruba, including several hotels with gambling casinos, (nothing wagered, nothing won or lost.) then sailed to the city of Cartagena, Columbia, South America. Have you noticed that when you buy a car, you suddenly see many just like it, that you never noticed before. The same with Cartagena. I don’t recall ever seeing that city’s name before, but in the year after our visit, I saw that name several times. That’s what I call “Name Catching,” which is a lot more fun than “Name Dropping.”

After 4 or 5 hours of walking and taxi-ing around Cartagena, we sailed to the Panama Canal.

PANAMA CANAL
The next day we spent 8 hours sailing the 51.2 miles through this very interesting waterway. There are three locks called the Gutun Locks on the Atlantic side that take ships up to the huge lake in the middle of Panama. Gutun Lake supplies the water to all the locks, both up and down, and on both sides of the country. No water is pumped. It flows as needed, downhill from the lake, through the locks, to this ocean or that. There is one Pedro Miguel Lock, then a short distance later, the two Miraflores Locks take the ship down on the Pacific Ocean side.

These three locks on each side of the country, lift the ships 82 feet, up to the lake, then down at the other end. The locks are 110 feet wide, and 1,000 feet long, so shipbuilders are very careful to build ships that fit, if they expect to go through the Canal.

If you look carefully at a map, you will see the “Eastern” entrance to the Canal is slightly west of the “Western” end of the Canal. That is, we sailed from west to east to get from the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean! Well, more accurately, we sailed in a south-southeasterly direction.

This was a very fun day on the ship, we really enjoyed this trip. (I have a favorite Canal story that I am not allowed to tell, something about Emmy winning the prize for best performance in the middle of the Panama Canal.) Late that afternoon and evening we visited Panama City, not the most beautiful place we have ever seen. We felt uncomfortable just walking around this city.