Panama Transit

Transit is the bread and butter of the small state of Panama and the canal its main source of income.  Service accounts for 80% of Panama’s GDP.  The canal and the ports of Colon and Panama City are the backbone of the economy.  Transit also takes place in the air!  The state carrier, Copa Airlines is certainly the most profitable and reliable Latin American airline (low bar!). Tocumen airport is the biggest international hub of the subcontinent, it connects Latin American and Caribbean countries to the main cities of North America.  I flew Copa to New York City as the airlines offers a free stop-over in Panama City. 

Panama is also a busy land transit point between the miserable South and the bountiful United States of America.  In 2022, an estimated 250,000 illegal migrants crossed Panama to reach the US border.  Most Panamanians try to ignore the infamous and deadly Darién Gap which straddles Colombian and Panama, the route taken by these desperate migrants.  The treacherous gap gives the country a bad name. 

Since I visited the Suez Canal in 1964, canals have fascinated me.  In addition to their economic and social benefits, canals unite people and are the unbroken evidence of mankind’s technological creativity and resilience.  Nowadays, the Corinth canal, once a Greek white elephant, is an enthralling tourism attraction.  The technological achievement of the Canal du Midi in the south-West of France still keeps modern folk in wonder.  A visit to the Panama Canal had been on my geologist’s bucket list for a long time.

At the outset, the Bonaparte connection between the Suez and Panama Canals intrigued me.  During his ill-fated but daring Egyptian expedition, Napoleon Bonaparte sent engineers to locate the ancient Suez Canal dating back from the Pharaohs’ period.  The canal reportedly linked the Nile to the Red Sea.  Unfortunately, erroneous topographic measurements concluded that the Red Sea’s level was higher than that of the Mediterranean Sea requiring the excavation of a set of locks.  In 1798, it was a very challenging undertaking which meant the project was unfeasible.  Finally, Bonaparte’s nephew, French emperor Napoleon III entrusted Ferdinand de Lesseps with the building of the modern Suez Canal which was completed in 1869

The lack of lock technology doomed Bonaparte’s canal dream.  In Panama, hard rocks and the Aedes Aegypty mosquito doomed the ambitions of another scion of the Bonaparte family.  Enter engineer Lucien Bonaparte-Wyse, Napoleon’s great nephew.  In 1881, he secured land rights to build a canal and exploit it.  However, after seventeen years of hardship, financial scandals, bankruptcy and 20 000 dead workers, the French company was compelled to sell its concession to the American government.  Having defeated both hard rocks and Aedes, the Americans opened the canal in 1914.  In December 1999, the Americans withdrew and the Canal was finally returned to Panamanian sovereignty.  

The Panama isthmus, through its rivers and lakes network has been used since the beginning of the Spanish conquest to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  A 76 km long railroad was built in the mid-1800s.  It was a commercial success, fares were paid in gold and during the first ten years of operation, some $700 million in gold was transported without a single robbery.  The canal is about 80kms long and the transit takes 8 to 10 hours from one ocean to the other.  I joined the partial transit tour, a one-way cruise which sailed from Gamboa to Panama City (about 25 km) through the narrow Gaillard cut (which defeated the French engineers) and three sets of locks.  We spent 4 hours in company of big ships.  We shared the lock with a huge grain cargo ship and another tourist boat.  In Miraflores, we passed the new lock extension which allows for the transit of mega container ships.  I suppose that tourist boats like our Pacific Queen are a bit of a nuisance for the Canal authority which aims at maximizing profit and expending business.  Tolls are expensive, complex and constantly changing; they may range from US$ 2000 for a small yacht to over a million for the large containers.

                                                        Miraflores: The three locks with the extension in the background

About 100 km wide, the Darién Gap is a lawless mountainous and swampy jungle, crossed by several rivers and without roads.  On foot, it can be crossed in ten days.  It is infested with poisonous snakes, mosquitoes, spiders, wild animals and above all thieves.  The gap is the fiefdom of human traffickers who ransom and ransack the migrants every step of the way.  Some 58,000 migrants mostly from Haiti, Venezuela and Ecuador are reported to have made the trek during the first two months of 2023, a sharp increase over the previous year.  Some 50 were found dead along the way.  Upon their arrival, the exhausted migrants are swiftly bused to the next border that with Costa Rica. 

Bizarrely, in 1696, the Darién Isthmus attracted 2500 settlers from Scotland.  They intended to establish a trading post at the doorstep of the Spanish colonies.  It ended in disaster as those who had not succumbed to disease and starvation were murdered by the Spaniards.  The endeavor was doomed from the start, the settlers had selected a poor choice of goods to trade: there were few takers for wigs, clay pipes, woolen clothe, shoes and bibles.  The mysterious wilderness of the Darién gap upholds its heart of darkness reputation, known as the “curse of the Darién.

Copa Airlines offers a much more comfortable way to transit to the USA.  However, the airline has also been a victim of the curse of the Darién.  In 1992, a Boeing 737 crashed in the jungle; after identifying the crash site, it took more than 12 hours to reach the wreck.  47 people died in the disaster.  Founded in 1947, It was the airline’s only fatal accident.  Ideally located between Latin America and the USA, the fair weather Tocumen airport hub is busy and efficient.  Copa has become one of the most cost-efficient airlines of the continent and its operating profits are the envy of its peers.  Copa has become a niche airline; it fills up its planes by offering cheaper fares to US cities.

My business class fare was US$ 2000 less than that of American Airlines, the cheapest airline among the big three (United and Delta).  However, you get what you pay for.  I selected day flights to read and did not miss lie-flat-bed seats.  Food and drinks are basic: Cava instead of French champagne.  Otherwise, service was friendly, planes were clean, the hub was efficient and my four flights were on-time.  My suitcase was neither damaged nor lost.  Like many Brazilians, I regard Copa as a low-cost alternative to fly to the USA.  A money-conscious transit!