Panama Canal Research Paper

From David, the two of us made the 210 mile flight to Panama City, where we spent the remainder of that day and all of the next. Of course, we visited the Canal. When it opened in 1914, the Panama Canal’s locks were one of the most impressive engineering feats ever undertaken. Ships travel through the canal between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Once in the first of the locks, ships are raised a total of 85 feet in three steps through a series of locks on their way up to Lake Gatun. After crossing the lake, they’re lowered in three steps on their way back down to sea level. This entire procedure is accomplished over the course of just 1.9 miles.
The locks themselves fascinated me; however, more importantly, this portion of our …show more content…
However, I came to view it as risk avoidance since it probably reflected an underlying feeling of fear. In many countries where governmental harshness exists, the people aren’t quite free. Employees, bureaucrats especially, are always quick to come back with a “No.” Anything out of the ordinary triggers a forceful “No” as a default answer. They don’t want to get in trouble by saying “yes” only to find out later that they weren’t supposed to do something and are in big trouble. Their world isn’t as cut and dried as ours is in the United States. In their world, governments change, officials move in and out of power, and rules change. People have adjusted to these conditions as it’s the way of life they’ve always known. Accordingly, they have a continuous underlying concern and reserve, maybe even some level of paranoia.
During our time in Panama City, I felt like I was back in the United States. Obviously, there’d been extensive American influence and involvement starting with the construction of the Canal, which began in 1903 and continued until it was given back to the Panamanian government in 1999. Panama City itself was a cosmopolitan urban area filled with numerous attractive women of various ethnicities. The hotels were part of familiar chains and provided all the amenities you would find in one of their hotels in the United …show more content…
Painted as though they were props for a psychedelic movie, they were known as diablos rojos (red devils). Beginning life as school buses in the United States, they were later purchased secondhand and shipped to Panama. The exteriors of the buses became canvases for some of the most extreme, colorful, hallucinogenic art imaginable. Each one was unique and the designs were limited only by the artist’s creativity. To complete the sensory experience, the buses all had large speakers which blasted calorie burning dance music at earthquake producing volumes. After watching those buses bullying their way through the heavy city traffic, I decided the music blared at ear-splitting levels to drown out the sounds of car horns honking in protest. I marveled that the passengers weren’t screaming in fear. Unfortunately, the Panamanian government recently replaced the red devils with non-psychedelic, modern, up-to-date buses; soulless, modern, air-conditioned vehicles without artwork. The transition was understandable considering the diablos rojos weren’t really built to fit adult sized bodies and weren’t well maintained. As a result of bad driving combined with numerous accidents and poor maintenance, few were still on the road when we were in Panama. And the ones that were running engulfed their surroundings with clouds of diesel fumes. Nevertheless, they were a reflection of a unique culture

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