eighth wonder of the world?

I'm sure you all know that work is in progress to expand the Panama Canal so that bigger ships can pass through.  The project is already forecast to end 18 months late, and the cost has gone way over budget, but nevertheless the project is generally seen within Panama as a wonderful thing to be very proud of.

Last weekend the Panama Canal Expansion Company held an open day at the nearly completed Cocolí lock so that people could go and see the expansion project for themselves - to actually walk about inside one of the new lock chambers and look at the new lock gates - before they start to let the water in.  To get a view that will never again be possible.

Some 45,000 of us queued for hours in the pouring rain to get in, and amazingly the atmosphere remained upbeat despite the rain, even amongst the many Panamanians who came totally unprepared for rain (it rains every day guys, from May to December, haven't you learnt that yet?).  Not only did they allow us in, but they did not even charge any money for the privilege, despite having provided buses to drive us down into the lock, guides to explain what was what, display boards explaining the engineering, portaloos galore, and even free bottles of drinking water and little Panamanian flags to wave around.  & there was a lot of flag-waving as the people posed for photos in this engineering marvel.

I didn't take in that much of the engineering, except to note that the concrete for the first set of lock gates alone would be enough to pave a two-lane highway from one end of the country to the other.  Mostly it was just about looking up and being awed by the sheer scale of the thing.  This is how big those lock walls are: