Panama Canal ~ Machu Picchu
Having been through the Panama Canal’s eastern three locks from the Atlantic to Gatun Lake in 1992, we were looking forward to transiting the entire canal. This cruise also offered us new places: Honduras, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru. We actually began the cruise from Fort Lauderdale, FL, then visited Key West, FL, and then sailed to Central and South America. As we remembered Key West in 1991, it had changed from a charming resort town to an overly crowded tourist stop. Honduras was unmemorable. The Costa Rica rain forest lacked animals except for a sloth seen at roadside outside the park. Ecuador was somewhat interesting, but Peru was fascinating. Of course, the Panama Canal was the main attraction and it had fulfilled our expectations. Our post-cruise excursion to Cusco, Peru, and Machu Picchu was fabulous. Our journey was December 27, 2004 ~ January 10, 2005.
The Radisson (now Regent) Seven Seas Mariner was the finest ship that we experienced. The 700-passenger ship offered the amenities and luxury of the mega ships without either the large crowds or stuffy formalities. The food and service was five-star quality. All cabins were suites. Our very spacious cabin was complete with walk-in closet and adequate bath. Also our cabin at the rear of ship had a large balcony and was complete with a butler.
Panama Canal
The Panama Canal, the bridge between two continents, is the greatest shortcut in the world. When it was finally finished in 1914, the 51-mile waterway cut off over 7,900 miles of the distance between New York and San Francisco, and changed the face of the industrialized world. This Canal is not the longest, the widest, the deepest, or the oldest canal in the world, but it is the only canal to connect two oceans, and still today is the greatest man-made waterway in the world.
The Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, who played a large role in building the Suez Canal in 1869, was sold on his idea to repeat a sea-level canal that was doomed to fail from the beginning. Disease, death, and rough terrain slowed down the construction of the canal. Mosquitoes, carrier of yellow fever and malaria, were responsible for many deaths. Besides poor leadership by De Lesseps and poor working conditions, the French did not have the correct equipment and tools for this rocky ground of the formerly volcanic area. Ultimately, De Lesseps company went bankrupt.
The U.S. government started to show interest in the Panama Canal in 1887. Before any work could begin, the most deadly of the problems on the isthmus had to be overcome – disease. An American doctor William Gorgas and his troops started to cover all standing or slow-moving bodies of water with a combination of oil and insecticide to kill off any mosquitoes. Gorgas also kept all infected persons in a wire-screen tent that stopped all mosquitoes from spreading the diseases. The project to wipe out the malaria-carrying mosquito was successful, and work proceeded without the hazard of disease that doomed the French venture. Work on the canal was finally continued from where De Lesseps crew stopped (76 million cubic yards of dirt had already been dug). Construction began at both ends of the projected canal. Now that the U.S. started construction, Americans wanted to make sure that the canal would be finished. One fear was the canal attempt fail due to overspending and no funding. So the U.S. Congress set up a commission where the chief engineer's requests would be confirmed through the commission.
During the U.S. construction there were three chief engineers who made a major impact on the canal. The first was civil engineer John F. Wallace, who had to fix the problems of the French before construction could begin. New railroad tracks needed to be laid due to the old ones being too narrow for American railroad cars. Long delays in equipment arrivals finally forced a dissatisfied Wallace to eventually resign. The second canal civilian chief engineer John Stevens also didn’t last long because of government bureaucracy. Accepting Stevens' resignation, President Teddy Roosevelt appointed Army Lieutenant George Washington Goethals. The most organized of the three chief engineers, Goethals was unable to resign from the canal because he was under military orders. Unlike his predecessors, Goethals was used to working within the government rules. Also part of Goethals’ success was the fact that he took time out of his schedule to listen to the needs of the workers. The canal was completed in August of 1914 under the budget by over twenty-three million dollars.
Some other interesting facts about the canal are:
1. There are 12 locks and 12 chambers.
2. Over 40,000 tons of dynamite was used for blasting through the mountains in the continental divide.
3. There is a difference in the heights of the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific oceans by six inches.
4. Over 4.4 million cubic yards of concrete were used to build the 12 chambers locks.
5. The doors that are on the lock have the amazing ability to float despite their massive weight.
6. Each lock holds 8,800,000 cubic feet of water.
7. It takes an average of 8-10 hours for a ship to travel through the canal. Quite a time savings when you consider that it would take two to three weeks to go around South America!
8. For a single ship, 52 million gallons of water are let into the sea each lockage.
9. Vessels from 70 different countries use the canal, but the U.S. is the biggest user.
10. During the construction, 100 massive steam shovels dug up the earth. Each scoop of dirt from these huge machines could weigh as much as 10 tons.
11. About 239 million cubic yards of Earth was moved in total.
Cusco
We experienced two nights in the hallowed colonial San Antonio Abad seminary, built more than 300 years ago and which, today, is the Hotel Monasterio. While providing us with the comforts and quality of a modern luxury hotel, it is the only museum hotel where you can experience a unique encounter with Cusco's Inca and Spanish traditions.
Machu Picchu
The train journey via the Hiram Bingham Train from Cusco to Machu Picchu was an enjoyable trip through the Andes. The scenery was simply spectacular. The 3 1/4 hour journey took us through a changing landscape. First there was a steep climb out of Cusco into the surrounding hillside, by means of a series of switchback turns known locally as "the zig zag". Soon the train stopped at the beautiful village of Poroy, and then descended into the Sacred Valley, passing by lush, green fields and colorful villages in the foothills of the Andes. From here on, there were wonderful vistas of the mountains and, deep in its dramatic canyon, the beautiful Urubamba River running through the Sacred Valley. We enjoyed a newly enhanced food-and-drink service with entertainment.
Our train, the Hiram Bingham, came to rest at near the river bank. Buses took us from and to the lower train over an unpaved switchback road to a higher entrance to Machu Picchu.
Pre-Colombian cultivation terraces once grew potatoes and maize. Potatoes originated in the Andes Mountains of Peru and Bolivia and have been cultivated for at least 2,400 years.
Machu Picchu is a city located high in the Andes Mountains in modern Peru. It lies 43 miles northwest of Cuzco at the top of a ridge, hiding it from the Urabamba gorge below. The ridge is between a block of highland and the massive Huaynac Picchu, around which the Urubamba River takes a sharp bend. The surrounding area is covered in dense bush, some of it covering Pre-Colombian cultivation terraces.
Machu Picchu (which means "manly peak") was most likely a royal estate and religious retreat. It was built between 1460 and 1470 AD by Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, an Incan ruler. The city has an altitude of 8,000 feet, and is high above the Urubamba River canyon cloud forest, so it likely did not have any administrative, military or commercial use. After Pachacuti’s death, Machu Picchu became the property of his allus, or kinship group, which was responsible for its maintenance, administration, and any new construction.
Machu Picchu is comprised of approximately 200 buildings, most being residences, although there are temples, storage structures and other public buildings. It has polygonal masonry, characteristic of the late Inca period.
About 1,200 people lived in and around Machu Picchu, most of them women, children, and priests. The buildings are thought to have been planned and built under the supervision of professional Inca architects. Most of the structures are built of granite blocks cut with bronze or stone tools, and smoothed with sand. The blocks fit together perfectly without mortar, although none of the blocks are the same size and have many faces; some have as many as 30 corners. The joints are so tight that even the thinnest of knife blades can't be forced between the stones.
Another unique thing about Machu Picchu is the integration of the architecture into the landscape. Existing stone formations were used in the construction of structures, sculptures are carved into the rock, water flows through cisterns and stone channels, and temples hang on steep precipices. The houses had steep thatched roofs and trapezoidal doors; windows were unusual. Some of the houses were two stories tall; the second story was probably reached by ladder, which likely was made of rope since there weren’t many trees at Machu Picchu’s altitude. The houses, in groups of up to ten gathered around a communal courtyard, or aligned on narrow terraces, were connected by narrow alleys. At the center were large open squares; livestock enclosures and terraces for growing maize stretched around the edge of the city.
The Incas planted crops such as potatoes and maize at Machu Picchu. To get the highest yield possible, they used advanced terracing and irrigation methods to reduce erosion and increase the area available for cultivation. However, it probably did not produce a large enough surplus to export agricultural products to Cuzco, the Incan capital.
One of the most important things found at Machu Picchu is the intihuatana, which is a column of stone rising from a block of stone the size of a grand piano. Intihuatana literally means “for tying the sun", although it is usually translated as "hitching post of the sun". As the winter solstice approached, when the sun seemed to disappear more each day, a priest would hold a ceremony to tie the sun to the stone to prevent the sun from disappearing altogether. The other intihuatanas were destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors, but because the Spanish never found Machu Picchu, it remained intact. Mummies have also been found there; most of the mummies were women.
Few people outside the Inca’s closest retainers were actually aware of Machu Picchu’s existence. Before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, the smallpox spread ahead of them. Fifty percent of the population had been killed by the disease by 1527. The government began to fail, part of the empire seceded and it fell into civil war. So by the time Pizarro, the Inca’s conquerer, arrived in Cuzco in 1532, Machu Picchu was already forgotten.
Machu Picchu was rediscovered in 1911 by Hiram Bingham, a professor from Yale. Bingham was searching for Vilcabamba, which was the undiscovered last stronghold of the Incan empire. When he stumbled upon Machu Picchu, he thought he had found it, although now most scholars believe that Machu Picchu is not Vilcabamba. Machu Picchu was never completely forgotten, as a few people still lived in the area, where they were "free from undesirable visitors, officials looking for army ‘volunteers’ or collecting taxes", as they told Bingham.
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