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From Away.com
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Diving Deep into the Panama Canal (cont.)
Diving into the Past

By Bill Belleville

But the path above is still rich and vibrant. To get here from the old colonial city of Panama Viejo on the Pacific (adjacent to the modern capital of Panama City), my pal Gomez and I followed the ancient route of Camino Real, the path used by the Spanish to haul plundered Indian treasures from the Pacific to Colon and Portobello on the Caribbean. The trip took our jeep through a corridor of rich foliage-wild plantains and towering ceibas, papaya, and stands of bamboo, an understory studded with red-and-yellow heliconia blossoms.

Suddenly, something large and dark seems to rise up before me—it is the rusted cab of the engine!
Protected inside several national parks, this jungle hugs much of the 50-mile-long canal, playing a key ecological role in filtering storm-washed sediment that would otherwise clog the waterway. For the morphos butterfly, the bay-headed tanager, the agouti, and scads of other tropical critters who live here, it also provides a valuable habitat, safe places to live and breed. For naturalists, the Canal's natural watershed jungle is a great primer to this odd country.



En route, we passed a hillside graveyard, Cementarix Frances, simple white crosses burnished yellow with time, a poignant, nearly forgotten footnote to thousands of French canal workers here inside the humid rainforest. At the village of Gamboa, where the mouth of the Chagres River spreads out into Gatun, we put Gomez's boat into the water, dodging fishermen returning with creels of peacock bass, a hard-fighting ocher-colored fish scored with black vertical bars.

From the crumbling concrete dock at Gamboa, we putter westward, past the six-square-mile island of Barro Colorado. Before the manmade deluge, the island was a mountaintop in the jungle. But, when the valley was flooded, creatures great and small scampered to safety here, creating a Noah's Ark of biodiversity. Protected as a biological reserve since 1923, Barro Colorado may be one of the most intensively studied chunks of land in the neotropics. It is home to 1,316 plant species, 381 bird species, and 102 mammal species. Most of the 40 miles of trails winding back through this insular jungle isle are named for scientists who have passed through the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's field station.

In its short, rarefied life, Barro Colorado has become a laboratory to illustrate how isolated environments compress the food chain, favoring some animals over others. As we cruise by, I hear the territorial roar of a troop of howler monkeys from deep inside the jungle, the exhilarated cry of primates living jaguar-free lives.

West of Barro Colorado, we steer well clear of an ocean-going container ship, the Zim Savannah, a jarring vision that moves oafishly through this rainforest waterway like a gigantic floating city. As the ship disappears into the jungle, Gomez drops anchor. Soon, we are outfitted in scuba gear and falling backwards over the gunnels, tumbling down into the underside of Panamanian history.

After a few minutes, I lose track of Gomez in the murk. With no real point of reference in this algae-enriched shadow land, I feel as if I am finning my way through a gigantic Lava Lamp. I realize I am moving deeper now over the gentle slope of an ancient river valley.

Suddenly, something large and dark seems to rise up before me—it is the rusted cab of the engine! As I get closer, I see that is exactly what it is, a hulking coal-fired phantom of iron from another century. Trailing behind it is a line of gondola cars, forever bereft of their loads of rock and soil. I try to evoke the bustle of the work site here—the Gallic chatter, shouts, and laughter. But the only signs of life are the peacock bass silently darting under the train wheels, down where a few half-burnt chunks of coal lay scattered.

I swim in and out of the cab and then, my air dwindliing, begin my slow descent back into the present, leaving the train to dissolve behind me in the haze. As I do, I think how the movement of earth and the damming of rivers have birthed islands from drowned mountaintops, haunting visions of Gallic glory from submerged river valleys. With the new century, the Panamians now run this canal; but that transfer of management will have little affect on the more ethereal drama of Gatun, Barro Colorado, and the ancient trail of Camino Real.

This narrow isthmus was first crossed for exploration, and later exploited for commerce. But its existence today has become something else entirely, a juncture where sunken dreams and nature coalesce in ways its early conquistadors and engineers never could have imagined.
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Bill Belleville, an Away.com contributing editor, is a Florida-based writer specializing in nature and marine issues. He contributes widely to national magazines and has scripted and co-produced two PBS documentaries. River of Lakes: A Journey on Florida's St. Johns River has recently been published by University of Georgia Press.