Yes, if you want to go "from sea to shining sea," you are probably going to cruise the canal in the

The Panama luxury car rentals houston texas Canal is a 48-mile connection between the Atlantic Ocean (via the Caribbean Sea) to the Pacific Ocean that cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. There are locks at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake (85 feet above sea-level), a man-made body of water created to reduce the amount of work required to drive water through locks that allow those ships to be raised up and then lowered into the ocean waters. Our ship cruised into a lock, the door was closed behind, the water gates were opened and the lock filled with water until the ship was 42-feet higher (21.5 in two more cases), then the door in front of the ship opened and it sailed into the next lock, and so on.
France began work on the canal in 1881 after it completed the building of the Suez Canal in Egypt. The French wanted to dig a sea-level canal, but had to stop because of engineering problems and high mortality due to disease. The United States later took over the project and took a decade to complete the canal in 1914, enabling ships to avoid the lengthy Cape Horn route around the southernmost tip of South America. How much time does it save versus the old way of sailing from New York City to Los Angeles? More than two weeks!
There are two types of Panama Canal cruises, which interestingly, if you go the way we went (from Atlantic to Pacific), you sail from the northwest to the southeast because of the way the isthmus between North and South America turns and twists. The vast majority of the cruises start in either Ft. Lauderdale or Miami, Florida luxury car rentals houston texas and sail through the Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side to Gatun Lake, then turn around and go back out the way they came in and go back from whence luxury car rentals houston texas they started. Such cruises never pass through the Culebra Cut, the actual part of the canal that was dug, or the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores Locks on the Pacific side; nor do they go under The Bridge of the Americas, which symbolically links North America with South America, or past Panama City on the southern shore of the canal where it empties into the Pacific Ocean. All of which is why I highly recommend you cruise the Panama Canal all the way through, and this requires sailing up or down the west coast of Mexico, depending on whether you are going from Atlantic to Pacific or vice versa.
Yes, if you want to go “from sea to shining sea,” you are probably luxury car rentals houston texas going to cruise the canal in the spring or the fall. Why? Because the vast majority of cruises through the Panama Canal that go “all the way,” so to speak, are what are called “repositioning cruises.” Repositioning cruises result when a ship has been following luxury car rentals houston texas a particular itinerary in one part of the world and is sailing to another part of the world for a completely different itinerary.
Here’s how it works. Alaska is very popular. Almost every cruise line in the world sends ships to Alaska for the summer, luxury car rentals houston texas but that season only lasts from May through September for those companies. Almost everyone also loves to cruise in the Caribbean Southern Caribbean, Eastern Caribbean, Western Caribbean, the cruise lines are all there from October through luxury car rentals houston texas April. Really hot places are not nearly as popular in July as they are in January. How convenient: those two areas of the world have popular seasons for us cruisers that dovetail wonderfully. You can do one, and when it’s done, you do the other. But this means the ships have to reposition themselves from the one to the other; hence, the “repositioning cruise.” All cruise lines plan them for anywhere from four to seven days down the west coast from Vancouver, B.C. or Seattle to Los Angeles in late September or early October, and going up the coast in late April or early May. Then there are cruises from Los Angeles to Florida (or vice versa depending on whether it’s spring or fall). Some of them even go all the way to or from New York City, such as the one we just completed with 45 of our close personal friends.
Ah, but wait, there’s more! The really great news is these repositioning cruises are almost always priced luxury car rentals houston texas at really low rates. You’d be lucky to find a seven-day Alaska cruise in July for under a thousand dollars, but our 17-day cruise going all the way from New York City to Los Angeles had prices starting at $999 per person. $59 a day. $118 per couple. You cannot luxury car rentals houston texas stay at the Salt Lake City Motel 6 and eat at McDonalds for that. And believe me, the food on the cruise ship is way better and offers far more choices; plus, cruises offer lots of choices for nightly entertainment.
Here’s my next recommendation. Get a balcony cabin a stateroom with a floor to ceiling sliding glass door with a veranda. You’ll find two chairs and a small table perfect luxury car rentals houston texas for the room service breakfast we were offered whilst we enjoyed the trip into the canal. Our balcony cost us a few hundred dollars more apiece, but we loved having luxury car rentals houston texas a constant view of the sea, as well as being able to view our ports of call as we sailed in and out.
Traversing the Panama Canal is a 12-hour proposition starting early in the morning. We were out there before dawn as the ships lined up to go through. We were second. Breakfast of bacon, sausage, eggs and toast and other goodies was served at 6:00. We actually went to one of the dining rooms with wall to wall windows for lunch. We sailed past Panama City shortly after 5:00. Everything in between boggled the mind as we comprehended what a tremendous feat was accomplished over a hundred years ago.