Day 7 – January 11, 2015

Today we went through the Panama Canal. We went up on the front of the deck at 6 AM to watch us go through the first locks. We got to see a very beautiful sunrise. You will see this in the pictures.

This is a very technical operations that depends on two men in a row boat. They row out to your boat to hand you the lines. It has been that way for 100 years. The also have these small train cars, called mules, that have lines attached to the ship to keep it straight in the lock. The canal is 80 Kilometers long and connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It opened in the spring of 1914 and to date over a million ships have passed through the locks. There are two lanes in the canal each with its own set of locks. The ships are raised 26 meters from sea level to the level of Gatun Lake (3^rd largest man made lake) and then back 26 meters to the ocean on the other side. Some cruise ships only go to Lake Gatun and turn around and go back the way they came. The water used to raise and lower the vessels in each set of locks is obtained from Gatun Lake by gravity and poured into the locks through a main culvert system that extends under the locks chambers from the sidewalls and the center wall.

In these pictures you will see a building that seems out of place. It is the prison where Noriega is now incarcerated for the rest of his life. It is right along the passage way. There are some pictures of what look like little tanks, those are the mules that are keeping the boat straight. The cruise boat in the locks in the picture is not us, but a different cruise ship. It was a great day. Now we are off to Ecuador and see where they make Panama hats (believe it or not).