We asked another passenger to take our photo together last night, on the deck near the swimming pool. We had just eaten dinner and were on our way to the evening show. It is windy everywhere we go, I have given up on my hair!

We started our approach to the Panama Canal this morning before 6 AM. We were waiting to go through when we woke up. We got up and went out to an upper deck to watch. Everyone on the ship was up early this morning! It was too dark to take a good photo, although the light got better pretty fast.

There are two sets of chambers, side by side, to allow more ships to get through, we went through the right side (which is the west side). Before 1962, the Canal was only open 12 hours a day, but since then has been open for 24/7 because of the high volume of traffic going through. The captain told us all these details over the intercom this morning. The canal goes from north to south. You don't realize this until you look at a map of Panama, which has the Caribbean Ocean to the north, and the Pacific to the south.

The ship got through the three chambers of the lock in about 2 hours. After the ship moved into the first chamber,the water level had to be raised until it was level with the next chamber. It took about 8 minutes to fill. The water is not being pumped, the chamber is filled using gravity, at 3 million gallons per minute. There are train tracks on each side of both sets of chambers with small trains connected to our ship by metal ropes to guide us through and I suppose to keep us from bumping into the sides of the chamber! We only had about 6 feet of leeway on each side. It was a tight fit! Here is the starboard side of the ship.

Here we are, almost through the lock at almost 8 AM, and heading into Gatun Lake.

We arrived in the lake, Lago Gatun, which is one of the largest manmade lakes in the world, if not the largest. The lake side of the canal is also a dam, so the water level in the lake is 85 feet above sea level. The lake is dotted with lots of little islands, which were mountain tops before the dam was built.

Our ship had to pay $219,000 to go through the lock, which is the full price for a one way trip to the Pacific side, or a trip halfway through and back to the Caribbean side, which is what we did. The cargo ships that go through can pay up to 249,000, depending on how big they are and how much they weigh with their cargo, mostly container ships. The lake in the middle was full of boats when we got through the lock. Here are the ships behind us starting their trip through the lock, two in the east lock chamber and a cruise ship behind us.


Here are several other ships with ours, they seemed to all be hanging out in the lake. Before noon, boats go from north to south, as we did, and after noon, they go south to north, from the Pacific to the Caribbean Ocean. The total trip, once a ship has started the journey through the locks (there are two other locks on the other side of the lake), take 8 to 10 hours, which is quite a savings of time - it would take over two weeks to go down around South America, and because the ocean is so dangerous down there, ships can't get insurance on their cargo anyway. We were told going through the locks costs about 10% of the cost of going all the way around. Container ships that can't fit drop off their cargo in Colon, where we got off the ship for our excursion. The cargo containers are then loaded onto trains which take them to the Pacific side where they are loaded onto ships on that side.

Panama is going to build a third set of locks starting later this year, expected to be completed by 2014, and costing billions of dollars. It will hold much larger ships.

We got off the ship on a tender, and went on a bus to the observation deck of the Canal lock we had just gone through to watch other ships going through, and we heard all kinds of interesting facts about the canal. Here is one of the chambers, with the water rising in the lower chamber.


And here is the chamber doors opening after the water had risen. Notice the water in the higher chamber has gone down at the same time.





We then got in a boat and visited a Panama Indian tribe village. Above, we were heading down to the little dock to get on the boat.

Apparently these Embera Indians live in this village on one of the many islands on the lake, no electricity or anything! We didn't actually believe it.


Then we cruised around the lake looking at birds and monkeys, etc. We didn't actually see too many animals. Apparently in parts of the lake, there are crocodiles and alligators, and lots of poisonous snakes!

Here I am sitting for a moment after the little boat landed.
i
We shopped around the flea market at the Cristobal Pier when we returned and then went back to our stateroom and relaxed for a while.
GO BACK