Panama Canal

Our first full day in Panama, Clark was anxious to visit the canal as soon as possible so after the kids and I got through some morning "school", we headed out. I don't have too many pictures of our experience. I think this is something a person needs to do in real time to get the real impact. The rest of our time was spent low key because we were busy soaking in being back in a semblance of "normal" civilization after two weeks in more remote beach regions. The kids also had some school to catch up on. Clark wandered the neighborhood a bit to find the best places for groceries and food in general. So far, we weren't impressed with Panamanian food compared to Costa Rica.

A cathedral in our neighborhood

A local green space

Embassy

View of the canal. This is the smaller locks. We watched an informative IMAX movie before going to see the ships pass through. You can only view ships in the morning around 9 am and in the afternoon around 2pm. From the movie I learned that Panama constructed a newer, larger lock to handle the massive more modern ships. It was extremely educational!

Looking down the lock.

While we waited for the movie we read the bit of museum information of the history and snapped this selfie.

The first ship we saw come through. This one was already in the lock when we arrived after the movie ended.

The next round started with these two sailboats, one of which was flying Australian flags. The people were clearly excited for their unique opportunity. It wasn't clear to us how boats get in the que or register for passage. There are some interesting facts about the least amount paid to pass through the canal, maybe a single guy swimming through for a swimming record (36 cents) and then the most paid for a ship passing through, I think around 4 million dollars by a Japanese company in order to "skip the line". The typical toll is "based on a vessels size, type, and cargo".

This ship came in to share the lock with the sailboats.

German perhaps? Swiss, dutch?

Here you can see the mast lines of the sailboats still visible above the ground level and the walls of the lock behind the masts as the water level decreased.

Looking left in the picture, the masts of the sailboats are visible as they pass down the lock and through the now open gate.