Up early and we are queued for the Panama Canal, though we are not in it yet. Therefore, we went up to the Horizon Court for breakfast. It is very crowded because apparently there are a large number of people who want to sit inside the restaurant and view going through the canal from that vantage point. We finally found a place to sit and eat. After that we went out and walked around the decks until we could find a place on deck 15 that didn’t have glass in front of us. Unfortunately that was mostly near the back of the ship and it was getting hotter by the minute. We roamed around for a few hours and then decided we had the best view with shade, etc. from our balcony on the port side. Going through the Miraflores and Pedro Miguel Locks we used the eastern lock so we had great views of the western set of locks right beside us. It’s most interesting to watch the ships or boats along side since you get to see very well how the locks operate. We also had many views of the canal expansion from our balcony. The nice part was we could go in and cool off for a few minutes, get ice water and the entire process was shown on the cabin TV as well, complete with announcements so you really didn’t miss anything if you came in for a few minutes. I really didn’t look at the clock but I think the rain began about noon. Even with that it worked well for us as our balcony is half covered and we were able to take plenty of photos without getting the camera wet. Passing through the Culebra Cut we waited for him to announce the crossing of the Continental Divide. I was greatly disappointed when after the fact he said he forgot to announce that so of course we missed it. Our time in Gatun Lake seemed very short and before we knew it we had arrived at the Gatun Locks. Our journey via the canal was almost to an end and it seemed to pass so quickly. The rain is really coming down now! It was interesting to see a large tanker passing in the western lock just before we passed in the eastern lock we and it ended up side by side most of the time. We went through to the end with them and near the end there was a grinning young man who came out with a sign that said “stay far away 140,000 tons of liquid propane” – amazing because I keep wondering what they were carrying and it did say LPG on the side of the ship. I’ll explain why the sign was somewhat humorous; many people on the ship have made Panama Canal signs so they can hold them up as we transit the canal and have their photos taken. I’m sure this looked strange to the few men (and women) on this tanker. Nice to feel a small connection even as we are ships that pass… What an amazing feat to build this canal 100 years ago and still have it in operation and even expansion today. We are off to dinner now so I will post this early as nothing else is planned for this evening since we get to Cartagena tomorrow.
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