Day Sixteen

Panama Canal today, only doing a partial transit, first three locks which are called the Gatun locks, took about two hours to get through, then we entered the Gatun lake which is a massive man made lake that sits between the locks on the Atlantic side and the locks on the Pacific side. As I said we are doing a partial transit, which means we spend about six hours anchored in Gatun lake till our alotted return time comes then we go back through the Gatun locks to the Atlantic side and then on to our next port which is Limon.
The feat of engineering it took to dig the canal out is amazing, yet so simple, it's just like the locks on say the Leeds and Liverpool canal but on a far far bigger scale and there are two canals riunning side by side. It was fantastic to see this huge container ship transiting the opposite lock to us. They have small railway type engines called mules that pull the ships through the locks, a minimum of one either side and up to four either side depending on the size and weight of ship. Even though we are just anchored in Gatun lake, there is still plenty to see, there are cargo ships of all shapes and sizes passing us going both to the Atlantic and the Pacific, we are quite close to shore and have a great view of the rain forest. We've had various birds flying past the best of which was a group of about six pelicans which flew within about twenty feet of us, quite an amazing site really. On the return transit one of the lock gates got stuck, so we were waiting about half an hour while they fixed it.
So I can say we went to the Panama Canal and it was broken....lol.
The men won the first half of the battle of the sexes.... Round two will be on the return leg of the cruise, I'll keep you informed of every exciting round...lol