Panama Canal

Hi Girlies,

  Today is exciting as we are going through the Panama Canal.  The canal was completed in August 1914, ten years after the Americans began working on it.  The French made the first attempt to dig the canal, but they failed.  Over 25,000 people died from accidents and diseases.  Here is a photo of our ship entering the first lock.  You can see the second and third lock ahead of us.  Those are some big ships in front!

The locks raise the ship 85 feet to the level of Gatun lake ahead of us.  Do you see the small tug below and to the right of us?  They are called mules.  That mule and one on the other side keep the ship from hitting the side of the locks.  They don’t tow us through the locks, they just keep us straight.  The ship’s engines are used for power through the canal.

Here you can see the lock doors closing behind us as the enter the third lock.

And now we are through the three locks and in Gatun lake.

It took us about an hour and a half to get through the three locks.  But, we are not through the canal yet.  We still have to sail about 6 more hours to get through the entire canal.  We have three more locks to go through that will lower us 85 feet as we exit the canal. So we entered  from the Atlantic Ocean and we will exit into the Pacific Ocean.  Before the canal was built, ships had to go around South America to sail between the oceans.

Here is a picture of Nanoo from last night.  We were on our way to dinner.  She is wearing the new gold slider she bought in Cartagena.

Dinner was very good.  Gpa had this yummy appetizer of eggplant stuffed with linguine.

I forgot to take other pictures.  Nanoo had crab cakes and I had veal piccata.  Nano had dessert, fig sherbet.

Now, about that question I asked you.  All your answers are wrong, so I’ll give you some hints.  Look at the top of the picture.  What are all those little panels?  Look at the bottom of the picture.  What do you see?  OK, give me your answer tomorrow, good luck!

How do you like my new orange glasses?  Pretty cool! No one on the ship has as many glasses as I do :).

Nanoo has been wearing the slippers you gave her for Christmas.

OK, that’s all for today.  I’ll show you some more canal pictures tomorrow.  It is a sea day and our next port is Manta, Ecuador on Monday.  We have a private tour planned so it should be fun.  It’s really getting hot around here!

We love you!

Gpa and Nanoo

xoxoxo