The Panama Canal

Today we are transiting the Panama Canal, and even though we have been through it before, it truly is an engineering marvel. We have a person making announcements about the various locks we are going through and citing some interesting facts.
It takes a ship like ours all day to go from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean and costs around $75,000 cash.
A couple of observations:
The people working the locks are very friendly, wave at all of us and sometimes take pictures of us, taking pictures of them, taking pictures of us.....
You think they would be a bit jaded after doing this day in and day out, but they all seem to have a smile.
The tugboats that we see along the way seem to have such personalities! They are almost territorial in how they act, sometimes seeming to chase another tugboat away so they can do the job. Sort of the Jack Russells of the boat kingdom.
The lock we just passed through dropped us 31 feet-and quite quickly I might add. The water went out at 3,000,000,000 gallons a minute.
The rest of the cruise until we arrive back in the Caribbean in March is new territory for all of us so stay tuned.Read more