Saturday, 11 Feb – The Panama Canal

Larry was up and out on deck about 5:00 am as we approached the Panama Canal for a 6:00 am entrance. 

He got a good position at the front of the ship.  I dozed and watched the TV view from the Bridge camera until about 5:30, then went forward, grabbing a coffee on the way.  It was still dark and I didn’t find him, but I had a good view for the hour or so until we started to enter the first lock.  The three locks that took us up to Gatun Lake are all right together, so the process is continuous.  A commentator provided interesting technical and historical information.  

Larry found me about the time we had entered the first lock and we had breakfast by a window, enjoying the beautiful scenery – lush green rolling wooded hills.  We returned to our balcony for the rest of the transit into the lake, where we arrived at about 8:00 am. Earlier, when we approached the locks, we seemed to be the first through and now could see that each lock behind us had a ship in it.   It was warm and humid and although the sky overhead was blue, there were clouds

around us, and it appeared to be raining out on the lake. We had a good view of Gatun Dam, which provides all the electricity for canal operations.  While we were on the lake, we watched many different kinds of ships coming and going, and the lifeboat tenders from our ship taking people ashore for land excursions back to Colon to reboard the ship.  

Meanwhile on the ship I had a poor showing at trivia.

As we headed back to the locks (our canal experience was to enter Gatun Lake and then return and dock at Colon for a brief docking) we watched and photo graphed the process via the bridge camera feed,

then from our balcony.  Once we were into the locks, we moved to the Palace dining room and watch through the window while having lunch, then played a couple of games of cards.

Once we were back out on the open sea, it was like being part of a convoy; at one point we counted 36 other ships in sight. I wondered if we should watch for U-boats or torpedoes! 

It was a lazy trip to Colon and once there it took a very long time to land. Those on the shore excursions were given priority to board as they had waited a long time for the ship.  Finally with about 1 hour to our dinner reservation we went ashore.  We didn’t have much time, but it turned out to be plenty.  We entered through a large hangar-like structure, set up to handle large numbers of cruise passengers, but empty.  There was a small craft market as we left the building.  Then we entered a huge and interesting very new shopping centre, in which all the stores were either closed or not yet operational except for 2 or 3.  It fact it seemed that this centre might have been built but never opened. Perhaps a victim of the pandemic.

Another market was there, but very few customers.  We continued through to a street where everything seemed to have closed for the night.  That’s when we turned back and went to dinner at La Cucina on the ship.  Nice meal, good surroundings.  I’m becoming known – one upside of food issues I guess [ Right says Larry: every day she consults with staff and preorders from the next few days’ menus so they provide garlic- free meals every time.  Never such personal service in any home restaurant].

Feb 11 - All Photos