After one more sea day, we arrived bright and early at the Panama Canal. We set our alarms and were up with the sun so as not to miss anything.
Lots of other ships were hanging out in this area waiting their turn to traverse the canal.
Some sea birds welcomed us as well. Everyone congregated on the bow or upper levels of the ship. These areas were usually closed, but open today for the event.
Our wonderful stewards and crew, knowing that we were all up very early and probably hadn't eaten, brought out trays of "Panama Rolls" and juice. They looked just like a dinner roll, but were hollow inside with a taste of tropical fruit. I think they had put something inside before baking.
Panama City came by first.
And soon we could see in the distance the "Bridge of the Americas."
I wondered if we would fit underneath.
Yep, we fit.
Here's another neighboring ship awaiting passage.
The most exciting part of the morning was when we began to see glimpses of the Panama Temple.
Of course we took lots of pictures and shared our excitement with those around us.
This is a zoomed in shot.
At last we reached the first lock and began to prepare to sail in. Can we fit?
Many people work to make this passage possible. We had three boats come up to our ship and people get on and off. Some of them got on before we even woke up.
These "mules" don't pull the ship through, but they keep it straight. Since there was only a two foot clearance on each side, that's important.
Moving on into the lock.
See the cables from the mule? They are attached to our ship.
In we go.
Now this is the deck of the ship as we went in. Note the height of the mule and the building.
Here we are a bit later.
And finally the big gates open and we're ready to move into the next lock.
At this point we were very hungry (for more than a sweet roll and juice). The dining room was just about to close so we booked it down there (from Fore to Aft) and got in just in the nick of time. We were seated right by the window and had a glorious view of the lock shutting behind the ship. We didn't look too great since we had not had showers or done our hair and the wind was blowing out on deck. But ahhh, breakfast was wonderful.
We had one more lock to go (Pedro Miguel) after crossing Mira Flores Lake. We arrived there after breakfast. After that lock, we spent the better part of the day traversing Gatun Lake on our way to the other side. The locks on either side of the lake are necessary to raise the ship to the height of the lake and then back down to the ocean. Since the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean aren't exactly at the same level, all the locks, which are operated by gravity fed water, are very important. Gatun Lake is a man-made lake and is huge. It provides all that water for the locks. Thankfully Panama gets plenty of rain to refill the lake. I didn't take many pictures as we traveled.
Finally around 2:00 in the afternoon, we arrived at Gatun Locks. These three were all together. Instead of staying on the bow and watching, we walked all around the ship and took pictures.
I stuck my camera down over the edge to see this guy getting ready to connect cables to the mule.
They use a rowboat to catch and connect the ropes.
This is the neighboring lock.
And just to prove we were really there . . .
Two ships passed through next door as we went. We stayed in this lock for about an hour because we had to offload a couple of passengers with medical problems.
And finally, we were released into the Caribbean Sea. See it out there?
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