What a day! It is HOT HOT HOT in Panama. I already changed clothes twice (well once into my bathing suit and back into real clothes for lunch).. We passed through the first set of locks this morning (the Gatun locks) and entered the big Gatun Lake. The lake is kept full and is fed by Panama rivers that fill in the rainy season to feed the locks. Tremendous amounts of water are used (prodigious amounts of water) are used to raise the water in the locks. Then the water is lost. We watched the transverse at about 9am and heard a loud bang!!! Chuck says we hit a wall which Panama Canal has to pay for; so when we get off we want to see if we can see a scratch or worse … We have a narrator on board and she is talking about a Mr Aspinwall who built the railway over the isthmus to move gold during the gold rush… and the area was called Aspinwall where my Mother’s family lived in Pennsylvania… . While we were in the Gatun Lake, I went into the pool for an hour then found Chuck in the Vintages bar… He was sipping red wine and the bartender gave me champagne. So three glasses later after lunch with cream puffs for dessert, I am sleepy and fat, but we have another series of locks to go through. One of the "events" I tried to photograph was 3 small boats rafted together were making the crossing… The pilots strap them all up .. They came into the lock next to us, and behind them… I couldn’t catch it as we were leaving our lock; was a huge big tanker or grain carrier like followed us in yesterday!!! We waved and shouted and left the three small boats with their big friend coming on them.. We are now headed for the Miraflores… God bless you!… Whew half way through!
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