Caribbean Sea, Dec 12

Caribbean Sea, Dec 12, 2005

Last Friday we landed at Cost Rica and spent most of the day on a tour. We traveled into the mountains and went on a tramway through the rain forest. The idea was to observe the jungle at all levels, particularly the canopy. Although we could certainly see that the jungle differs as you go higher, with definite changes in vegetation, we were a little disappointed not to see any wildlife to speak of. I think that since the tramway goes through an unchanging route, the wildlife probably avoid it.

On the way to the mountains we passed lots of pineapple farms and banana plantations.

We sailed that night, and early yesterday arrived at Colon, Panama. Our cruise ship entered the Panama Canal. Going through the locks was very interesting. There was about one-foot clearance on either side of our ship. They have tugboats on alert as we enter the locks, ready to give us a little push, if the heading is not just right. Once in the lock, they attached line to the port and starboard side, and pulled them tight to ensure we did not hit the sides of the canal. The “locks” were a series of three locks; we gained about 85 feet in elevation. There are three locks on the Atlantic side and three on the Pacific side. The boats are raised 85 feet. Instead of making a passage thru the mountains they flooded the area made one of the worlds largest man made lakes and raised the boats up 85 feet to go over the mountains back down to sea level and out to the Pacific ocean.

After going through the locks and anchoring in Lake Gatun, we took a tour in a very small boat around a portion of Lake Gatun. A dam formed the lake, so it is actually a flooded valley, with mountains (Really hills, I think, but they call them mountains here.), which became islands in the lake, are populated by wildlife that formerly inhabited the valley. Anyway, we saw lots of wildlife including three species of monkeys and several sloths. The monkeys were quite active and moved about a lot. The sloths were slothful.

Today we are at sea, enroute to Jamaica.