panama canal

 We were up before the sun to enter the protected breakwater around the Panama Canal and were able to watch the sun rise over the Pacific…Because of Panama’s positioning and the fact that the land takes an S-curve, you are looking West toward Panama and the Pacific when you see the 

 sun rising, I’m not sure about this, but it appeared to be true…Anyway, we had no clue where we were going from the breakwater, but were able to see several ships ahead of us and stake out a good position up top and in front before the show really started.  The ship’s lecturer came on the PA system 

and narrated the passage from there and we were able to see ships going in before us, rising, and rising, and then were boarded by pilots to navigate the locks.  With all due respect to the Soo Locks, this is the great east-west passage that 27,000 people died to provide and it is a spectacular engineering marvel.  John was all over the ship to get pictures and video from every angle and I stayed mainly on the balcony to see us rising up

in the lock on the right and another cruise ship rising behind us in the port side lock.  Our balcony was the perfect place because of our positioning in the locks.  It took 3 hours for us to make our way to Gatun Lake above the locks and at that point we were 86 feet above the level of the Caribbean sea that we had just left.  I broke into the adults only part of the back of the ship that you have to pay extra to be in in order to get the good shot looking back at the locks from our ship, but they should have that open on canal day anyway…