Panama Adventure

 The next part of our trip took us to Panama to explore the new expansion of the canal.  Panama City, as shown from this picture when we flew in, is a modern, big city with plenty of new construction.

 Here is a view of the canal expansion at Cocoli, being built right along side the locks on the Pacific Ocean side of the isthmus.  The current locks are 110 feet wide and a class of ship called Panamax is 106 feet wide - 16% of the ships in the world are too big to access the current size of the locks.  The Panama Canal was built almost 100 years ago and the new locks will be open supposedly on the 100 anniversary of the opening of the first canal locks, which will be in 2014.  The cost of this canal expansion is $5.25 billion.

 The Port of LA helped us to get a really good tour of the locks at Miraflores.  We are shown here walking across the gates of the locks.

 The boats go through the locks under their own power, but the tugs help to steer them.

 There is only a small amount of space on either side of this ship going through the canal.

 This ship barely fits.

 Our group after touring the canal.

 We then drove to the Gamboa Rain Forest Lodge and took a tour up the Chagras River to the indigenous tribe of the Embara Indians.

 The entrance to the village of the Embara people.

 The village of the Embara.

 Mom with the chief of the Embara people.

 Some of the women in the tribe performed for us.

 After the trip up the Chagras River, we relaxed in the pool of the lodge.

 A view from our balcony at the Gamboa Rain Forest Lodge.  There were capybaras grazing on the lawn outside of our balcony.

 Dad celebrated his 87th birthday that night at the Rain Forest Lodge.

 Right after the Culebra Cut part of the canal, we watched this big ship make its way into Lake Gatun on its way to to Colon, the port on the Caribbean side of the isthmus.

 We drove to El Valle, which is a small town in the crater of an extinct volcano.

 This is the small inn, Las Capitanes, that we stayed at in El Valle.

 Dinner with the Captain of the inn.

 The next day we did a zip line in the forest canopy.  Here we are suited up and ready to go.

 We had to cross the rivers on rope bridges.

 Here is Annie getting ready to go on the zipline.

 Mom liked her first trip on the zipline.

We had our final meal at a restaurant on the Amador Causeway overlooking Panama City.