Few Shots of the Canal, Just Because I Can...

Kyle is cracking up while typing here so his post should be pretty funny, well at least for him. In the meantime, enjoy some shots of the Panama Canal. We went to check a small section of it out this afternoon called the Miraflores Locks. Pretty amazing to say the least. We are basically pros on the Panama Canal now so if youŕe interested come talk to us sometime.... ;)

By the way I finally figured out what the problem was with some of the pictures I uploaded and not being able to click on them to bring up the full sized shot. So they should all work now if you click on the photo itself. Yes I know, I am a Genius, you don't have to say it.

The Miraflores Locks is the first system of channels from the Pacific Side that allow one large ship to pass through at a time. The canal operators bring the water levels of the channels up and down to move the boats through and over the different terrain levels underneath.

Here's a big oil tanker making it's way West towards the Pacific Ocean. It takes a total of 8 hours to pass through the canal from coast to coast and can cost big ship like this over $50,000 each time they use the canal.

You can see the varying water levels in this shot. They use the water to act basically as a"ship elevator" if you will. These channels fill up in about the time it takes to fill up a bathtub, pretty incredible.

Here´s a map of the entire canal in the Visitors Center. Probably not the easiest to see but we were just at a little section of it on the Pacific Side, close to Panama City.

When we pulled up to the Hostel yesterday these kids were pretty enamored with the bikes. Kyle put his helmet on one of them and put him on my bike for a photo. They were pretty excited.

Anyways, that's it for now. Tomorrow we load up the bikes and ourselves on Fritz' Catamaran and take off for the San Blas Islands and Columbia!!! We'll update you in a few days when we reach land. We´re really excited for the boat and Columbia. Talk you all soon.

Clay