Sailing

I have not been good at keeping this up-to-date as there have been computer issues with accessing my program onboard the ship. Well hope I have those worked out now. We stopped at a small island of Panama called San Blas. The island is quite primitive and is inhabited by an Indian tribe. They live in thatch roof homes, which are tightly positioned almost one on top of the other. The women do embroidery work and that seems to be about it except for asking for one dollar to have their picture taken in their native dress.

January 15, 2008

Today we passed through the Panama Canal. This was a very exciting day to see the lock system and what an engineering marvel it is. There are a series of 7 locks. Four that raise you up to get to the largest man-made reservoir in the world and then 3 locks to lower your ship back to sea level on the Pacific side of Central America. This whole process took us from 7 a.m. until 4 pm. We were very fortunate to enjoy all of this from a balcony where we enjoyed a champagne breakfast compliments of our travel agent. Interestingly enough, also several people from Panama came out to see the ship go through the last set of locks before entering the Pacific. Tomorrow we will be at sea again on our way to Ecuador.