I woke up at 130 am and did not get back to sleep until 4am so by the time I woke up at 8 Margie was already up and dressed and thinking that I slept in. I was a beautiful morning and we were looking forward to seeing the canal today.
We were getting to the canal at 9 am so we hurried upstairs by way of the elevator and had a quick breakfast and came back to our room to see the canal from our balcony.
The tv told us it was going to be a very hot day so we were glad that we had air conditioning so close at hand. To be able to just jump in and out was so nice.
The Jungle is green, green, green and very captivating. There are pole markers set up in cleared sections of the jungle for the pilots and captains to line the ships course up with to keep in the deepest part of the channel.
The pilot for the first lock arrived just before we arrived at the first lock, right on time for our turn to go through. How very exciting!
It was very interesting, watching all the activity of the crews hooking up lines to little trains on both sides of the ship and the ship going through at a steady speed just inches away from the sides of the canal.
The giant tires they have inserted along the way helps to keep the ship just inches away from the sides. I wonder how often they need to change those tires. probably more often than my car tires at home
I took photos of how snug we were in the lock both directions and was amazed, I admit, to how snug we were in the lock. I had heard from friends who had been through the canal how interesting it was and they were right.
We watched the little trains letting go of the lines right when they got to the end of the lock and coming back to get ready to repeat the exercise again for the next ship.
We went upstairs to the lecture on the history of the canal.
There are 3 sets of locks one going up and two going down.
It took years to build and there was a lot of political maneuvering and power struggles to control the locks over the years.
There are two big Lakes and lots of little islands in those lakes. the first lock takes you up 80 feet and deposits you into the larger lake. This lake had most of the little islands and lots of big ships waiting their turn to go back the other way. Lots of the islands have the white pole markers for the pilots to line up with at each turn to make sure that they clear the channels as they go.
There are two locks at each set of locks, each with their own names and they are building more locks, larger than the ones that are currently there to take care of the much larger ships that are now being constructed.
There was lots of maintenance activity going on all along both sides of the canals which surprised me, although I don't why it would.
Of course they would have to do maintenance which would require road access hence the small roads along lamost all canal. There was building activity at the lock areas to accomplish the new locks as well.
The course that the pilot of the ship has to follow is quite difficult with turns and changes in speed all worked out by years of experience of the many pilots. Each section has its own pilots who know their own section.
It seemed there was always little boats coming up and dropping men off to start their section of the canal and a different boat picking pilots up to take them back to her starting point.
In the narrower part of the canal I saw lots of moving trees and thought maybe that there were monkeys. Filmed the moving trees hoping to get a picture of the monkeys but all I got was moving trees. Pretty but not what I was hoping for. 
we saw lots of different birds too. kestrels, buzzards, Grackles. birds I have never seen before. I heard lots of other birds but did not see them. the jungle is very thick and not easy to see through. sometimes I thought I saw something only to realize later that it was just another tree in a different shade of green or brown.
Lots of big boats going past us in the opposite direction. there is only room for two ships in the canal one going each way and in some places of the canal only room for one ship of our size.
Hot, Humid, Heat is what the main theme of the day was weather wise.
Lunch was outside at the pool side BBQ buffet. It was pleasant and fast as the indoor restaurants were packed. When we got back to our lovely air conditioned room we found a towel dinosaur.
As a change of scenery we passed old works that had been replaced by newer more efficient equipment.
They had a sale on the sun deck of Panama Canal souvenirs so went to that ... it was very hot and at one point the skies clouded over rather quickly and opened up with a downpour of warm topical rain.
It worked out well for me as I had been at the end of the line to buy things when the rain started and lots of people ran for cover, I did not and moved up to almost the the front of the line. What a great way to cool off an get out of the heat faster.
At one point the captain said that this was as close as this boat would get to the equator. 560 miles north of the equator. It was probably as close as we were ever going to get to the equator so it was a special moment and I took a photo of the jungle at that point to commemorate it. 
We spent a lot of time going between our room to our balcony and back again, to look at the canal works, or the jungle or the boats passing. Amazingly the air conditioning felt very good every time we came back into the room as it was, did I mention this, a very hot day.
We approached and passed under the very large and very long Bridge of the Americas which is the only connecting bridge between the North and South American continents.
I have to admit that by this time the allure of the jungle was wearing a little thin. what initially started out as captivating alluring and mysterious now seemed green and hot and humid. Still I loved it just not with the same enthusiasm.
We discovered almost too late that the ship bow camera was on and the we could have been laying in bed all day watching us go through the canal on TV in our room.
As it was we only did that for the last lock. it did not have the same impact but it was interesting in that you could see the lock filling up with water which was kind of cool.
At one point just before the last lock there is a building that was full of people watching us go past. We watched them and waved and they waved back. Whole families came out so it must have been a thing to do there on a Thursday afternoon. It was a moment of fun waving at total strangers waving at us. fro the in-between of two continents. I found out after that some of the people who were working on board would have their families come their to wave to them as they went past as sometimes they would not see them for months at a time.
We had a pre booked specialty dinner at La Cucina, the Italian restaurant on board. A delicious meal with a delightful view of the end of the canal going out into the Panama bay which is huge.
We passed a small bay with lots of sail boats waiting their turn to go through the canal. we wondered how many of the little boats could fit into the lock at one time.
There was also a very interesting and colourful building on q long spit of land that ran out into the bay. Maybe it was an art gallery or something.
Panama City was huge and sparkling white in the distance. We did not stop there but stayed in the bay for quite a while waiting for a refill of some kind of oil that we had to drain on the other side of the canal. No ships are allowed to travel the canal with this oil in their tanks I guess, but it was a calm warm night and we were now in the pacific so waiting around a big bay seemed fine with us..
Half our trip was done already. It seemed to be going too fast. We had seen so much and still had so much to see.
When we got back to our room we found another towel animal - Eggbert the elephant who was very cute. We were very spoiled, two animals in one day.
We decided to stay in and just watch a movie, the new Mama Mia which was pretty good. who doesn't love a musical. the next day the Pacific part of the tour .
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