Cruising | The Panama Canal

Our next stop was the Panama Canal.  We weren’t able to get off at this “port”, you just got up before sunrise and crowded onto the front deck for hours to watch the slow process of entering the locks.  It was an interesting experience, but not exactly what I had pictured it being like. They are in the process of making a larger lock, our boat barely fit and you could hear the sides scrape as we entered the first lock.  One of the facts I found most interesting about this process was that all ships pay by weight to enter.  We of course were really heavy and it cost our boat 300,000 dollars to go through the locks.  We docked in the lake after the first lock, then went back through the way we came.  This money has to be wired within 2 days of arrival and they don’t accept checks or credit cards. 😉  A man once swam through the locks and he had to pay as well, and I think they said his cost was like 37 cents.  🙂

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