Today we took a wilderness jungle river cruise on the Miraflores River, leaving from the Gamboa Marina. We saw crocodiles, Mantel Howler monkeys and White Cabachon monkeys, and various types of birds. The Smithsonia Institute for Tropical Studies is located here. We saw the barges which set off explosives to clear the River, and the huge dredge barges which suck all the debris up. We went by the former houses of the canal executives, which are now rented ou...

There are no scheduled activities for the group today, so I got up at 8am and put my bathing suit on, headed to the breakfast buffet, then to the pool for a bit. Extremely hot today, 91 and very humid. Took a shower, and grabbed a taxi from the hotel to the Monumento Al Canal ($5.00), which is a monument to the French efforts in the canal area. There are tribal vendors on the promenade around the point, so I bought some gifts for folks back home. I found a lit...

We left at 0830 to head to the Chagres National Park area, where we will caught some dugout canoes for a visit with the Emberra Tribe on the Chagres River. The tribe comes from the District of San Migelito, Darien Province, in eastern Panama, near the Columbian border. The tribal leader Melio welcomed us in Spanish and told us some history of their tribe. A tribal woman spoke to us in their native dialect and showed us how they make the baskets and some of the wo...

I woke up at 8am, worked on yesterday's blog since the wifi was down last night. Then, headed to the pool for a bit. We caught a bus from Flamenco Island on the Amador Causeway to Gamboa, where we caught a ferry, the Pacific Queen, to transit the locks at Gatun and Miraflores on our way south to the Pacific. We entered the Gatun Lock and a catamaran tied up to our ferry, and a huge ship shared the lock with us, the African Kingfisher. It was so big it almos...

Went by Allbrook Air Force Base, which is now a commercial airport. We headed north to Colon province, by way of the Miraflores locks and lake. We stopped at Camino de Cruces to see part of a Spanish cobblestone road from the 1500s. Went by the Culebra cut of the Panama Canal, which was the start of the work on the original canal. Saw Lake Gatum dam, spillway, and locks. We drove across the top of the new canal locks, which will not be possible when the new...