Melia Panama Canal Colon

... excited. As we sailed under the bridge the channel narrows, and you can see the dredges here and there waiting to start their day. We pass a freighter steaming into the Pacific, and ahead of see the first Miraflores Locks. Two locks side by side, the right one already filled with an enormous container ship. You would think that the left one would be for the opposite direction, but the Statendam steams into the adjacent lock. Amazingly, on this first dock ...

We arrived into Colon ready to organize the car for shipping! The city is the dirty, unruly armpit of the country. Christina and I were looking forward to getting Wesley in the container and getting out of there. On two occasions we had locals give us hand signs of them either holding a gun or pointing one at us. Not exactly the friendliest greeting. Furthermore, it was a sprawling slum with office building that were barely ...

... annoying tourists!<br><br>There is so much info on the canal scattered across the internet so I won´t pretend to have gathered any new facts. In a nutshell what you need to know is:<br><br>- The canal is in the process of being expanded so that it can handle larger ships but isn{t expected to be completed until 2014 at a cost of more the $5 billion.<br>- The canal only became the property of Panama in 1999 when passed ...

... by some mangrove species act as nurseries for vast numbers of fish and other marine life. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami taught (hopefully) people just how important mangrove forests can be to people as physical buffers. Coastal areas where mangrove forests had not been cut down fared much better than deforested areas. Mangroves also provide food, medicine, building materials, and fuel wood....often, coincidentally, in ...

... Canal for several years during the war. One final highlight was taking in some pro Panamanian baseball at Rod Carew Stadium, where Herrera beat Cocle in a stunning victory for the crowd favorites. Our next stop was the Waterfall Hostel, a very cool spot near the town of David, Panama. Described to us as "summer camp for backpackers", it did not disappoint. With two swimming pools, a waterfall fed swimming hole and rope swing ...

Rozhodl jsem se pojmout tento den oddychove, takze jsem vyrazil s Alexem a Paulou na nakupy. Musel jsem si udelat trochu radosti pote, co jsem zjistil, ze jsem ztratil mp3 prehravac. :) Vyrazili jsme do nakupniho centra Albrook, kde je obrovske mnozstvi obchodu, tak jsem nakoupil par veci, ktere se mi snad vejdou do batohu. Klimatizovane obchody mi pripomnely trochu domov. ;)

... by the guest speaker the 'United Nations Chief Weapons Inspector' which was followed by the 'Crossing the Line' ceremony. At approx 4.30pm there was an announcement by the Captain over the speaker system on the ship, broadcasting not only in the public areas but also into the cabins (this indicated something of great importance) to say that there had been an outbreak of the 'Norwalk Virus' on board and that a number of people had been confined to their ...

... that much more meaningful! Anne picked us up at our hotel at 8:30 this morning along with one other guest and we drove nearly to Colon (don't ever let me complain about potholes in the US again!) before we boarded dug-out canoes for a 15? minute boat ride to a swimming hole and waterfall that is the real live template for everything Rain Forest Cafe tries to do in the artificial. It was fabulous! In we jumped after sliding our way over ...

... once *bout how she w*s *cting tow*rds me, hoping for * ch*nge on her p*rt, but nothing ch*nged *t *ll. So I decided to just not spe*k to her *nd go on *bout my business. S*d. :( I w*s *ble to spend some good qu*lity time with my friend Sh*in* in S*n Diego. She w*s in town visiting her boyfriend, Bri*n, who is *lso my friend from college. Bri*n is in the N*vy. Sh*in* *nd I *re (were :() in Delt* G*mm* together. We h*d * b*ll! One d*y we took ...

Todays stop, the last port of call for this cruise, was Colon, Panama. Panama is world famous for its canal between the atlantic ocean, and pacific ocean. Our shore excursion today, was "Panama City Tour", which is actually a trip right accross Panama, to the pacific side, to Panama City. Our first stop was the Gatun Locks, where we got to spend 35 minutes watching ships enter the locks and being transfered up to the level of Gatum lake. The budget for maintainance on ...