The Panama Canal

Yesterday was a great day. I had signed up for some tour of the Panama Canal, not knowing exactly what it involved but it was a good opportunity to see it. We were collected at the hostel at 8am after very little sleep and driven to a point on the canal where there is a lake - Lago Gatun.

There we were met by Carl, an American who lives in the only houseboat on the lake and he runs tours there. This is the part of the canal where it is wild jungle and it is absolutely gorgeous, except for the ugly parts where they are working on the canal expansion. But the jungle reclaims those areas in a matter of a year or two after they've finished, digging, dredging and blowing things up. We passed some absolutely huge ships going through the canal, making us feel tiny in our little boat.

We saw four different types of monkeys, two types of them came onto the boat and we fed them peanuts and bananas. At Carl's houseboat (which is also a guesthouse) we had lunch and hung out with his menagerie of animals which included a caiman, toucan, three iguanas, parrott, monkey, snake and a rabbit. The rabbit was meant to be food for the snake but the snake was freaked out by it so now it is a pet.

After lunch we kayaked down a narrow canal and swam in a small waterfall and pool. When we got back to Carl's we all lazed around in the water on our swimming noodles drinking beer. There are crocodiles and caimans making this water home but we weren't too concerned. Carl reckoned we should check out some of his videos on youtube so we can see exactly what we were swimming in. I'll have to do that...