We had alerted our family and friends that they could watch our progress on various Canal webcams. As the locomotives were attaching their cables to our ship one of the lines snapped…which was quite a surprise and there was much scurrying around and hollering by the workers. Just before we entered the first lock I saw a large caiman (alligator) along the shore.

I went down to the lower deck at the stern of the ship to get a good view of theĬruise Consultant & Assistant Cruise Directoraction. We entered the Gatun Locks at 6:15am beginning our full day crossing this engineering marvel. west coast ports are quite worried since once the new locks are completed, these huge ships from Asia will be able to bypass Seattle, Oakland and Long Beach and take their containers directly to East Coast ports. A new set of locks is being built on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides in order to accommodate the new, larger ships that at present must go around Cape Horn or offload their cargo onto trucks and trains for transport. David McCullough’s excellent book, “The Path Between the Seas” has been our textbook since we first experienced the canal in 1997.Now there is a great deal of focus on the Canal since it is going through a massive construction phase. We have passed through many times and still find it fascinating. The highlight of this segment for most cruisers is the transit of the Panama Canal. Romancing the Stone was filmed hereTo this point he figures he has distributed about 13,000 beacons to fellow passengers. His trademark is giving out little flashlights. Long time cruiser Ed Knight was celebrating his 95th birthday and so we joined in the festivities. It was probably one of the best and by far the most energetic folkloric show we have ever seen. That evening Regent hosted a dinner under the Caribbean sky on the pool deck and brought aboard a local group of dancers for a post dinner show. So many passengers chose not to go into town and thus missed seeing the beautiful historic center of Cartagena. Regent arranged for a shuttle into town but unfortunately the buses were blockaded at the gate by the local taxi union. But soon the pirates got wind of the tremendous amount of gold and silver being sent out of this natural port and the likes of Sir Francis Drake and others soon became “pirates of the Caribbean.” Johnny Depp owes a lot to history. Kevin in the CanalWe had an overnight stay in Cartagena, Columbia.This is a lovely old colonial city and was initially used by the Spanish as a way of transporting their gold to Spain and thereby avoiding the Pacific Ocean pirates.

A path between the seas