Hosting Family and Seeing Things

     Alex and Emily (and Emily's friend, Paige) are visiting with us this winter.  We don't often have the opportunity to spend as much time together as we have been able to this week. 

Alex arrived first to visit us.  We took a day trip to Gamboa which is north of Panama City. 

This view is from the balcony of the Gamboa Rainforest Resort.  Located in Gamboa the resort "nests where the scenic Chagres River meets the Panama Canal".  We returned to the Gamboa area to take a trip to the island of Barro Colorado.

Emily and Paige arrived a few days after Alex.  Of course we had to find a sports bar to watch the Packers-Cowboys game.  We maneuvered through the confusing city streets of downtown Panama City to watch the game.  After the game we traveled to Casco Viejo (aka Casco Antiguo) to walk around and enjoy the views of the Panama City skyline.

Paige, Emily and Peggy shortly after the Packers game.

Panama City has some very unique looking buildings in its cityscape.  The view from ground level is much more chaotic in terms of traffic, lack of street signs and lack of parking.  It was an exciting adventure to drive to a downtown location to watch the game.

     The biggest thing to see is, of course, the Panama Canal.  While we can look out from the balcony of our temporary residence and see the canal and ships passing through it, we drove to the Miraflores locks to watch the canal in operation.

The visitor's center at Miraflores is the place to go to watch the locks in operation and learn a bit about the history of the Panama Canal.  There are three sets of locks and a very large lake that make up the trip from the Atlantic Ocean to the north to the Pacific Ocean to the south through the Panama Canal. 

We were fortunate to watch a number of vehicles travel through the locks.  Probably the most fun to watch was the cruise ship.

Today we traveled back to Gamboa to catch a boat for a guided walk through the tropical rainforest on Barro Colorado.  Barro Colorado is a island that was formed when the builders of the Panama Canal made a very large lake which is part of the Panama Canal.  The island was once a hilltop before it became an island and its diverse ecosystem was isolated from the surrounding land masses.  Because of the unique nature its geography and the diversity of plant and animal life on the island, it is one of the most studied tropical land masses in the world.  Research and travel to the island are supervised closely by the Smithsonian and travel to the island is limited.  Our tour, the only one of the day, consisted of 7 people and the guide.

Our tour really started when we boarded this boat for a 35 minute trip across Gatun Lake to the island of Barro Colorado.  We rode with workers and students doing their daily commute to the island.  During the trip we passed ships traveling through the canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.

 

We saw a variety of critters during our 3 hour walk.  Right off the bat a very large crocodile started moving away from us (luckily) just a few feet off the path.  Later we saw a few toucans and other types of birds, at least two types of monkeys,(Howler and Capuchin) a variety of other small mammals (including a large number of bats) and insects.  The easiest of these to take pictures of were this tarantula and a very large spider.