After the jungle hike we got into a boat for the second part
of our tour on the Chagres River and Gatun Lake.
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| The railroad bridge at Gamboa |
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| The Sheila Ann heads to the Pacific |
The railroad bridge, shown here, was constructed in 1908
after the Americans took over building the Panama Canal from the French. The railroad
was used to move the tons of dirt excavated from the dredging of the Canal. We
then entered the Canal itself and came face to face with many large ships. We
learned that 50 ships a day traverse the Canal, and that the approximately 45
mile journey takes eight hours. In the morning ships generally go from the
Pacific to the Atlantic, and in the afternoon they go from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. All of the ships that we saw were carrying natural gas or containers.
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| A baby crocodile lying on a tree trunk |
However, the purpose of our boat trip was to see living animals in the jungle
area near Gatun Lake. The lake was created during the building of the Canal and
it is now a national park. Among the wild animals we saw were a baby crocodile, a
big iguana, several howler monkeys, a snail kite bird, a sleeping two toed
sloth, and a family of white faced capuchin monkeys.
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| A white faced capuchin monkey |
This wasn’t the zoo!
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