DAY 12: TRANSITING THE CANAL -- It’s been a long day, a full day, and to do it justice I need to recapitulate (in a nutshell) what’s been going on.

We left a wake-up call for 5:30 so we could be out on the deck by 6:00 as the ship
arrived in Panama Bay and made its way into the Canal. It was a slow process, sometimes painfully slow, but I guess the brakes on this ship don’t work too well and it’s necessary to creep. Especially when there are dozens of other big ships around us.

Fortunately for our stomachs and nerves, coffee, juice and sweet rolls were served
on the deck, so we didn’t have to miss anything just to eat breakfast. We finally
entered the first (of three) locks, and began the slow process of being floated
up 85 feet, whereupon we eased out of the locks and entered the eight mile long
Gaillard Cut. We actually sailed over the Continental Divide, a landmark we’ve
driven across dozens of times; this was a first!

There's an interesting contrast here in the process of going through the Canal, the contrast between high tech and low tech. As you might imagine, this place is full of high tech electronics and hydraulics and other such wizardry, but it's also a place with its share of low tech: when the lines are delivered from the walls of the locks to the transiting ship, they are carried out by two men in a rowboat! That's the way they did that in 1914, when the Canal opened, and it still works today.

It was also moving to go through the tiered walls of the Gaillard Cut, a narrow and deep channel where so many lost their lives in the process of building the Canal. No one here seems to make very much of the complicated history of the Canal's construction, so it was helpful to have read David McCullough's "Path Beteen the Seas" to learn more about that. We did, however, have a very knowledgeable guide who described our passage over the ship's PA system.

By this time (close to 11:00) we were hot, tired, and hungry, so we headed up to
one of the casual dining rooms to take care of all three problems. Then a quick
nap in the cabin and back on deck to watch the process in reverse: locked down to
the Atlantic sea level and into the Caribbean Sea, on our way to Cartegna, Columbia.

We had a thought or two about going to the Catholic mass which was being held this afternoon, but it just didn’t fit our nap schedule. We haven’t been to any of the
church services aboard ship, the other alternative being a Baptist service, hence the Catholic mass looked inviting. Instead, we checked out the Robin Williams movie, “RV”, had another delicious dinner and were sacked out by 10:00.

Today has, for both of us, been the high point among many high points, the culmination of something we’ve talked about for years. We even, at one time, considered driving the motorhome down here, but now we’re glad we waited to do it this way.

Dreams do come true.