Friday trip to Miraflores Locks, the Canal and Monkey Island!
Our tour guide picked us up at around 9AM. On our way out we stopped at the same market we had on other days. It was just called the Chinese Market because the owners are Chinese Panamanians. My kids thought it was so cool how many "native" Chinese are there. Our tour guide explained that just like Jews and others came in the 1800's many Chinese also came to build the railroad and trade. This market only had fruit and we made sure to pick up lots of snacks not only for us but also the monkeys!
Our tour guide getting our fruit for the day, with the Chinese store owner:
First stop was Miraflores locks with are truly stunning. It was the only place all week we saw packed with foreigners (from the cruise ships) but you can see why it is can't miss. The engineering is astounding, how they move these HUGE ships up and down basically with elevators of water.
This is when the lock is full of water. You can't really see because I snapped the picture to late but off in the distance is a huge container ship that they had raised up the equivalent of many stories to travel through the canal:
And you should know which kids are mine since they wear Broncos clothing everywhere (I thought it was a cute look with a Panama hat)!
The one picture inside is in the attached 3 story visitor center, below is a model of the control room. The center was packed but it was REALLY cool. They show every aspect of how the canal and trade through it work. They also have a simulator where my kids got to pilot a boat through the canal and see how hard it is to do...they crashed, unfortunately.
After visiting the locks (I'd say it's 1-2 hours max, including the movie in the visitor center) we headed out on the canal!
This first ship was heading East from Japan (while we were going West), our guide said carrying approx. four THOUSAND cars. You can see the tugboat pushing it.
Then some huge container ships:
Soon we got to an island that had lots of howler monkeys. They are these teeny little black monkeys but when they yell they seriously sound like a 400 pound gorilla chasing you in the jungle and if I heard them yelling I would run VERY fast!
They are kind of hard to see so high up in the trees but the black shadow in the middle of these pictures is a howler monkey:
We hung out there a little bit and then headed out to the other islands with the other monkeys. Forgive me if I mess up any animal species but I think these are the white-headed capuchin:
They'll come right up to the boat and eat out of your hand but my kids (and me...lol) were a little nervous so we put some fruit on the front of the boat and they come grab it jump back in the trees. It was so AWESOME!
As we were driving among the islands and then on the way back we saw these cool ducks that can basically walk on the water and reeds because of their special webbing in their feet.
We also saw a baby crocodile in the water (search hard to find him in the middle of the picture where the hand is pointing)
On the way back we saw lots more cool ships that everyone enjoyed:
When we got back to the van it was about 2PM so I checked by trusted Kosher PTY app to see what was still open. Our friends had raved about Aroma Gourmet and we had actually gotten sushi delivery from them via the app, the first night at the hotel, so decided to actually try out their restaurant again. They didn't close until an hour before Shabbat and our guide dropped us there around 3PM. The decor and food is great and we all enjoyed the pizza, salads and sushi after another great day!
We then Ubered back to the Hilton for me to arrange our food (which had all been purchased the day before) and shower and generally get ready for Shabbat and services at the Shevet Achim shul...more details about Shabbat to come in the next installment!
