Panama Day 2: Gatun Lake & Metropolitan Park

 Panama was definitely a place that I needed to see in person to understand. After learning a bit about the length of the Panama Canal (51 miles), and the many locks that take ships from one ocean to another (a total of 6 if you are a "small ship", 1,500 container capacity or less) I had a pretty good idea of what it all looks like. I couldn't figure out why there was an almost 90 foot difference between the sea level of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The part I was missing was Gatun Lake, which was our first activity on Day 2 in Panama. 

What I didn't realize is that instead of digging out the entirety of the canal, it is a series of 3 locks that rise ships up a total of 87 feet to the man-made Gatun Lake. From there, ships sail across the lake, not encountering another lock until it's time to be lowered 87 feet back into the next ocean. The seas aren't necessarily that different in sea level, it's that the engineers that completed the canal realized that digging through a mountain range was harder than it needed to be. So they rise ships up to the lake, then lower them on the other side, creating an 8-10 hour journey through the canal. And since traveling through the locks is where the big money comes from, we enjoyed a boat ride on the lake, brushing shoulders with huge ships but not actually traveling through one of the locks. 

There is a reservation system in place if you are willing to pay to jump the lineup for the canal. Without a reservation, you may be sitting in queue for up to a week. 

These are the ships we got to see while joyriding on the lake. 

"Safety First! No Smoking"

The lake is surrounded by jungle, so we got to see a few visitors on the trip. We stopped by Monkey Island where we saw 3 different kinds of monkeys! 

We saw this cute little lineup of sleeping bats

And a Jesus lizard! They run so fast that they can run on top of water!

Our afternoon was spent hiking the Parque National Metropolitano, a large park located in the heart of Panama City. 

During the US owning and running of the Panama Canal, the surrounding area was designated US Military Zone. This also means that once we turned over ownership of the canal, all of the buildings and structures in this zone were abandoned. Some of the buildings have been purchased by organizations like the Smithsonian Institute to conduct research, but many other buildings, like this one, sit locked and abandoned.

The hike introduced us to all kinds of creatures. This black and yellow millipede was everywhere! They have a distinct oder and scare the daylights out of some 11 year old girls! 

This spider web was dense enough to catch my eye, and after asking our guide about it, he explained that it is a web with a male spider woven into the center. The female uses the male as bait after a few dates.

If you look closely, you can see that these little green bits aren't just leaf confetti, they are a parade of leaf-cutter ants. They lined the path for miles walking their little bits of leaf up to a larger nest. Once the girls realized that they were all working together, we had to watch out step for the remainder of the hike - god forbid we step on an ant (or 10). 

We were truly in the jungle, but also, right next to the city.

Our traveling troop. Guess who didn't like the millipedes. 

See that? I didn't either, at first... but it's a sloth!

And a stately looking toucan!

And another sloth! This one is of the 2-toed variety. It was still very, very, very slow.

So that was quite the full day of activity. This was only Day 2!