Travelling from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific through a canal that divides a whole continent is an experience we will never forget.
Mum and Dad had been wanting to do this journey for a long time and everyone was really excited as we spent the days preceding the trip visiting museums and reading books about the history of this mighty project.
The canal is 77km long and it is a shining example of human technical excellence, perseverance and pure greed. Where the French failed over 100 years ago the American picked up and fulfilled their dream of being able to get warships across the oceans faster than anyone else.
The Panamanian people were paid a handsome $250,000 a year for a 100 year lease on the 10km strip of land.... a mighty sum in 1910... but not so by 1990. When the USA handed the canal back to Panama in 1999 as a millennium gift, the Panamanians made more money in the first year than the whole of the last century. For more interesting facts visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal.
We set off from the Causeway on a sunny morning and motored along with high rise vista of modern Panama in the distance. We went under the Bridge of the Americas and past the huge shipping container yard. The first lock is the mighty Miraflores, and it can raise and lower 500,000 tonne ships in just a few minutes. The locks themselves have 50ft thick walls of pure concrete to hold back the water pressure.
Then we went on through Lake Gantun and onto another set of huge locks called Gantun, then it was plane sailing through to the Pacific ocean. We noticed a change in temperature as the Pacific tends to be fierce compared to the protected waters of the Atlantic!
It took over 8 hours to make the journey and was a wonderful day, but if we'd chosen to go the only other way round - via Chile and around, that would have added 32 days to our trip!
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