Panama Days 3 and 4

Did not get a post done last night - we had a very late dinner and then I fell asleep watching a movie.

All of today's pictures were taken with my camera - I did not bring my computer, so the pictures will get posted when we return home.

Today we did a Jungle Boat Cruise which was fascinating. We were picked up at our resort at 8:30 this morning and drove to local "marina" (I use the word with a grain of salt, however, it is descriptive. Along the way we saw some interesting birds' nest - apparently the males build these hanging nests - if the female doesn't like the nest, she destroys it. While we were waiting at the "marina" for our boat to be ready, I was able to get some pictures of a pelican - they are a lot bigger than I thought that they were. We then took our boat along the Panama Canal (discovered that the gravel laid down on the rail line is actually from Nova Scotia). Saw a huge container ship as well as a couple of the dredging machines that operate 24 hours/day, 7 days a week to keep the canal a uniform 64 feet deep.

After seeing some of the canal, the tour took us off the beaten path to see some of Panama's wildlife. We travelled through the rainforest to see several different animals - Panama is home to 3 species of monkeys, howler monkeys, cappuccino monkeys and white-faced monkeys. We say all 3, although the howler don't put on much of a show - they only ear leaves so they pretty much ignored us. The cappucin and the white-faced monkeys both climbed all over the boat, eating out of peoples' hands - they were absolutely adorable. We also saw a sloth, a crocodile, some ducks and some eagles.

We had lunch onboard a floating restaurant - a typical Panamanian lunch. After lunch we had the ;choice of fishing, kayaking or lazing in a hammock. Lazing in a hammock really appealed to us - how relaxing!

Returning to the city, we ran into their horrendous traffic again.