Now That’s a Boat!

 Now That’s A Boat!



Sittin' in the mornin' sun
I'll be sittin' when the evenin' comesWatching the ships roll inThen I watch 'em roll away again . . .


 We aren’t sitting on a dock by a bay but we are “watching ships roll away.” There is an old abandoned lighthouse, that we hoof it up a pretty good hill to get to, on the outskirts of town. Kirby and I refer to it as “our lighthouse.” (Hope the Panamanians don’t mind.) As we drove back into town today we noticed a ship approaching the west side of Gamboa. No questions were asked or answered between the two of us - of course we were going to stop and watch from our spot on top of the hill. 

Gamboa sits on the East bank of the Chagres River, the largest watershed in Panama.  In order to make the canal work, this river was damned up and Lake Gatun was created. This lake banks Gamboa on the South side and ships from all over the world pass by on their way to a lock system that will lower them back down to the ocean and allow them to continue on their way - reducing travel time substantially. 


Today we saw an enormous container cargo ship from Baltimore heading toward the Pacific Ocean. Named the Ever Frank, we counted 20 rows of containers from bow to stern x 20 rows across and 18 rows high on this beast. Approximately 10,000 containers on this one ship. Kirby has done some research and he estimates the cost for this ship to be around a million dollars for this one trip. It is too big to go through the older locks and so will utilize the new, bigger locks that opened in 2016. 



Behind every ship is a tug boat, not pushing but steering the ship. You see there is a large curve in the waterway the that ships have to navigate. The tug pulls the back end to the left bank which in turn positions the front end to make the turn. It takes a team.



This afternoon back at the house, a few cute little monkeys like this one swung through the trees in our backyard. We tried to entice them to visit by sharing apples but they weren’t interested. Maybe next time. 

We DID initiate a visit with the neighborhood fruit truck. This little truck zips through the streets of Gamboa, scale rocking back and forth with every bump - and there are many bumps! They shout out their wares over a loud speaker and it makes us laugh. Hopefully the video below works so you can get a smile too. 😁 You can tell how impressed Kirby was with the whole affair by the look on his face at the end. 


Until next time - Hasta la próximo!






 

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