Barro Colorado Island and the Panama Canal, Panama
Even though today is our first official day of the voyage, our trip really started yesterday. A couple of hours after our arrival to the Sea Voyager at the port of Colon on the Caribbean side of Panama, our Canal pilot came on board and we started heading towards the first three set of locks. Known as the Gatun locks, this set would raise us 85 feet above sea level onto the level of the fresh water man-made lake named also Gatun. This lake was created after damming the Chagres River to form a freshwater way between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
After the breathtaking crossing of the locks, we dropped anchor on the Gatun Lake for a nice calm night. This morning we awoke in front of Barro Colorado Island (BCI), an island in the middle of the Lake, which is part of Smithsonian Tropical Research Institution. BCI became an island between 1911 and 1914 when the lake was created and in 1923 was declared a biological reserve. The Smithsonian Institute became the administrator of the island in 1946 and since then has grown to be considered one of the researching Meccas of tropical regions. New techniques have been developed and used here, to be applied later in other tropical regions of the planet.
So today we had a chance to see a scientist’s playground and learn about some of the research that is taking place at this moment. We also had our first glimpse of tropical animals such as howler monkeys, agouties, snail kites, white-throated capuchin monkeys, trogons, as well as our first encounter with this lush green tropical rainforest that we have seen in movies and read about in books and magazines.
After our morning on BCI we spent the rest of the day making our way through the rest of the Panama Canal and cruising through Culebra Cut, the narrowest part of the Canal, and finally going down the last three sets of lock descending 85 feet under the Bridge of the Americas and into the Pacific Ocean.
Even though today is our first official day of the voyage, our trip really started yesterday. A couple of hours after our arrival to the Sea Voyager at the port of Colon on the Caribbean side of Panama, our Canal pilot came on board and we started heading towards the first three set of locks. Known as the Gatun locks, this set would raise us 85 feet above sea level onto the level of the fresh water man-made lake named also Gatun. This lake was created after damming the Chagres River to form a freshwater way between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
After the breathtaking crossing of the locks, we dropped anchor on the Gatun Lake for a nice calm night. This morning we awoke in front of Barro Colorado Island (BCI), an island in the middle of the Lake, which is part of Smithsonian Tropical Research Institution. BCI became an island between 1911 and 1914 when the lake was created and in 1923 was declared a biological reserve. The Smithsonian Institute became the administrator of the island in 1946 and since then has grown to be considered one of the researching Meccas of tropical regions. New techniques have been developed and used here, to be applied later in other tropical regions of the planet.
So today we had a chance to see a scientist’s playground and learn about some of the research that is taking place at this moment. We also had our first glimpse of tropical animals such as howler monkeys, agouties, snail kites, white-throated capuchin monkeys, trogons, as well as our first encounter with this lush green tropical rainforest that we have seen in movies and read about in books and magazines.
After our morning on BCI we spent the rest of the day making our way through the rest of the Panama Canal and cruising through Culebra Cut, the narrowest part of the Canal, and finally going down the last three sets of lock descending 85 feet under the Bridge of the Americas and into the Pacific Ocean.
