The Panama Canal, baby!

After sleeping like logs (literally), we finally felt rested enough to conquer our first official tourist activity: the Panama Canal! We had no plans, no direction in what to see, where to go or how to go about it, and yet it turned out to be a great (and, gasp, educational) day.

Despite the best efforts of our GPS to actually get us lost as opposed to getting us to our destination (seriously, only *I* could get lost WITH a GPS), we found our way to one of the 3 locks in the canal, Miraflores Locks. We decided to "splurge" and go for the ultimate tour, which cost us a grand total of $8. I love vacations where the main attraction of the country only costs you 8 bucks to experience. Since we coughed up the full entrance price (as opposed to the $3 cheapskate tour price), we got to go to the museum, see the film and have as much time at the lookouts as we wanted. Eight dollars gets you a lot in this country!

Gotta say, our timing rocked. As soon as walked out on the observation deck, a boat was on its way through. I won't bore you with all the details of how the locks work but it really was amazing and WAY beyond my comprehension of how all the engineering was conceived of and brought to fruition. Especially since construction on it began in the 1880s and a lot of the work was literally done by hand. Pretty ingenious, I must say! I can now officially appreciate why it is considered one of the seven wonders of the industrial world.

We had lunch on a patio there, overlooking the canal. During our meal, it started pouring rain (I'm talking torrential here) so we decided to just chill, ride it out and enjoy the location in the meantime. Turned out to be a good thing as, in addition to the great food, we got to see three more ships go through. Super cool stuff.

After that, we drove over to a beautiful causeway and ate some typical Panamanian food while overlooking the water with the city skyline in the background. Vacation rocks.