January 8 -Panama Canal

January 8, 2017 – Sailing to the Pacific Ocean on the Panama Canal.
At 2:30am we were all woken up by an announcement that the Medical Team was required at the medical center. A passenger was taken off on a stretcher when we got to the canal. The rumor on the ship is that he had a heart attack last night.
We started entering the canal at 6am. We are in the old canal locks since our ship is relatively small. Only very large ships are taken through the new locks. The process is very slow. We got to Gatun Lake at 9am. We slowly sailED around the lake waiting for our time slot to go through the Miraflores locks and exit into the Pacific Ocean. We got an earlier time than expected and exited to the Pacific about 4:30pm
There is a speaker who can be heard on the outer decks explaining everything about the canal. He is also on the TV station in the cabin.
The stuffed penguins keep moving around. Tonight is Tropical Night so they showed up outside the dining room.
Linda and I went to get some questions about our Galapagos trip answered. It looks like the hotel will have WiFi so I will bring my tablet so I can blog. I guess we weren’t the only ones with questions because they have scheduled a meeting for all of us tomorrow at 1pm.
I played Hole in One golf which is a board with net pockets of different values. We each got to shoot 3 ping pong balls and 1 real golf ball. There were 6 of us playing. First round I got 5 points for hitting the board once. I won the next 2 rounds with 50 points each time. I know it wasn’t skill so I think it was a miracle.
Later Linda and I played Scatter glories just to collect more Dam Dollars. There were no winners because the person running it didn’t know how to score.
Dinner was great – cold coconut soup, chicken empanada, chicken marsala, and coconut ice cream for dessert. Others tried the fish and the lamb dishes and hot soup.
Tomorrow, I’ll be packing for the Galapagos. The schedule is busy with 3 lectures and -Dam Dollar events.

Pam,  we are staying in a hotel in the Galapagos but sailing around on a boat to see the islands.