Day 14

Today was saturday, so luckily we didn't have to get up early. We spent the morning doing nothing interesting, but in the afternoon we went to the visitorscentre at the Miraflora locks in the Panama canal.
After watching a 3d movie about the history of the canal, we went to the museum part. It was really interesting, and we definitely learned a lot about how the canal was built and how it works. The upper floor of the centre was a small zoo, so we also saw some of the wildlife that lives around the canal. When we felt like we had seen everything, we went to the observation platform, which gave you a nive view over the ships and the locks themselves.
The canal basically works like this: Ships enter the canal at the Pacific of the Caribbean side, and then go through a set of locks (the Miraflora and Pedro Miguel locks on the Pacific side, near Panama City, and the Gatun locks on the Caribbean side, near Colon, Panama's second biggest city). The locks raise the ships to the level of the Gatun lake, which is located 26 meters above sea level, and the ships get lowered again at the locks on the other side, after which they can set course to open sea again. At the observation deck, we saw how those locks work, while having a nice drink, and that was the last thing we did that day.