Panama Viejo and the FREAKING PANAMA CANAL!!

An early wake up call this morning. We knew that we wanted to see the Panama Canal and that was about it. We had breakfast downstairs in the Crown Plaza Hotels restaraunt and hten planned our day. A city tur was decided on, as well as the Panama Canal. Our first stop with Manuelo was Panama Viejo. This was the first city and it was destroyed by the Prirate Henry Morgan. There are just ruins left now, but they look so cool. As we were walking through the ruins, we came across a humongous line of ants!! Thousands of red ants, carrying pieces of leaves. Kaleb and I followed it to their ant hill. But, get this... the line of ants went over a hundred feet away and up a tree. I have seen things like this on the discovery channel, but never in real life. It was quite the sight to see!! We climbed the tower of an old catholic church. From the top you could see a 360 degree view of old, new, and newest Panama. After leaving the church, we went to the city that was built after Panama viejo was destroyed. We walked around and saw all there was to see: The street of a thousand balconies, the national theater, San Jose church ( the golden altar was painted white, so that it would not be stolen by the pirates.), Las Bovidas (an underground prison), Puente de las Americas, Simon Blvd., and so much more! Get this, we went to the Panama Canal. We got there just in time to see tw ships go thtough the Mira Flores Lock. It is the thrid of three locks. It taks 8 to 10 hours to get a ship from one side of the Panama Canal to the other and it cots up to 249,000 dollars to go through it. A man once swam the canal in 1926 and he paid 36 cents. This is the lowest fee ever paid. The Canal was built so long ago and the only technology added are the hydrolic gate openers, instead of manual ones. Pretty neat that it was built so strong and has lasted so long! If the lakes surrounding the Canal ever dried up, then the Canal woul not function. After the Canal we havd the opportunity to drive on a man made road in the middle of the ocean. It connects to a little island. The drive was pretty ... infact! Panama in i entirety is BEAUTIFUL! It is all lush and green.!~~~ We did devriefing of our time in Brasil tonight. After that was through, we went swimming in the rain eventhough, 1. It is dangerous to do so( in case of lightning), 2. The pool closed at seven and it was around 12:30 am when we went. I suppose we were being a little loud and we were not in swimming attire ( I mean we were being spontaneous and if we needed to swim with out clother on, then so be it!) All of a sudden a man shows up, he creps out of the shadows and just stands there. All we could see was the reflectio of the pool lights on his golden hotel name tag. We threw our life rings back and ran up seven flights of stairs, dripping wet, what an adventure!