Sunday Fun-Day!

Hola amigos!

Today was the continuation of our break from work until this evening. Wanting to take advantage of the beautiful weather, we decided to go to Playa Bonita, one of Panama's most beautiful beaches. On the way, we crossed over the Bridge of the Americas, which bridges over the Pacific side of the Panama canal; meaning we crossed from the South American continent to the North American continent when we crossed over the bridge!

The resort we visited was called InterContinental at Playa Bonita, which was coincidentally owned by the same company as the hotel at which we are staying, the Crowne Plaza. As a result, we were able to use the resort facilities and the beach free of charge!

Although it's difficult to tell in this picture, from sitting at the edge of the infinity pool that overlooked the Pacific Ocean, we could faintly see the ships mooring in the bay waiting for their turn to take a passage through the canal. We know they were waiting to cross to the Atlantic—as opposed to having just crossed from the Atlantic—as we learned Friday at the Miresflores Locks. For half the day (half of 24 hours as the canal operates at all hours), both lanes run from the Pacific to the Atlantic, until pretty late in the evening, when both lanes switch to allow vessels to travel the opposite direction.

After our beach adventures, we headed back to our hotel for an extremely long, albeit interesting, discussion on the American attempt at building the canal. We covered a plethora of topics, ranging from the extermination of the yellow-fever carrying mosquitoes due to brilliant efforts of William Gorgas to the system-level engineering genius of John Stevens that forever changed the way the canal effort operated.

From your Day Five bloggers,
Kelly and Karen