Day 73 - Colon, Panama
Princess did a great job on arranging port lecturers and shopping guides and tours in a short time frame for the port change. We docked in Colon 2000 a duty free shopping area that is gated and in a safe area in Colon. Colon 2000 is the 2nd largest duty free port in the world. It really does not do us any good unless we want 20 TV, 20 Stereos and so on. We were advised not to go into Colon City as it is not the safe. The population of Colon is 198,500. There is 80% unemployment in Colon and in Panama City the rate is 4%. It is the case of haves and have not's. The drive is around 1 hour to Panama City and the difference is dramatic. All the money from the Canal goes to Panama City. We took a tour van with Joanne and Garry, Ros and Arnold, Dennis and Anthea and Bev and Ed. Our tour took us to the Gatun Locks and Fort St. Lorenzo. Randy and I were very glad that we went to the Locks as we were able to get a good view of how we were going to transit the Panama Canal. It is very interesting and we saw how the locks worked giving us an eye view, that we will not get during the transit. We spent about 1 hour at the lock, where we saw several ship going thru the locks. Next we traveled through the rainforest and passed through the old us military base that was left and is in ruins. Fort St. Lorenzo is a fort from the 1500'S. It had been attacked, destroyed and rebuilt three times. We then traveled back to Colon 2000. We were able shop a little and go to a beauty salon and then we went to a Lebanese restaurant for dinner. They had free Wi-Fi but we could not find anyone on Skype or Facebook. Sorry we missed you family. Looking forward to LA! Tomorrow we transit Panama Canal.
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