After cruising all night long over 200 nautical miles, we arrive to the beautiful Island of Otoque and Bona. These islands are well known because their importance as nesting sites for many marine birds. This island are located in the Gulf of Panama, which during the dry season months become one of the richest location on the isthmus in terms of food. The strong trade winds blow away warm water from the surface and that brings up cooler water with a lot of nutrients that support local fishes and marine life, also this upwelling matches with the nesting periods of brown boobies, brown pelicans and magnificent frigatebirds, and of course we could not pass the opportunity of exploring the shore line in search of the wildlife sightings which we saw closely while we enjoyed watching the birds feeding techniques, breading behavior, nesting sites and lovely displays.
After this wonderful outing, we repositioned to another local island known as Taboga, or Isla de las Flores, where we could experience the local life of the fisherman, enjoy the view of the colorful fishing boats and certainly we were able to visit their unique church which dates back in the early 1500. Also many of us enjoy the Paul Gauguin avenue in were this famous painter spent time in 1887 while working as labor for the French Company of the Panama Canal.
We relocated later to the entrance of the Panama Canal were we dropped anchor and waited for our canal pilot who commanded the Sea Lion during this fascinating experience, we saw many Panamax and Neopanamax vessel waiting for their transit, as well as important landmarks at the canal entrance such as the Biodiversity Museum, the Amador Causeway, The bridge of the American and finally our first set of locks of Miraflores. We share the lockage with another bigger vessel, the Johanna C from the UK which gave us a very good perspective of the size of the locks chamber. We continued our transit through Miraflores Lake and Pedro Miguel lock while several other tanker ships and container panama vessel were cruising by on their way to the Pacific Ocean.
To finish our unique experience we cruise under the modern Centennial Bridge which frames the entrance of Gaillard Cut, as we cruise through the continental divided entering the Caribbean slope of Panama.
