Barro Colorado Island & the Panama Canal, Panama
After having crossed Miraflores and Pedro Miguel locks the previous day, we anchored on Gatun Lake for the night. This is a privilege few passenger ships have. Thanks to special arrangements Lindblad Expeditions has made with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute we were able to visit the biological station at Barro Colorado Island during the entire morning. There we enjoyed hiking through the tropical forest, observing wildlife and we also came to understand the importance of the research being carried out there for the future of the planet and humanity.
In the afternoon the Panama Canal Authority pilot came aboard and at sunset we completed the path between seas as we left Gatun locks.
When we started our journey through Costa Rica and Panama we were excited about getting to experience first hand the wonders of the rain forest, however, as the days went by, we found that the rain forest was just one of many different kinds of habitats that are intimately interrelated and interdependent. It was fascinating and intimidating to see how fragile and precise is the balance of these ecosystems and how much impact our action or inaction might have over them.
Concluding our trip with the crossing of the Panama Canal was a revelation. The construction of this waterway was a dream that was first conceived by the Spaniards in 1534. Later on in the 1880’s and for almost twenty years, the French tried to carry out the project in what became one of the worst financial fiascos of all times at a tremendous cost in human lives. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt accepted the challenge of fulfilling what seemed to be a hopeless dream. He allowed nothing to get in his way; neither political and economic obstacles nor the dreaded yellow fever and the tropical rains, which constantly flooded the project, were able to break the American determination. The creative genius of men like Gorgas and Goethals and the unbreakable will of Teddy Roosevelt are to be credited for the completion of the canal.
Today as our planet faces enormous political and environmental problems, we must look at the examples set by conservationists in Costa Rica and Panama as well as in the determination of the builders of the Panama Canal to come to renew our faith in the capacity of humans in solving problems.
After having crossed Miraflores and Pedro Miguel locks the previous day, we anchored on Gatun Lake for the night. This is a privilege few passenger ships have. Thanks to special arrangements Lindblad Expeditions has made with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute we were able to visit the biological station at Barro Colorado Island during the entire morning. There we enjoyed hiking through the tropical forest, observing wildlife and we also came to understand the importance of the research being carried out there for the future of the planet and humanity.
In the afternoon the Panama Canal Authority pilot came aboard and at sunset we completed the path between seas as we left Gatun locks.
When we started our journey through Costa Rica and Panama we were excited about getting to experience first hand the wonders of the rain forest, however, as the days went by, we found that the rain forest was just one of many different kinds of habitats that are intimately interrelated and interdependent. It was fascinating and intimidating to see how fragile and precise is the balance of these ecosystems and how much impact our action or inaction might have over them.
Concluding our trip with the crossing of the Panama Canal was a revelation. The construction of this waterway was a dream that was first conceived by the Spaniards in 1534. Later on in the 1880’s and for almost twenty years, the French tried to carry out the project in what became one of the worst financial fiascos of all times at a tremendous cost in human lives. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt accepted the challenge of fulfilling what seemed to be a hopeless dream. He allowed nothing to get in his way; neither political and economic obstacles nor the dreaded yellow fever and the tropical rains, which constantly flooded the project, were able to break the American determination. The creative genius of men like Gorgas and Goethals and the unbreakable will of Teddy Roosevelt are to be credited for the completion of the canal.
Today as our planet faces enormous political and environmental problems, we must look at the examples set by conservationists in Costa Rica and Panama as well as in the determination of the builders of the Panama Canal to come to renew our faith in the capacity of humans in solving problems.
