Monkey Island, Panama

Yesterday we left Pedasi to start the trip home. For the first time ever we were able to take an airplane from Pedasi to Panama City. When you consider it took 40 minutes instead of 6 hours sitting in a vehicle, it was pretty good deal.

We had a day and a half in the city, which gave us time to do touristy stuff. Directly across from our hotel there was a City Sight Seeing office. After breakfast we went to check out what was available, on short notice on a Monday morning. Amazingly lots of attractions are closed on Monday.

A tour to Monkey Island was available….now. Seriously, before we had paid for the trip, the bus was already waiting outside. After about a 45 minute bus ride to Gamboa we arrived at our departure dock.

Monkey Island tour was a boat ride around several islands in the Panama Canal. Our guide was quite informative, she also spoke English and Spanish.

According to our tour guide, this is ‘Herman the German’, a heavy duty crane that is used for lock maintenance. It went to the US, from Germany, after WWII, and in 1996 was sold to Panama for $1.

There were lots of big ship and containers with tug boats attached, on their way through the canal. We looked so tiny going past.

The canal is maintained at a depth of 17 meters, and is constantly being dredged. The material that is collected flows through the pipes below and is used to make new islands, or anywhere else silt is needed.

After a short 10 or 15 minute ride, we arrived at the monkeys island. The capuchin monkeys were the first we saw and are as cute as a button. They are not at all shy to come into the boats for fruit. We also saw howler monkeys from a distance as they stayed way up in he trees. There was also a whole stack of tamarin monkeys but I did not get a picture as they were too busy moving about.

Those little critters are some kind of bat, they are all lined up having a nap to get ready for evening hunting. Apparently they go back to the same tree every morning.