Transiting the Panama Canal

While visiting Panama with my wife, Sandra, in February 2014, our guide, Daniel Gonzalez (Aug. ’15, pg. 27), told us that only about 10% of tourists actually take a cruise all the way through the Panama Canal, called a “full transit.” That’s a shame, because the original canal, completed 100 years ago, is one of the engineering wonders of the world. I strongly recommend the full transit.

Our arrangements for the trip were perfect. They were handled by Judy Tovar (easytravel@cwpanama.net). We started with a stop at the Miraflores Visitors’ Center, not far from Panama City. There we saw the locks operating, viewed a short film and toured a small historical museum.

Daniel arranged to get us to the visitors’ center before 10 a.m. because the hordes from the cruise ships would arrive around 11.

Next, we drove across the isthmus for a nice lunch and a stop at the Panama Canal Expansion Observation Center to see the much-delayed canal-expansion construction, now due to be completed in mid 2016.

Finally, we traveled through the canal from the Pacific to the Caribbean. We know of only a couple of tourist boats that regularly make the full transit. We were aboard the smaller, 300-passenger tourist boat Pacific Queen (Via Porras y Calle Belén, No. 106, Panama; phone +507 226 8917, www.pmatours.net). 

From a small ship, the perspective you get of the canal and of the huge ships among which you are traveling is like nothing else.

I have only three cautions:

1) Since full transits are available only a few times a month, be sure to schedule your trip accordingly.

2) Don’t forget your sunscreen.

3) No matter how bad you might think the (included) food on a tourist boat like this will be, it’s worse than that. I’d suggest having your hotel or a nearby restaurant pack snacks and lunches for your party. Soft drinks and beer were available on the boat and were not expensive.

GEORGE ANDERSON

Minneapolis, MN