Americas

Panama Canal

One of the great feats of engineering on Earth, transited by ship.

Overview

Sailing the Panama Canal

A Panama Canal cruise is less a beach vacation and more a piece of living history. You watch a ship rise and fall through a century-old lock system, guided by electric locomotives on the tracks alongside. Most sailings pair the transit with stops in Colombia and Costa Rica along the way.

Best time to sail: December – April

Where to Sail

The routes within the Panama Canal

A one-way ocean-to-ocean crossing, or a round-trip partial transit. Here’s the difference.

Full Transit

Start on one coast and end on the other. A full crossing through the locks over the course of a day, usually as part of a longer 10–15 night positioning sailing.

Fort Lauderdale or Miami (embark)Cartagena, ColombiaFull canal transitCosta RicaLos Angeles or San Diego (disembark)

Partial Transit

A round-trip itinerary from Florida that enters the canal, transits partway through Gatun Lake, then reverses back out. A shorter way to see the locks without a one-way repositioning.

Fort Lauderdale or Miami (round-trip)Cartagena, ColombiaPartial transit into Gatun LakeCosta Rica or Aruba

Did You Know

Why the Panama Canal is worth it

1The canal's Gatun Locks lift ships 85 feet above sea level using nothing but gravity-fed fresh water from Gatun Lake, the same basic engineering design from when it opened in 1914.

2Toll for the largest cruise ships to transit the canal can run several hundred thousand dollars for a single crossing, one of the highest tolls of any waterway on Earth.

3Cartagena's walled Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was built by the Spanish starting in the 1500s to defend against pirate raids. The walls are still fully intact.

4You can watch the entire transit from the ship's bow as electric locomotives, called mules, guide the vessel through each lock with only a couple of feet of clearance on either side.

A Closer Look

What the Panama Canal actually looks like

A ship in the Gatun Locks
The mule track runs right alongside the lock chamber, close enough to watch the electric locomotives guide the ship through by hand.

Cartagena's city wall
A watchtower along the fortified wall built to defend the port from pirate raids, still standing after nearly 500 years.

Costa Rica cloud forest
A common shore excursion pairing for canal itineraries, cloud forest canopy tours and volcano views a short drive from port.

Photos: Charlotte Elton, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Igvir Ramirez, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Cephas, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

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