Colón, Panama

The experience of watching a vessel of 100,000+ tonnes navigate a lock chamber with roughly 60 centimetres of clearance on each side — guided by electric mule locomotives running on rails alongside the hull, while water floods in from below at 26,000 litres per second and the ship rises nine metres in minutes — is the defining experience of any Colón port day and one of the most remarkable engineering spectacles accessible to a cruise passenger anywhere in the world.

There are two Panama Canal lock complexes accessible from Colón: the original Gatun Locks (1914, 8 km from terminal, three chambers raising/lowering ships 26 metres to/from Gatun Lake level, the original 1914 design operating exactly as designed for over a century) and the Agua Clara Locks (2016 Neopanamax expansion, 12 km from terminal, handles vessels up to 366 metres long that the original Gatun Locks cannot accommodate). Agua Clara tours guarantee seeing a Neo-Panamax ship in transit — vessels of a scale that dwarfs the original locks and have to be seen to be understood. Many tours combine both locks in one 5–6 hour excursion, which is the VTS recommendation if available.

When the Chagres River was dammed in 1913 to create Gatun Lake — the largest man-made lake on Earth at the time of its creation — the valleys of the rainforest flooded and the hilltops became islands. Those islands are now, more than a century later, undisturbed wildlife sanctuaries where the animals of the Panamanian rainforest live without ground-level predators and at extraordinary density. A boat tour through the Gatun Lake channels and around these islands offers close encounters with:

• Howler monkeys — the loudest land animal in the Americas, visible in family groups in the canopy above the water, often so accustomed to boats that they allow very close approach
• White-faced capuchin monkeys — highly intelligent, the kind seen in wildlife documentaries using tools, often visible swinging at the water’s edge
• Three-toed sloths — hanging upside-down in the canopy, visible with binoculars or on close approach
• American crocodiles — in the shallows around the islands; genuine large crocodiles in their natural habitat
• Tropical birds — toucans, mot mots, kingfishers, herons, ospreys, and over 100 other species documented in the Gatun Lake area

This is one of the finest accessible wildlife boat tour experiences in Central America, available from a cruise terminal. The lake is also where canal ships pass — you may see a Neo-Panamax vessel moving silently through the lake while monkeys call overhead, which is a genuinely surreal juxtaposition. Many tours can combine the Gatun Lake wildlife experience with a Gatun Locks visit in one full port day.

Portobelo (Puerto Bello, “beautiful port”) was one of the most important cities in the Americas from the 16th to 18th centuries. It was Spain’s primary Caribbean transshipment port for the treasure of the Inca and Aztec empires — Peruvian gold and silver, Bolivian tin, and the accumulated wealth of the Spanish colonial world were brought by mule train across the isthmus from Panama City and loaded here onto galleons for Spain. The city was attacked repeatedly by English pirates and privateers: Francis Drake died of dysentery near Portobelo in 1596 and was buried at sea in the harbour in a lead coffin (his coffin has never been found and periodically surfaces as an object of salvage expeditions). Henry Morgan sacked Portobelo in 1668 in one of the most audacious pirate raids in Caribbean history. The fortifications you see today — San Jerónimo Fort, San Fernando Fort, and Santiago Fort — are the Spanish response to these raids, now UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Black Christ of Portobelo (El Cristo Negro) in the Church of San Felipe is one of the most venerated religious icons in Panama, the focus of an annual pilgrimage each October 21.

Fort San Lorenzo is a separate UNESCO World Heritage Site approximately 25 km from Colón, sited dramatically on a jungle headland above the Caribbean entrance to the Chagres River. Built by the Spanish in the 16th century and rebuilt after Henry Morgan’s assault, the fort offers extraordinary views of the Caribbean and the Chagres River valley, and is one of the best-preserved examples of Spanish colonial military architecture in Central America. The jungle encroaching on the stone walls gives it an atmosphere of genuine remoteness even though it is accessible by road.

The Emberá people are one of the indigenous groups of Panama who have maintained traditional village life in the rainforest of Chagres National Park. A visit begins with a drive to the park boundary, then a dugout canoe journey up the Chagres River (the same river that feeds Gatun Lake and powers the Panama Canal) to the village. The visit includes traditional music and dance performance, demonstrations of basket-weaving using natural fibres and the intricate geometric patterns that define Emberá textile art, wood carving, face painting in traditional designs, and a traditional meal. Emberá crafts purchased directly from the artisans are genuine hand-made items: the tightly woven baskets using natural dyes from rainforest plants are among the finest indigenous craft objects available from any Caribbean cruise port.

A note on the waterfall: many tour descriptions include a visit to a waterfall as part of the Emberá visit. In the dry season (December–April), the Chagres River water level is lower, and some waterfall visits may be reduced or unavailable. Confirm with your tour operator before booking if the waterfall is a specific priority.

Panama City is approximately 80 km from Colón via the Transístmica Highway — about one hour in normal traffic — and contains two exceptional sites worth a full-day excursion when ship departure time permits. Casco Viejo (the historic old quarter, UNESCO World Heritage Site, founded 1673 after Henry Morgan sacked and destroyed Panama Viejo) is one of the most rapidly gentrifying historic districts in Latin America — colonial buildings being restored alongside boutique hotels, restaurants, and art galleries, with the remarkable Panama City skyline of Punta Pacifica visible across the bay. Miraflores Locks Visitor Centre (on the Pacific side of the canal) offers the finest general-public canal viewing in Panama: multi-level observation platforms above the lock chambers, a comprehensive museum, and the 40-minute IMAX film Panama Canal: A Land Divided — A World United narrated by Morgan Freeman in 3D. Ships transit Miraflores from both directions throughout the day — sighting guaranteed.