The Panama Canal and Gamboa: engineering and rainforest in one day

There are few places where a feat of engineering and a tropical rainforest sit so close together. In Panama you can watch a 300-metre ship rise 26 metres through century-old gates in the morning, and cross the canopy of a rainforest by aerial tram in the afternoon. They are half an hour apart.

The Miraflores Locks

The Canal opened in 1914 and still works on the same principle: a system of locks that lifts ships up to Gatun Lake and lowers them back down to the other ocean, using nothing but gravity and rainwater. Each transit uses around 200 million litres.

The Miraflores Visitor Center has terraces at different heights so you can watch the whole manoeuvre: the ship entering, the gates closing, the water rising. Seeing it from above gives you the real scale of the works. It is worth checking the transit schedule — there tends to be more movement mid-morning and late afternoon — because without a ship the visit loses a lot.

Gamboa: rainforest half an hour away

Gamboa sits beside Soberanía National Park, one of the most accessible tropical forests in the world from a capital city. The aerial tram climbs over the treetops to an observation tower with views of the Chagres river and the Canal.

• Aerial tram over the forest canopy and panoramic tower.
• Sloth sanctuary, with rescued animals in rehabilitation.
• Butterfly house, frog house, aviary and orchid house.
• Boat expedition on Gatun Lake, where capuchin monkeys are a common sight.

What wildlife you can see

Two- and three-toed sloths, howler and capuchin monkeys, toucans, iguanas and more than four hundred bird species. Panama is one of the continent's great birdwatching destinations because the isthmus acts as a corridor between two land masses.

The best time to see animals is the first hour of the morning. By midday the heat sends them into the shade.

How to plan it

Miraflores is usually included in city tours, along with Casco Antiguo and the Causeway. Gamboa is worth a full day on its own, with lunch inside the reserve. Bring closed shoes, repellent and a light rain layer: in the forest a downpour can arrive at any moment, even if the sky was clear when you set off.