Panama Canal Guide: Miraflores Locks, IMAX, Cocolí & Agua Clara Neo-Panamax Expansion

Stretching 80 kilometres across the narrowest point of the Central American isthmus from the Bay of Panama on the Pacific to Limón Bay on the Caribbean, the Panama Canal is one of the defining engineering works of the modern world. Rather than a sea-level trench, the concept that bankrupted Ferdinand de Lesseps' French company between 1881 and 1889, the American engineers who completed the waterway between 1904 and 15 August 1914 dammed the Chagres River to create a giant freshwater elevator 26 metres (85 feet) above sea level. Under the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties, Panama assumed full sovereignty and operation of the canal on 31 December 1999.

How the 1914 Panamax locks and electric "mules" work

Three original twin-lane lock complexes, Miraflores (two steps, 16.5 metres total lift) and Pedro Miguel (one step, 9.5 metres lift) on the Pacific side, and three-step Gatun on the Caribbean side, raise ships up into Gatun Lake and through the 12.6-kilometre rock canyon of the Culebra (Gaillard) Cut across the Continental Divide. Each original chamber measures 33.53 metres (110 feet) wide by 304.8 metres (1,000 feet) long. Remarkably, no water pumps are used inside the original locks: culverts eighteen feet in diameter open and close by gravity alone, emptying freshwater from Gatun Lake into the chambers in eight minutes while electric towing locomotives known as mulas ("mules") run along cog tracks on the lock walls to keep vessels centred within inches of the concrete.

The 2016 Third Set of Locks (Cocolí and Agua Clara Neo-Panamax)

On 26 June 2016, the Panama Canal Authority inaugurated a third lane of giant locks, Cocolí on the Pacific side and Agua Clara on the Caribbean side near Colón and Portobelo, capable of handling Neo-Panamax vessels carrying up to three times the cargo of 1914 ships. Measuring 55 metres (180 feet) wide by 427 metres (1,400 feet) long, the new locks use sliding steel gates instead of mitre gates, tugboats inside the chamber instead of rail mules, and three huge lateral water-saving basins (tinas) that recycle 60 per cent of the water from each transit.

Timing your visit to Miraflores Visitor Center and partial canal transits

Located twenty minutes northwest of downtown (reachable by Uber, taxi, or MiBus from Albrook), the Miraflores Visitor Center features broad open-air viewing terraces overlooking the twin Miraflores lock chambers and an adjacent 3D IMAX theatre screening a 45-minute documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman. Because canal traffic moves in directional convoys, the most reliable windows to see ships inside the Miraflores chambers are early morning (08:30 to 10:30) and mid-afternoon (14:00 to 16:30); check the official Visit Canal de Panamá portal before setting out. To experience the locks from deck level, book a four-hour partial transit cruise from the Amador Causeway through the Miraflores and Pedro Miguel locks and the Culebra Cut.