A trip to Panama would be incomplete without a partial crossing of the Panama Canal or, at the very least, a visit to the Miraflores Visitors’ Center at Miraflores Locks, situated about 20 minutes from downtown Panama City. The Center features a museum with interactive exhibits and a short film on the canal’s construction, while an outside terrace offers a bird’s-eye view of ships transiting. Completed in 1914, the American-built waterway is viewed as a feat of engineering with its locks system that lifts ships 26 metres to the main elevation of the canal and then down again. More than 14 000 vessels transit the 77km long canal each year. An expansion project, designed to increase the size of the locks and scheduled for completion at the end of 2015 will mean the canal will double its capacity for the size and number of ships passing through.