Another check-off on the old bucket list – our main purpose for this trip. We entered the canal at Colon on the Caribbean side – travelled northwest to southeast traversing the Gatun Locks (three locks that raise the ship about eighty feet) to the level of Gatun Lake and the man-made Culebra Cut which lets the ship sale across the isthmus then on to the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks which drops the ship into the Pacific near Panamá City. The 50 + mile trip took about 6 hours. From a historical sense the canal was first thought about by the Spanish in the 16th century – in 1880 the French started to build an all-water route but failed because of losses of financial backing and tropical diseases. In 1903 the United States restarted the construction and completed the process in 1914. The US handed the canal and the canal zone over to the Republic of Panama in 1999. Panamá started the construction of an expanded Canal in 2007 and completed it in 2016 to handle the new and bigger containerships and LNG ships.