Canal expansion access?

[nycessex]

Can anyone recommend a source to see the panama canal expansion project up close (or tour a portion of the project)? Either by land or by water is fine, but I would be taking my kids, so would like to hire a private direcr tour rather than see the project as part of a longer tour.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

[BillB48]

I don't know of any tours that are offered to the general public. On the Atlantic side the bulk of the construction centers around building the new lock. On the Pacific side there is a bit more activity since the project involves building a new lock, but also digging several miles of access channel. The construction of the access channel is the largest of the projects

(in visual terms) and a great deal of the project can be seen from a vessel that is transiting the Pacific Locks. If by chance you are taking a full Canal cruise then you will already be in the best place to see a lot of the work that is in progress on the Pacific side. If however your ship is doing a partial transit or just calling in Colon then there is a tour that you can take. The tour is called various things by the different cruise lines, but it is a partial transit of the Canal. The partial transit will take you through both Pacific Locks and Gaillard Cut giving you a pretty up close look at the excavation of the Pacific Access Channel.

 

As far as seeing the construction for the new locks, at this time it will be limited to glimpses as far as I am aware of. On the Pacific side the view to the construction is blocked by a large hill and on the Atlantic side I am just not sure how close you can get.

 

Right now I think the best views maybe through the Panama Canal's construction webcam. There are buttons for both the Atantic and Pacific portions of the project.

http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/webcams-works.html?cam=Expansion

[Keith1010]

I have not heard of any tours either. We'll be on a Panama Canal Cruise in early January and I will be sure to ask about this.

 

Keith

[Loonbeam]

They specifically said on the ferry tour we did that the new expansion is not accessible right now at all, only construction roads in...

[nycessex]

Thanks very much to you all - do any of you know of private motorboat charters that run on the canal? My guess is that leaving from someplace like Gamboa could get us close to the new Pacific access channel relatively quickly. I have two kids aged 9 and 7 who would be bored to death on the ship's 6-hour partial canal transit tour.

I looked into a helicopter ride as it seemed like a good fast option to see the construction project, but the 4-passenger helicopters run about $1,500 / hour...

[BillB48]

The force maybe against you;)! The area in which they allow private craft in that part of the Canal is from Gamboa to Gatun. This essentially is the Gatun Lake portion of the Canal. From Gamboa south is Gaillard Cut and it is heavily controlled for Canal traffic only. I am unaware of any other options of getting real close at this point.

 

There are a few public areas where you may see some of the activity for the Pacific Access Channel. One would be at the visitor's center at Miraflores Locks, another at the south end of Gaillard Cut, just above Pedro Miguel Locks viewing is available along side of Gaillard Highway.

 

Just an aside, a friend of mine is still working at the Canal as a tugboat captain and he was just recently able to a get tour of the work in progress. However, it was a friend of friend type tour and not for the public.