Panama Canal Day Trip With Kids

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Visiting the Panama Canal

A Panama Canal day trip with kids was the easiest thing we planned in Panama City, and it’s the day our girls still bring up. We did the whole thing in one go: a boat out into the canal and around the Monkey Islands in the morning, then the Miraflores Locks after that. Here’s how the day actually ran, and where the kids checked out.

A quintessential activity to anyone’s first visit to Panama is usually a Panama Canal tour.  Or more specifically what people are referring to, is visiting the locks.  Truly a marvelous feat of engineering, it is an impressive site to behold and worth a visit.  There are two locks, the Miraflores Locks on the Pacific side of the canal, and the Agua Clara Locks on the Caribbean side of Panama.  Out of convenience of proximity to the capital, the Miraflores Locks are the most visited.

An argument can be made that if you are going to see the locks, why not get in a boat and cruise through the canal and see these exceptionally large ships up close while on a jungle cruise to see some monkeys?  What kid doesn’t want to see some monkeys?!  And so our adventure began…

Booking the Boat Trip to Monkey Island

We hired a driver/tour guide to arrange the excursion for us and we highly recommend hiring a driver or tour guide for your adventure.  There are several people offering day excursions to Monkey Islands and the canal.  You could probably take a taxi to do it all, but I wouldn’t know how to go about reserving a boat and skipper as they are individually owned and do not have a website.  I suppose you could just show up and hope to find one available but then how much do they charge?  What is fair?  Will you be taken advantage of as a tourist and charged more?  Too many variables and too much hassle if you ask me.  The less variables and the easier the trip the better for us with littles on board!

Out on the Canal With the Big Ships

After driving through the Gamboa Rainforest, we hopped on our boat (life jackets were provided by the boat owner), slapped on a bunch of mosquito repellant stickers and hit the canal!

It is really hard to have an appreciation for how large these boats are until you are in a little boat sharing the canal with them.  On our way to Monkey Islands we passed several large ships, from container ships to oil tankers.  It was fascinating.

Meeting the Monkeys on Monkey Island

As we approached Monkey Island the surrounding land morphed into rich jungle.  It felt a bit like we were on a real life jungle cruise!  I guess that’s because we were.  It was hard not comparing it to the beloved Disneyland ride though…

Your tour guide will probably warn you, prior to taking the tour ,that there is never a guarantee that you will see any monkeys.  These are wild monkeys doing their business and they may not show themselves on a given day.  That being said, the boat owners were clearly professionals at this.  It’s almost like they do this everyday! Duh!  They know all the spots to look and they are all exceptionally good and making monkey calls to get their attention.

We were in luck!  In fact we saw lots of monkeys on our visit.  Three different types on three different islands.  On our way in our tour guide stopped to pick up some bananas and peanuts to feed the monkeys.  The girls had a lot of fun trying to get the monkeys to take food from them, although unsuccessfully, it did not take away from the fun.  We saw monkeys taking food from other boaters and daddy did get one monkey to take a peanut from his hand.

We were also lucky enough to see the howler monkey, pictured below.  Our tour guide and boat driver were freaking out about it because apparently they never come this close to the boats.  You are lucky to see them in the distance.  They were trying to take pictures too because it was such a rare occasion.  We did not get to hear him howl though…that would have been the icing on the cake!

We spent about an hour boating around in between the jungle islands, then we headed back to the canal and back to where we launched.

The Miraflores Locks and Museum

Next we headed to the Miraflores Locks and Museum.  As we pulled up the tour guide mentioned that it is possible we may not see a ship pass through the locks as it is a long process, the ships move very slow and sometimes it is hours between ships.  We headed up the escalators to the Miraflores Visitors Center to purchase our tickets.  You can see the current visitor pricing on their website visitcanaldepanama.com.  The visitors center was modern and clean.

We headed upstairs to the viewing deck and were excited to see that there was a vary large containership getting ready to move through the locks!

As we watched the ship make its way through the canal, there was an employee on a microphone explaining what was happening and indulging us with interesting facts.  He said everything in  Spanish, then he repeated it in English.  He was full of interesting facts from how much the lock doors weighed to how much the current ship passing through had to pay to make the pass.

This is a very slow process so the kids mostly ran around.  I couldn’t blame them, but mom and dad found it interesting.  The viewing deck is quite large but the rim was packed with spectators watching the engineering marvel in action.  I had to squat and put my phone in between peoples legs to get some of these shots…for full disclosure sake.

Many of these ships carry several thousand containers.  Their size often determines how much they have to pay to cross the canal.  The ship in the photo below passing through the upper canal locks (who knew there were two canal locks?!) we were told had to pay $750,000 USD that day.  Yikes!

After the ship finished passing through (actually more like the kids ran out of patience) we decided to call it a day.  We headed out around 9am from our hotel in Casco Viejo and were back around 1:30pm.  This is a good little half day adventure for anyone of any age.  If you have kids, I strongly recommend you do the Monkey Islands.   They will be bored at the Locks, so this way they get some fun too.  If you don’t have kids and don’t love monkeys you could probably skip it and just take a taxi to the locks from the city.  But, it is pretty spectacular seeing those ginormous ships up close from the water…so consider taking a boat ride on your Panama canal tour.

If you are looking for another great day trip from the city, check out our day adventure to the Caribbean and Portobelo!

How a Panama Canal Day Trip Works With Kids

If you’re planning the same day, here’s the shape of it. We left our hotel in Casco Viejo around 9am and were back by 1:30pm, so it’s a half day rather than a whole one. About an hour of that was spent boating between the jungle islands, and that was plenty.

Do the Monkey Islands part. It’s the piece the kids will remember, and it buys you goodwill for the Locks, where they’ll almost certainly be bored. The boat owner handed out life jackets, and we slapped on mosquito repellent stickers before we got in. Our guide stopped for bananas and peanuts on the way so the girls had something to offer, and no, the monkeys never took food from them. It didn’t matter one bit.

Nobody can promise you monkeys. These are wild animals and some days they stay hidden, so treat a sighting as a bonus rather than the point of the trip.

At the Locks, expect a slow show. A ship takes a long time to move through, the rim of the viewing deck fills up with spectators, and small children run out of patience long before the ship clears the last gate. We were fine with that. We saw what we came to see and left when the girls were done.

Planning the Rest of Your Panama City Trip

If this is your first time in the city, our Panama City with kids guide keeps everything in one place. Things to do in Panama City with kids covers the rest of what we tried, our Panama City family itinerary shows how we fitted it all together, and the Panama City travel tips page has the practical things we wish we’d known before we landed.