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The Panama Canal
Home » Panama » Panama Activities and Attractions » The Panama CanalThe place to view the Panama Canal is called Miraflores Locks. There is a viewing deck and the Miraflores Visitor Center, a state-of-the-art museum with interactive exhibits of the Canals history, people and ecosystem. You can also combine your visit to the Canal with a meal at the Miraflores Restaurant with its extraordinary views of ships as they pass through the locks as you dine.
Due to the vital importance of water for the Canal’s operation and the direct inter-relation between the rainy tropical forest and the pluvial precipitation, the wooded areas that surround the Canal have been converted into managed national parks and biological reserves. These protected areas are also used for eco-tourism and scientific research.
The Chagres National Park covers 320,000 acres of rainforest that provides 40% of the fresh water that goes into the inter-oceanic waterway. The Soberania National Park consists of over 55,000 acres in a tropical forest boasting amazing biodiversity.
In the largest section of the Canal, Gatun Lake, the Barro Colorado Island was declared a biological reserve in 1923. It offers a great variety of plant and animal life, especially monkeys, and has been recognized worldwide for its scientific research. Since 1946 it has been under the administration of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
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