A tourist ship passes through one of the Gatun locks, a section of the Panama Canal near Colón, Panama. Ships must inch through 12 locks to travel from one ocean to another. Photo by Roger W / Flickr

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I felt like a Lilliputian as I stared up at the imposing oil tanker immediately ahead of our cruiser, the Pacific Queen. The ship was aptly named the STI Magnetic Majura, a mammoth 600-foot oil tanker from the Marshall Islands that can carry 47,500 tons. This floating behemoth was likely eight football fields long, one football field wide and two football fields tall.

Thankfully, it was empty. Our bow was so close I could almost touch it as we inched into the Panama Canal and tailed it all day.

This was the exciting, 7 a.m. start of my all-day transit through the 51-mile Panama Canal, one of the seven wonders of the modern world, an engineering marvel slicing through the Isthmus of Panama and connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

While transiting the canal is a bucket-list wish for many tourists, Panama offers much more to see: tropical forests, beaches and some of the best birdwatching in the world. During a Road Scholar trip to the country, our group also spent time exploring historic Panama City and an indigenous village nearby.

The main attraction

The Panama Canal is a strategic waterway that cuts almost 10,000 nautical miles off a ship’s voyage around Cape Horn, South America. So far this year, it has served 170 countries and serviced more than 13,000 transits, which take about eight to 10 hours each.

From my hotel window the day before, I was gobsmacked watching the steady, slow procession of humongous, multi-story ships carrying the world’s commerce in containers stacked 20 high, hauling trinkets made in China, cars from Japan, oil, grain and other vast miscellany.

Historian Jaime Robleto told my group, “You can ship corn through here, and two days later it’s cornflakes.”

One of my fellow travelers, Caroline St. Clair from Orlando, noted the irony: “The structure is mankind at its most audacious and its worst because of American consumerism, hauling cheap tchotchkes to the landfill.”

To squeeze through the canal’s locks — with two feet or less to spare on each side — and to keep boats centered, tugboats guide every vessel through the locks, rectangular compartments with entrance and exit gates.

For operational efficiency, smaller boats like ours usually sail behind a large vessel and must be scheduled ahead of time. A canal pilot boards and guides every ship. Every vessel pays a toll based on its size and cargo volume. Some tolls can reach $450,000. Our boat owner paid $3,700.

Here’s how the lock system works: Water from the man-made Gatun Lake in the middle of the canal flows to the locks by gravity and raises vessels from sea level to that of the lake, 85 feet above sea level, and then back down to sea level.

Each lock gate, eight stories high, has two “leaves,” which emerge from the lock walls and close like elevator doors. Easing through a lock can take up to two hours, but in Gatun Lake, ships can speed up a bit.

During our journey, we were captivated by plenty of canal-side sightseeing, from tropical birds to capybara, the world’s largest rodents, which resemble big guinea pigs.

Going through the nine-mile Culebra Cut, I studied rock layers and tried to imagine the 6,000 workers who blasted out this section with drills, dynamite and steam shovels, while combating landslides and mosquitoes.

Canal history

Two places for landlubbers to get their canal facts straight are the Canal Museum in Panama City and the Miraflores Locks Visitor Center. The museum highlights how Americans lived there during the canal’s U.S. ownership until 1999, with displays on furniture, commissaries, sports and entertainment of that era.

At the Miraflores Visitor Center, we watched massive ships crawl by. A film there narrated by Morgan Freeman recounts that the French tried to build a canal but gave up in 1889; the U.S. Corps of Engineers then completed it in 1914.

During these two combined construction projects, workers excavated 262 million cubic yards of earth and rock, and 25,000 people died in the process. In 1999, the U.S. turned it over to the Panamanians.

Panama City

Panama City is a cosmopolitan metropolis of modern skyscrapers, home to many international corporations. On a walk along the narrow, brick-paved streets through old town, Casco Viejo, a UNESCO World Heritage site, however, my mind went to 1519, the year of the city’s founding.

Amid the ironwork balconies and red-tile roofs are monuments to Simón Bolívar and the French canal builders. I explored the cathedral, a museum, some small churches and historic homes. I chatted with indigenous people selling crafts in the plaza, like Guna molas exquisitely stitched on four layers of fabric.

In Panama City, the stunning Frank Gehry-designed Biomuseo seems like a haphazard jumble of red, blue, yellow and orange curved squares. Inside, surround-sound brings Panama’s natural resources to life, including fish under a glass floor. Exhibits trace the country’s history from the first modern humans in 11,500 B.C. to the Spanish peoples’ arrival in the 1500s to American astronauts who trained in the Panamanian jungle and learned survival tactics from people who lived there.

Indigenous people

Panama is a melting pot of 4.6 million people of Spanish, French, Mestizo and other backgrounds. Some indigenous communities sustain their traditions while also welcoming tourists.

In the Embera village of 30 or so families, we enjoyed a lunch of local tilapia, plantains and fruit, then watched women perform a dance with moves that mimic flying macaws, set to music by five men playing a bamboo flute, a deerskin drum, bongos and maracas.

We reciprocated by buying crafts, such as figurines carved from cocobolo wood and colorful masks made from palm fibers and other rainforest materials.

Nature stars

A country with two oceans, rainforests, beaches, coral reefs and rugged backcountry does not disappoint the adventurer.

I did not have to go far to marvel at nature’s wonders. Outside our hotel in Panama City, we watched a shaggy mother sloth in a tree with her clinging baby. Purple martins swooped over the hotel pool and dipped down for sips.

Steps away from the Gamboa Rainforest Resort, an eco-lodge in the rainforest, I was dazzled by 20 big-billed toucans “playing chase” and perching. Lucky travelers might see a howler monkey and the harpy eagle, the national bird with a two-meter wingspan, one of the country’s 1,026 bird species.

For my group, the canal was the biggest draw.

“Nearly every single person on earth has been affected and entire cultures shaped by this waterway,” St. Clair said. “I had to see it in person. It’s been one of my favorite trips so far.”

To book a day trip through the canal, visit panamacanaltrips.com. For more information, see tourismpanama.com.