Taking a short cut across the Isthmus of Panama, the narrow strip of land that divides the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, has been a reality ever since the Spanish conquistador Vasco Nuñez de Balboa hiked across in 1513, but it was more than 400 years before the dream of sailing from one ocean to the other via this short cut was realised with the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. Now, even as the Canal approaches its 95th anniversary, the voyage remains as delightful and memorable as it must have been to those who first took it, if only because it’s as much about going up and down as it is going across.


These days, sailing through the Panama Canal is a small pleasure in that many of the cruise ships now plowing the waves are simply too large to fit through. This will change by 2014 (the Canal’s centenary) at the latest, say Panamanian officials, with the building of an additional series of locks alongside the existing locks — at an estimated cost of €3.87bn — to accommodate modern super-sized ships. 


In the meantime, traversing the Canal is an intimate affair that is best experienced by starting on the Pacific side, if only to avoid departing from Miami where the hordes of roll-on roll-off seniors in wheelchairs makes it seem as if you’re boarding a hospital ship.


We chose to begin our voyage in Costa Rica, where eco-tourism and a cool mountain climate promises a pleasant layover. While the capital, San José, is unremarkable, there are good buys on locally produced items made from exotic woods such as rosewood and the purple-colored amaranth. The Hotel Grano de Oro, once the tropical Victorian-style home of a local coffee baron, features a fantastic restaurant with regional fare such as a cloudy white guanabana juice and a pejibaye soup that is like a milder version of pumpkin, and is worth an overnight stay.


Departure from Caldera, a lonely port on Costa Rica’s west coast, comes after a three-hour overland car trip through a landscape of mountains and rainforest. The ship, the 68,870-ton Crystal Serenity, is superb and the addition of specialised Japanese and Italian restaurants translates into deliciously varied dining experiences.


The main advantage in leaving from Caldera is that you’re already at the entrance to the Canal on the morning of the second day aboard ship. On the approach to the Canal, the interesting scenery is on the starboard side of the ship. Book a berth with a balcony and you’ll enjoy breakfast views of the small town of Balboa in the foreground and the towering skyscrapers of Panama City hugging the coast beyond. The approach ends as you pass under the beautifully designed Bridge of the Americas that seems to have only a tenuous hold on the two continents it links.


The next phase of the journey is navigating the Miraflores Locks, which look very big at first but seem increasingly narrow as the ship slowly enters with the assistance of tugboats. Canal workers help the process further by attaching cables to the bow and stern, which are then linked to six small, guiding locomotives running on parallel tracks along the banks of the canal. Each lock chamber is 33.5m wide and 305m long but the Serenity slides in like a commuter train arriving at a station platform, with only a small gap to spare on either side. Water floods the gravity-fed locks and the ship rises 16.4m in two stages. After a short journey across a man-made lake, the ship enters the Pedro Miguel Lock and rises another 9.4m. As it crosses the Continental Divide, the ship sails through the 12.6km Gaillard Cut, a narrow defile flanked by towering cliffs and jungle that stretches to the horizon. 


The last portion of the crossing occurs just in time for evening cocktails where, after cruising through an even larger man-made lake that provides water to the locks, the ship enters the equally narrow Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side. At the Gatun Lock, the Serenity begins its descent, being lowered 25.9m in three stages before heading into Limon Bay and the Caribbean Sea beyond. 


Roughly 52 million gallons of fresh water have been used to get 
the ship through both the Atlantic and Pacific locks and the final toll for Serenity’s 80km passage through the Canal is $194,210 (€143,715), a fee that varies according to ship size. That’s a staggering €1,796/km but it’s money well spent, as the 14,000 other ships that use the Canal every year will testify. The eight- to 10-hour journey saves 7,860 nautical miles for a ship travelling from New York to San Francisco, and, as they say, time – or in this case distance – is money. Our final destination is St Barthélemy in the French West Indies, 1,693 nautical miles from Caldera; we can only guess where the other ships are headed.