From the sky, the first thing you notice are the ships. So many of them. Lined up, as if they’re stalled, bumper to bumper, in a big city’s rush-hour traffic jam. Huge cargo vessels and their multi-colored shipping crates, with wares from all over the world, piled up to the height of a high rise. On board: hundreds of millions of metric tons of brand-new vehicles and heaps of grains and cereals, along with loads of energy, coal and oil, and much more. The lifeblood of the world, waiting to pass from sea to sea.
Perhaps the most vital waterway on earth, the Panama Canal slices through a little more than 50 miles of lush, Central American rainforest, the water dividing two continents. Located at one of the narrowest points of land in the Americas, the importance of opening of the canal in 1914 cannot be understated. It literally shaved weeks off of often-hazardous ocean voyages. Previously, ships would have to sail “around the horn,” down at the bottom of South America. Proceeding around Cape Horn, these vessels were routinely rocked by the infamous winds and waves of the Drake Passage, one of the world’s most tempestuous stretches of sea….