PANAMA CANAL: The Waterway That Could Stop World Trade | 4K Travel Documentary

Ships do not sail through the Panama Canal. They are lifted twenty-six metres over a mountain range on a staircase of fresh water, and every crossing flushes roughly two hundred million litres of it into the sea, never to be recovered. That water is not seawater. It is rain — collected in a man-made lake above a drowned valley, in one of the wettest watersheds on Earth. In 2023, the rain did not come. Gatún Lake fell to its lowest level since at least 1965, daily transits were cut from thirty-eight ships to twenty-four, and around six percent of global maritime trade began queueing offshore. In this documentary, discover how a strip of land three million years old rerouted the Gulf Stream, why twenty-five thousand people died digging a ditch that could not be dug at sea level, what lies beneath the surface of Gatún Lake, and the decision Panama has now made to drown a second valley so the ships keep moving. Take a breath. Stay a while. ▶ See More Travel Documentaries:    • UGANDA: The Country Where the Nile Truly B...      • TAIWAN: The Island You Only Know From the ...   ▶ Subscribe:    / @whereonearth4k   #Panama #TravelDocumentary #Documentary #WhereOnEarth #CentralAmerica #PanamaCanal