Initially when planning our stopover in Panama City (an easy and cheap option with COPA), we had planned to visit the Panama WHS and the Portobelo part of the Portobelo-San Lorenzo WHS, using public transport. But after seeing how easy driving is in the country (a whole swathe of the country was basically part of the USA for years), we decided to hire a car for the day to visit San Lorenzo and the canal.

Visiting San Lorenzo is easier than it used to be, thanks to the building of a new bridge north of Gatun, the Puente Atlantico. It's an impressive bridge to drive across, and there's no toll. Continue down the road past Fort Sherman, past the old military booth where no-one waved us down. The road is now nicely sealed all the way to San Lorenzo, at least when the road works present when we visited in June 2022 are finished. 

San Lorenzo itself was also undergoing renovations. There's a new video with a version in English from early 2022 that we watched before wandering around the site, with newish signs in both English and Spanish. We joked that they were preparing the site for sound-and-light shows (about the pirates, of course), as the renovations involved more concrete than we thought was suitable. However, we noticed the restorations at Panama Viejo also involved more modifications than we expected, with signs explaining they were making the new parts distinct from the old. 

The fortress by itself isn't that impressive, but if they inscribe the extensions for the overall Trans-Isthmus route, of which both fortresses are part, the WHS has more weight. 

Of course we also visited part of the canal. We followed the signs to the new Aqua Clara Locks and its visitor centre nearby, where we watched a huge container ship pass through, before being treated to a huge thunderstorm with lightning that may have hit the ship and enough rain to almost flood the road out. It was sunny by the time we got to the Miraflores Locks, although we skipped paying to visit another set of locks.