The Panama Canal was opened in 1914-the first man-made link between the Atlantic and the Pacific. For more than 50 years it has handled the ever-increasing traffic of world shipping. Today it can no longer cope. The modern solution is to cut another canal with nuclear explosives.
Five nations are now involved in the search for a new route. Their final decision will involve not just politics and economics but the social problems of the peoples who live there.
The Golden Isthmus is the story of 450 years of man's efforts to bridge the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and of the native peoples who have had to suffer them.

Ten tons of hovercraft arrive in the West African republic of Senegal, and the first stage of the expedition, the journey from St Louis to Bamako, begins.
Africa, between the towns and villages, is like outer space... and we, in our heaving, hissing, belching machine, are like comic astronauts exploring the great void, unaware of the fact that no man has ever touched upon the land and water which we merrily detonate in dust and spray, as if our purpose is to wake up a sleeping age and then disappear.