Panama: Much More Than Palm Trees Swaying in the Tropical Breeze

Panama. Warm, tropical, palm trees silhouetted against the golden sky of a setting sun. Yes, it is all those romantic things. But it is so much more. Its capital is the most modern city south of the U.S. If this is the third world, I missed the first somewhere in my travels. Panama City is a world-leading financial center with some 120 banks, many with competing glass and steel monuments to commerce. Panama is shopping, U.S. style. Many of the stores found on Main Street, U.S.A., are here too. After all, the Panama Canal was run by Americans for almost 100 years, and the American military had a major presence here until 1999. Panama once had a reputation as part of the pipeline for Colombian drugs. It suffered under the savage dictatorship of Manuel Noriega, until he was captured and imprisoned by American troops in December, 1989. The country has had a peaceful democracy ever since. Like Costa Rica, it has no military. Money is spent on education instead, and its people have a high level of literacy. And if you need medical attention here, your doctor is likely to have been trained in the U.S. or Europe. Panama is silver sand on the Caribbean side and black volcanic sand on the Pacific side. It has the second-largest volcanic crater in the world inside which nestles a popular tourist and retirement town. (The largest is the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.) It is dessert and mountaintop. It can be humid all year, or like spring for all 12 months, depending on where you are in this small country. Panama is world-class hotels and resorts, the best roads in Central America by far (many were built by Americans). And Brinks gives the country a top rating for personal safety. Panama is tales of pirates, of Spanish treasure and the forts that tried to protect it; it is jungle and monkeys and parrots. It has more birds than all of North America put together, some 960 different species. There is even a jungle preserve right inside the city limits. And Darien National Park on the Colombian border is a jungle of monstrous size and one of the world