Panama’s historic towns and wild islands

Most tourists in Panama focus on its “storied” canal and resort towns such as Bocas del Toro. But this Central American country – a narrow isthmus stretching for 500 miles between Costa Rica (to the west) and Colombia (to the east) – offers far more to interest the curious traveller, said David Amsden in Condé Nast Traveller.

The canal, which was completed in 1914, bisects the country at its midpoint, where it is narrowest (at a mere 37 miles across). And set beside the Pacific coast at the great waterway’s southern end is Panama City, where its “sprawling” skyline of steel-and-glass skyscrapers trumpets the success of “Central America’s fastest-growing economy”. However, I stayed in the charming, pastel-hued old town, at the “excellent” Hotel La Compañía Casco Antiguo. From Panama City, I went on a “zigzagging” road trip, stopping first at Portobelo, a “drowsy” town with “candy-coloured” buildings on the Caribbean coast. It’s a place of “raw” beauty, with a “hushed, draughty” cathedral and an impressive Spanish fortress (in its early days, the town’s harbour was often raided by pirates).

It is also home to a large Afro-Panamanian community, the subject of “striking” photos by Sandra Eleta, a celebrated artist who runs an informal artists’ residency and hotel called La Morada de la Bruja, or The Witch’s Abode. An “eclectic compound” with breezy verandas and walls hung with “folkloric” murals and feathered masks, it is the best stay in town.

Next, I visited the Guna Yala islands, a “mesmerising” Caribbean archipelago that has been governed by the indigenous Guna people since 1925. Exploring it on a yacht chartered from San Blas Sailing, I enjoyed such “elemental” pleasures as snorkelling with stingrays and drinking rum cocktails on palm-fringed beaches.

My final stop was the undulating, big-skied Azuero Peninsula, on the Pacific coast, where I went riding and surfing, and also sailed alongside a pod of humpback whales.