Panama: pretty great. The Panama City aesthetic is the first thing that strikes you on the drive from the airport: chrome and colorful and BIG, with absurdly distracting animated LED brake lights sprinkled throughout. Optimus Prime was designed by a Panamanian, I’m sure of it.
They are mostly not kidding around about the whole not-speaking-English thing, but otherwise I think you can safely count Panama as an absurdly American-friendly travel destination. This is probably pretty obvious — after all, we’re responsible for spurring Panamanian independence from Colombia, they use American currency, and the School of the Americas boasted both Panamanian facilities (now a resort!) and graduates.
Honestly, what’s most striking is how benign this history of meddling currently seems. At the moment, at least, the country is prosperous, proud and happy. Panama City is an impressive, cosmopolitan place. A tourist’s perspective can’t be trusted, and we didn’t venture toward the more dangerous Colombian border, but driving through a large chunk of the country without seeing any real human suffering must count for at least something. The experience made me feel uneasily comfortable with American hegemony — though it was well timed for our burgeoning Cold War resumption, I suppose. Probably I’ll eventually be deeply embarrassed to have thought this, but for now: things seem like they’ve worked out.
Otherwise? The canal is pretty cool. Santa Catalina is a lovely little surf town. The coffee is sadly not as good as Panamanians think (mostly because they don’t brew it strongly enough), but the hats seem legit. Panama City is very impressive, and Casco Viejo is particularly lovely. Boquete was a lush respite from the heat (though its animals failed to cooperate with our hiking plans). We fucked our rental car up pretty good. All in all, a great vacation.
