my husband and i will be traveling to panama for two weeks this upcoming january!
we would like to experience as much of the country in as we can.
..any helpful tips would be appreciated!
rent a car?
hire a driver/tour guide?
history/architecture/bookstore are of particular interest and we are both professional chefs so local food and markets are mandatory!
thank you, everyone!
It’s been a few years but I’ll start things off. Temper your expectations. Panama is worth a visit and I enjoyed four days there, but two weeks is a long time. The old part of Panama City is interesting for half a day. The rest of Panama City is modern, chaotic sprawl. Visit the canal locks of course, and there is good rain forest hiking in nearby parks, and we enjoyed hiring a taxi to take us a bit north to El Valle, and a ferry for a bit of beach at Taboga Island. We saw little evidence of interesting food. There are tropical fruits and fresh fish, but no real indigenous cuisine. It’s either rice and beans, or the kind of restaurant that caters to businessmen coming for the purpose of Panama’s vibrant money laundering economy.
The highlight of any trip to Panama is a transit of the canal or at least one of series of the historic locks. I would definitely look for options to do this. I only spent a brief time there ( a canal transit and a day in Panama City), but I’m pretty sure that if I were going to spend 2 weeks there, only a few days would be in Panama City and then I would out into a more rural area.
