I had always planned to visit Panama. I had heard that it was possible to sail from Cartagena through the San Blas Islands (which are part of Panama). This seemed like an alternative means of travel that I would find appealing. I also wanted to visit the Panama Canal. Panama is a relatively easy country to visit. They use U.S. currency. Panama mints coins, but not paper money. U.S. and Panamanian coins are used interchangeably. Although English isn’t widely spoken, Panama does have a solid infrastructure with buses that run on predictable courses and some modern cities. No one would confuse Panama for Western Europe or the USA, but like Colombia, Panama is a far cry from Peru, Guatemala, Nepal, or some of the other poorer places I have seen.

I have broken up the separate pages a bit differently in this section. As usual, I have chronologically visited site pages for the San Blas Islands and Panama City. I visited the Panama Canal sites one day while I was in Panama City, but the canal seemed to deserve a page to itself, so I included that separately even though that visit occurred during my time in Panama City. The rest of the Panama City visit is included in the page labeled Panama City.