Allow me to sum up my twelve-day road trip in Panama using a sample of dialogue between my son and me.

“Liam, where are we supposed to turn?”

“Riiiiight… HERE! Turn now! Now now now!”

I blink.

“Too late, you missed it.”

My twenty-year-old son and I clocked 1000 kilometres of sometimes lit and labeled and mostly smooth Panamanian roads. I know what you’re thinking. “You’re brave!” I know you’re thinking this because it was the reaction I got from most everyone I told that we were taking a road trip in Panama. They looked at me with puzzled admiration like I was an enigma and not a sane person.

I admit I was a bit worried. As our departure day approached, my internal dialogue escalated from: “We could get lost,” and “I don’t speak enough Spanish.” To: “We could get kidnapped for ransom by professional roadside kidnappers and then someone’s going to have to identify our bodies!”

Yet, we made it unscathed through rainforests, small coastal towns, to and from canals, and even to the big busy city. We didn’t get terribly lost, my Spanish was better than I thought, and no one tried to kidnap or kill us. The following is an account of what really happened:

#1. On this first segment of our road trip, we only got lost once near this town called Colon which is the murder capital of Panama (according to the trip advisor community) and we didn’t even get murdered.

Maria Chiquita is a quaint seaside town on the Caribbean side with the population of roughly 2000 locals and zero tourists. The purpose of staying here was to visit the Gatun Locks, the newly opened expansion of the Panama Canal. I’m no engineering buff, but I was rubbing my chin in amazement while eavesdropping on the guided tour we weren’t a part of. Did you know there was enough steel in the Canal’s construction to build nineteen Eiffel Towers? And it’s long enough to accommodate the Empire State Building should anyone want to move it.

Maria Chiquita was also the perfect spot to jump over to the nearby town of Portobelo where we hiked its national park, photographed its colourful buses, checked out its crumbling ruins without running into a single tourist, and lounged with locals at Playa La Angosta.

It’s hard to pick which of those activities was my favourite so I’ll tell you which was the most memorable: the hike in the rainforest. We had hired a private guide to take us on an all-day adventure; canoeing, portaging, and hiking to waterfalls and vistas via the rainforest. But when we arrived at the meeting point, my son took one look at the distance we were meant to canoe and immediately poopooed the idea. I was relieved that I didn’t have to endure being doped up on the back of a wee boat (I suffer from motion sickness) but it was awkward being sandwiched in a standoff between a guide ready to take us out and my son shaking his head and saying, “Nah, you go ahead.” As a consolation prize, the guide took us hiking in the national park of Portobelo.

I remember thinking, “This is dumb. Why do we need a guide to walk around a forest?”

I’ll tell you why: no signs, no trails, no people. It would’ve been the perfect place to get eaten by the monkeys we heard howling in the distance, their voices so deep I was convinced they were related to King Kong. And we also came thiiis close to being attacked by the biggest bees I’d ever seen in my life (killer monkey-bees, perhaps?). Had our guide not pointed out the nest the size of a Mini Cooper I would’ve hurdled over it like an Olympian, and then for sure my body would never have been identifiable or even discovered for that matter.

#2. On this next segment of our road trip, we didn’t get lost at all! Instead, we discovered that weaving up and around mountains and valleys on potholed roads without guardrails in the fog is a bad idea.

Sheraton Biljao is a four star—debatably a three-star—all-inclusive resort on the Pacific side. We enjoyed the resort, but mostly we used it as a resting spot from which we visited Anton Valley. Oh, how we loved the Valley. We soaked in thermal waters and slopped black mud on our faces, we zip lined in the jungle, we learned all about butterflies in the $5 conservatory, and we hiked up a mountain in search of the sleeping woman and some old rock with ancient scribblings. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a guide to eavesdrop on so we could understand the importance of what we were looking at, but the upside of having gone rogue in the Valley was the joy of relying on an eager old local woman to take us through her backyard (“it’s a shortcut,” she said). This clever lady showed us how to get to the spot via an uphill mudslide—for free—instead of taking the nicely paved stairs like a paying tourist—suckers!

#3. We had read reviews that driving in Panama City, with the population of almost a million, was a death wish. So on this last segment, we ditched our rental in favour of .35 cent metro rides and my dear friend, Uber.

This was not my first visit to Panama City, and even though on this occasion we spent four days savouring it, I wouldn’t object to doing it again. I could live here. I’d love to roll out of bed and head out for a busy morning of loitering along Cinta Costera, watching people and staring off over the waterfront with that skyline in the background. In the lazy afternoons, I’d challenge myself to sample each flavour of handmade ice cream from each café in the quaint cobblestoned district of Casco Viejo. For dinner, I’d try a different resto every night from your cheap hole-in-wall Panamanian fare to your modern-chic five-star dining. On a hot evening (and it’s always hot in Panama) I’d hit up the popup craft market along the water to stay cool…

…and I haven’t even touched on my top things to-do in Panama City. My son and I both agree that no visit to Panama would be complete without stopping by the Biomuseo (the museum of biodiversity) and Panama Viejo (the ruins of the original city dating back to the 1500’s).

I’m embarrassed to admit I had never even heard of Panama Viejo. I had devoted seventeen years in the travel industry and even visited Panama City in 2002 and somehow I missed this UNESCO gem. I’d like to point out, however, that it seemed a lot of people hadn’t heard of this spot. It was near empty. We ran from ruin to ruin snapping pictures without worry of people obstructing the shot because there were no people. We spent hours in its museum and if I said we ran into ten tourists I’d be exaggerating.

Our final stop was the Biomuseo. Every exhibit was interactive and immersive. We started our visit off with the rainforest experience: a 360-degree standing theatre with screens from the walls to the floor to the ceiling. I’m one of those people that retain nothing after leaving a place, but here’s something that stuck: long before Panama became the bridge of commercial trade, it was the bridge for which animals and plants migrated between the two continents starting almost three million years ago. Cats, dogs, and llamas were originally from North America. I never would’ve guessed given the number of stray cats and dogs in Brazil (do llamas run wild anywhere?). We spent a full day at the Biomuseo and if I said that it’s now my favourite museum in the whole wide world, I wouldn’t be exaggerating.

Allow me conclude this Panama post with a continuation of the sample dialogue between my son and me followed by the internal dialogue between rational Raquel and irrational Raquel (which Raquel is which is entirely up to you).

“Liam, what’s the GPS saying now?”

“It says to turn down that road with no name.”

“You mean that dark unpaved alley?”

“Uh huh.”

Gulp. Internal dialogue:

Q: “What if we get kidnapped for ransom and someone has to identify our bodies in Panama?”

A: “I can negotiate my ransom—my Spanish isn’t that bad.”

Q: “What if all the worst case scenarios happen at the exact same time?”

A: “What if they don’t?”