Panama City

Panama City's skyline is genuinely startling for a Central American capital — a dense cluster of glass high-rises along the bay that visitors more often compare to Miami or parts of the Gulf than to its regional neighbors. That density traces largely to Panama's role as a global banking and shipping hub, built around the canal that gives the country its outsized economic weight.

Directly across the water sits Casco Viejo, the colonial old town built after the pirate Henry Morgan destroyed the original settlement, Panamá Viejo, in 1671. Restored over recent decades from a genuinely rundown state, Casco Viejo's plazas, churches, and wrought-iron balconies earned UNESCO recognition and now anchor the city's restaurant and nightlife scene.

The Panama Canal itself remains the city's defining landmark, and the Miraflores Locks visitor center makes it a genuinely watchable one — viewing platforms overlook the lock chambers as ships, from massive container carriers to small private yachts, rise and fall through the system, timed around a published transit schedule.

Panama City also holds a claim few capitals can make: a real tract of rainforest, Ancón Hill and the wider Metropolitan Natural Park, sits inside the city limits, dense enough to support sloths, toucans, and occasional sightings of larger wildlife within a short walk of downtown high-rises.

The US dollar's role as legal tender, a legacy of Panama's early 20th-century relationship with the United States during the canal's construction and later handover, makes budgeting here simpler for American visitors specifically than almost anywhere else in Latin America.