Panoma. The pivot of the Americas.

Panama isn't simply a Central American country — it's the pivot of the Americas. Geographically, the isthmus draws an S just 75 km wide at its narrowest point, where the Atlantic and Pacific contemplate each other. Politically, it became independent from Colombia in 1903, in a movement orchestrated with Washington to allow the canal's construction. Economically, it lives off transit — maritime via the canal, air via the Copa Airlines hub serving the whole continent, financial via an offshore center that made it the 'Latin Singapore'. And culturally, it's the most cosmopolitan country in Central America : Spanish descendants, Afro-Antilleans who came from Barbados and Jamaica to dig the canal, a Chinese community (since 1854, the oldest in Central America), Indian, Lebanese, Sephardic Jewish communities, and of course seven indigenous peoples who still occupy 22% of the territory in autonomous comarcas.

At the center of it all is the Panama Canal. Opened in 1914 after ten years of American works (and a first French project abandoned in 1889 under Ferdinand de Lesseps), it runs 80 kilometers and saves 12,000 km around Cape Horn. At the Miraflores locks, you watch the Panamax container ships pass live — the fascination is total, mechanical, hydraulic. Since the 2016 expansion, new Neopanamax locks allow the giants through: 15,000 ships a year, nearly 6% of world maritime trade. The Canal returned to Panamanian sovereignty on December 31, 1999 — a date Panamanians still celebrate. And next door, the Old Town — UNESCO 1997, a colonial old town of baroque churches and restored Andalusian balconies, with the rooftop bars of the American Trade Hotel or Tantalo — facing Panama City's futuristic skyline; nowhere else in the world offers that contrast.

Beyond the capital, Panama is two countries layered on top of each other : the Caribbean and the Pacific. On the Caribbean side, the archipelago of San Blas / Guna Yala — 365 islands of which 49 are inhabited, managed by the Guna people since their 1925 revolution (the Guna are one of the very rare peoples in the world to have kept real political autonomy within a state). The women still sew molas, those reverse-appliqué textile panels considered a peak of world folk art — each mola is unique, hand-signed by its seamstress. Further west, Bocas del Toro, an archipelago of nine islands fringed with coral reefs and mangroves, where the Afro-Caribbean influence sets the tone — English Creole, calypso, coconut rice. On the Pacific side,Coiba Island — a former federal prison returned to nature in 2004, a UNESCO marine site since 2005, the largest tropical marine park in the Eastern Pacific — where whale sharks, manta rays and schools of hammerheads parade past. And the peninsula ofAzuero, the country's folkloric heart, birthplace of the tamborito and the pollera, the traditional dress considered the most beautiful in Latin America.

On the nature side, Panama plays in the big leagues. Wedged between Colombia and Costa Rica, at the biogeographic junction of the two Americas, it shelters nearly 1,000 bird species — more than Canada and the United States combined. This is home to the Harpy Eagle (águila harpía), the national bird and and the most powerful raptor in the world, which hunts monkeys and sloths in the Darién canopy. This is where you find the Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki), a national symbol critically endangered. On the coffee side, the highlands of Boquete and Volcán have produced for twenty years the legendary Geishavariety, whose lots from Hacienda La Esmeralda have shattered every world auction record — over 10,000 dollars a pound at special sales. One last decisive point: Panama is outside the hurricane corridor. No hurricane possible — the latitude is too low. While its northern neighbors have to manage hurricane season, Panama can be visited year-round. It's the only Central American country you can say that about.