Panama

The Bocas del Toro archipelago off Panama's Caribbean coast is a cluster of nine main islands and countless smaller ones, known for Red Frog Beach on Bastimentos — a long curve of pale sand, surfable waves, and some of the most accessible coral reefs in Central America.

Panama City's original walled city was destroyed by pirate attack in 1671; the replacement, Casco Viejo, was rebuilt on a peninsula and today stands as the world's most coherent ensemble of Spanish colonial secular architecture, framed by the modern skyline and the Pacific harbour.

Coiba National Park covers 270,125 hectares of marine and terrestrial environments centred on Coiba, the largest island in Central America, separated from the mainland by 12,000 to 18,000 years of sea-level rise and home to a remarkable collection of endemic species found nowhere else on earth.

The Miraflores Locks lift and lower vessels 26 metres between sea level and Gatun Lake, the midpoint of the 82-kilometre Panama Canal, in a dramatic sequence of water, steel and tropical heat that has defined global maritime trade for over a century.

The San Blas Islands are a chain of approximately 365 islands off Panama's Caribbean coast, governed by the Guna people under a semi-autonomous comarca, known for crystalline water, white sandbanks that appear and disappear with the tides, and a culture that has successfully resisted assimilation for five centuries.

At 3,475 metres, Volcán Barú is the highest peak in Panama and the only place in the country where you can stand above the cloud forest and — on the rarest, clearest mornings — see both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea simultaneously from the same viewpoint.