Panama is an amazing place. While my Spanish is far from great, people were friendly, the food was amazing, Ubers were very affordable, and there was never a time I did not feel safe. From riding ATVs in the jungle, to sitting in the sand overlooking the San Blas Islands, the people were open, the activities were fun, and the wildlife was inspiring. Please let me know if you/your family is planning a trip as I'd be happy to share our itinerary with you.

Let me start by saying, I leveraged a cheat code here. I was 15 years old and was here for 9 weeks during the summer for various basketball reasons. I had two host families, one with grandparents. Usually, grandparents are scary as they typically are stuck in their ways and tend to be less open. It was ultimately the opposite, they took me in as one of their own, paid for museums and boat tours all over the country for me, and when speaking English was nothing but kind. I know speaking about grandparents is not ideal, but it really spoke to the youth of the area. The youth were as open, if not more, than the grandparents. I had people requesting to buy me drinks just because I was an outsider and they wanted to make me feel welcome. While I had a great time and felt safe all over the country there was only one drawback. A friend of mine joined me one night. We were approached by a man much older than us who asked me how much for my friend that evening. Once it was established she was not for sale and we were not those types of people, he quickly left. Yes, this can happen anywhere and he was rather polite about the whole thing. However, due to a more open culture, I believe that gave him the idea that asking would be okay. This only happened once, but still, something to be aware of. This occurred on my most recent trip to Denmark back in 2011.