Bocas del Toro

Bocas del Toro is an archipelago in Panama's Caribbean corner where the streets are water: nine islands and hundreds of cays, tied together by water taxis that leave when they are full, with Bocas Town on Isla Colón — a grid of Caribbean-Victorian wooden houses on stilts, built when the United Fruit Company ran its banana empire from here in 1899 — as the hub. Bastimentos keeps the Afro-Caribbean village of Old Bank and the red frogs of its beach; Zapatilla's two cays keep the marine park; Boca del Drago keeps a shore where starfish lie in the shallows like dropped coins; and the north shores keep the surf.

The traveller gives each day to an island: Isla Colón for Bluff and Starfish Beach; Bastimentos for the walk over the hill to Red Frog and the calypso of Old Bank; Zapatilla for the snorkelling of the marine park, with a stop in Dolphin Bay on the way; Carenero for a beer over the water at sunset; and Bocas Town every evening for the wooden bars on stilts. Surfers come from December to March for Paunch, Bluff and Silverbacks; the rest of the year the archipelago is for the swimmers, the sloths and the slow.

The Guide's honesty: it rains here in every month, seriously — the two drier windows are real but modest, and a wet afternoon is the price of the green —; the water taxis are the transport and the fun, and the fare is set, so ask before boarding; the sea between islands has current and boat traffic, so swim from beaches, not from docks; sandflies own the dusk on some beaches; and Bocas has grown fast and a little rough at the edges, and its Ngäbe and Afro-Caribbean communities deserve the visitor's respect and money more than the resorts do.