Panama City is the only capital in the world with a rainforest inside its limits, and a canal at its door. The city curves round a bay on the Pacific side, with a skyline of glass towers that looks more like Miami than anything in Central America, and behind it the old quarter, Casco Viejo, is a peninsula of balconied houses, plazas and church towers rebuilt after the pirate Henry Morgan sacked the first settlement in 1671. The ruins of that first city, Panamá Viejo, still stand a few kilometres east, with a bell tower you can climb.
The Canal is what made the place. The Americans completed it in 1914, after the French failed, and it still lifts ships over the isthmus in giant locks. At Miraflores you can stand beside the lock and watch a vessel taller than a building slide past at walking pace. Across the Bridge of the Americas, the road leads west to the old Spanish fortress at San Lorenzo, which sits on a headland at the mouth of the Chagres river, to guard the route along which Spanish gold once moved from the Pacific to the Caribbean. The rides here lead into that jungle and history.
Riding in the city needs care. Traffic is dense and aggressive, lanes are suggestions, and the rain, when it comes in the wet season from May to December, falls in great afternoon downpours that turn the roads slick and the drains into rivers. The dry season from January to April is much easier, with blue skies and a steady breeze. Once you get out through the Canal area, the roads on the Gatun side run through thick green forest with tall trees, hanging vines and the sound of birds, and you might see toucans, monkeys or a sloth in the roadside trees.
Fuel is easy in the city, with modern stations everywhere. Pack a rain jacket whatever the forecast, as the sky can turn quickly. Ceviche and fried fish at the fish market by the bay is a real local lunch, and the coffee in Casco Viejo is as good as any in the region.