Our first night was spent at El Almirante in Granada, a pleasant colonial-style hotel with rooms around a central open courtyard, which was probably the best feature. It made a perfect location for a great breakfast, probably the best of our trip. Eggs, bacon, potatoes, fried plantains, rice and beans , fresh corn tortillas and the terrific Nicaraguan coffee, rich and delicious, served in a clear glass pitcher.

• Car rental and driving: It’s doable but challenging. You must be constantly aware of not only motor vehicles but bicyclists, ciclo taxis, pedestrians, small children, animals from loose cows and horses to goats and chickens. Everything is in the road. Expect it, and don’t hit it. And if you manage to avoid that, watch out for the national police. There’s a good chance you’ll get stopped and coerced into coughing up a little cash for the privilege of driving on Nica roads. That happened just once to us, on our first day out, which put a damper on our enthusiasm for a little while, but it never happened again and we chalked it up to experience.

• We have traveled in Costa Rica and Panama, and I’d say that — minus the traffic cop incident — our Nica week was the best of them. Why? The beautiful country, the friendly people, the good food and the affordability. Oh yes, the good roads, too. Yes, when you get off the pavement the dirt roads are as bad as those anywhere, but the mostly paved highways are very good indeed. Here are some highlights, should you consider a trip there yourself, and I would strongly recommend it:

• Volcan Masaya: Near Managua and Granda, you can drive right up to the lip of a still-smoldering volcano.  In fact, there’s enough potential danger that you must turn around and park with your car facing the exit for a quick getaway if needed. And the sulfurous smells are so strong that visitors are advised to limit their stays for 20 minutes. In the daytime, you get to view steamy clouds rising. Nighttime offers a much better show, when the molten lava pool glows.

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• People: Trace Sanders at Hotel Convento, the most widely traveled person we’d ever met. This L.A. guy has been on the go for four years. And his stops have included Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. His web site tells (almost) all. Adam, the gentlest and best old-guy waiter we’ve ever encountered, has worked 14 years at the restaurant at Selva Negra. Oregonians Scott and Katy McCullaum and their Bonnie Lassie Luxury Spa in San Juan del Sur — where Katy gives terrific and reasonably priced massages. Dr. Julius Hellenthal of Austria and his young Nica girlfriend we met at the Timon beachfront restaurant in San Juan del Sure. He operates the Curismo clinic there that focuses on “umbilical cord stem cell treatment and bio electric cancer therapy.” And the young male Nicaraguans who gave us reason enough to return  — Juan Carlos, our guide to Las Isletas, Salvatore our horse-drawn carriage driver, Enoch at the Mombacho cigar store and the guy who resembled Seth at the Doña Elba cigar store. And finally, expat Teri Schroeder whom we met at the big Hotel Granada pool. She’s a nurse from the Seattle area who lives nearby the hotel and whose husband does volunteer work.

• Selva Negra: the “black forest” area of Nicaragua in the north. Hearing the barks of howler monkeys and finding an elusive resplendent quetzal. Lakeside dining. Great steak and old Adam, the perfect waiter.

• Food and drink. Fish like dorado and guapote and seafood from shrimp to lobster. Plantains and fried cheese. Rice and beans and salads with thin slices of cabbage and beets. Toña beer, the most popular brew — a light, fizzy lager best served as cold as possible.

• San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua’s coastal playground. The town is inviting, but rough by U.S. standards. There are good places to eat on the beachfront, but even the best hotels leave something to be desired. We stayed a night each at the Hotel Colonial and Hotel Gran Oceano. Both were nicely situated, but at the first we had to put up with barking dogs and a powerful scent of insecticide that ruined our breakfast, and the shower at the second didn’t work. Incidentally, both offered “suicide showers” — an electrical gizmo that heats the water at the shower head. You adjust the temp, if you can, by turning a switch while you’re in the shower. Suicide, get it? We wanted to explore the coastline around there, but  it wasn’t what we expected. The road north from SJDS was a rough-and-tumble 4-wheeler-only dirt route that only gave us a taste of the wrenching poverty of back-country Nicaragua.

• Full circle, and rediscovery in Granada. For our last night before returning to Managua and the airport, we took the advice of our MP Travel rep Cézar Ramirez, and booked into the Hotel Granada. What a find. By far the best place we’d stayed. A huge Olympic-sized pool we had virtually to ourselves. From that base, we enjoyed a wonderful $20 tour of Las Isletas in Lake Nicaragua, a couple of rides in a horse-drawn carriage, visited a couple of cigar factories and had two great meals at one of the best restaurants, El Zaguán.

I won’t dispute that, after spending much of our 11-day trip at elevations from 8,000 to 12,000 feet and feeling somewhat breathless from time to time.

The journey is in three parts — Guayaquil, the police strike and then Cuenca and Quito environs.

We visited Gabriela’s home, met other family members, spent time at her school, and toured the nearby Children International community center which provides activities and health care for families. We brought gifts to Gabriela, but also paper, pencils and supplies for other children at the community center.

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We then took mom and daughter to a big shopping mall where we had lunch and Gabriela enjoyed her first McDonald’s Happy Meal and got a Barbie doll with it.  Afterward, we stopped at a clothing store in the mall where they bought (at half off) some new clothes. From there, we went grocery shopping at a supermarket where they filled up a cart with a whole chicken, big bag of rice, other staples and some treats.

It was a sad good-bye when we had to leave them at their home in mid-afternoon. Mother and daughter hugged us both, saying, “I love you.”

We learned about and already were aware of issues involving the country’s police — specifically that you might be stopped for something and asked for money to get released. Since we decided not to drive, but to hire drivers, that wasn’t an issue.

But on the morning of Sept. 30, as we ate breakfast at our hotel, we noticed a lot of other people watching the TV in the dining room intently — some kind of protest at a police facility north of Quito. Later, we headed toward the Parque Calderón, Cuenca’s main square, and saw a demonstration under way in front of the regional government building. A hundred or so mostly young people were gathered listening to a fiery speaker sound off. They waved flags and chanted. Someone lit a pile of tires on fire in the street.

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I quickly slipped into a journalist mode and started shooting the affair with my Canon 40D while Nancy stood back. As I circled around for a new view, she intercepted me and told me a shopkeeper was warning people to hide any valuables, especially cameras, because the police were on strike and there was no protection. But I walked down the street and was able to shoot iPhone video of a procession of police vehicles, sirens screaming, that slowly drove around the square, filled with flag-waving protesters.

We were expecting to hop on a city tour bus about that time, and I figured that wasn’t going to happen. But Nancy found someone who spoke English who pointed to a group of tourists heading away from the square. We joined them, found the double-decker tour bus had parked away from the square, paid our $5 apiece and hopped aboard for a pleasant and educational two-hour tour.

You wouldn’t have known anything was out of the ordinary. At least until the tour was almost done — and some other Americans on the bus passed around the word that the airports had been closed.

What? Uh-oh. What looked like some rowdy fun was much more serious. And things got worse from there. We headed straight back to our hotel. It was early afternoon and shops were closing. Fewer cars and people were on the street. I asked at our hotel reception desk, “Is this a national emergency?” “Si.”

Many more people, with worried expressions, were watching the hotel’s big flat-screen TV. Now there was video of Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa in a crowd, being hit with tear gas, and being led away wearing a gas mask.

Using the hotel’s wireless Internet service, I had to get onto news sites with my iPhone to find out what was going on. It looked pretty dire. Correa was in a police hospital, held by his opponents. Reports of an attempted coup d’etat. Police were upset that Correa and the legislature had cut their benefits. The army was on his side, but apparently the air force wasn’t — and that’s why the airports were shut. The U.S. embassy warned Americans in-country to stay at their homes or hotels and those heading toward Ecuador to stay away.

So we stayed in. We ate dinner at the hotel dining room and mostly watched TV, all Spanish of course, and watched the talking heads and constantly repeating video clips. The news anchors were clearly agitated themselves, advertising was suspended, guests were brought in one after another off the street to talk, and by evening cameras were showing a studio filled with worried people.

Were we scared? Yes, some. But what could we do? We knew we were not in any physical danger — this was mostly a political conflict. Mostly, it was not knowing when or if the situation would ease before we had to fly to Quito. What if it went on for days or weeks? That would certainly cost us a lot more money.

Nancy, coming down with a cold, went to sleep and I flipped the channel to watch “Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” until going to sleep myself.

Next morning, Oct. 1, it was as if the clouds had cleared. During breakfast, we watched the TV showing night-vision views of troop movements and gunshots, injured soldiers. Was this war? No, an army raid on the hospital was able to release Correa unharmed. And he was roaring mad — the police insurgents would pay! Also, he imposed martial law. The army was now in charge of public safety. Later, we learned that the police realized they had lost — big — and returned to duty

And the people, having been down this road before, got back to normal life, pretty much. Shops opened, traffic resumed. We asked, “Is it over?” “Si, no problem, it’s OK now.” And yes, our flight was still scheduled. Airports were running, highways were open.

We walked back to the Parque Calderon and saw that, indeed, the army was in control. Groups of armed soldiers literally were gathered at almost every other corner, and particularly around banks.

We felt safer than we had since arriving in the country.

• In Guayaquil, after visiting Gabriela and her mom, we walked a lot downtown and that included the length of the Malecon, a kind of waterfront park with playgrounds and attractions for families. It was nice, but also a long walk under a hot sun.

• We opted out of an expensive taxi or cheap but risky bus ride to Cuenca. We asked the night manager at Grand Hotel Guayaquil about other transportation. He referred us to a van service operating near the airport for $12 per person. We rode with a driver and three men for several hours.

• Cuenca is everything it’s billed — historic, colonial, pretty and pleasant. Bigger than we expected at first, but after five days we realized it wasn’t THAT big. Cuenca and nearby villages are where the Panama hat is made and sold. It’s in the “sierra of the Andes” at about 8,000 feet, and occasionally we felt a bit breathless — although not uncomfortably so. We stayed two nights in the Hotel Santa Lucia (part of our Latin Destinations package), a converted high-end hacienda home built around a now-enclosed courtyard. All dark woods and carpets. Elegant, but a bit stuffy. For our remaining three nights, we scouted out and found (for half the price) the very well situated and comfortable Hotel El Conquistador. In fact, we got the junior suite on the top (5th) floor with a great city view.

• Check out THIS panoramic view from Turi, a suburb on the south side of Cuenca.

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• Food and drink: generally very good, more healthful than U.S. restaurant fare. Not hot like Mexican. Rice and beans and fish/seafood dishes. Corvina and shrimp. Plantain cooked in different ways. Entrees prices are usually single digits even in the best restaurants. Ecuador’s beers are Pilsener (a brand) and Club, straight lagers but a bit heavier than U.S. fizzy brews like Bud and Miller. Usually $1-2 a bottle. Wine is plentiful, usually from Chile and Argentina, about the same price as U.S. A real find: a half-bottle of Cono Sur WHITE merlot, D.O. Valle Central, 2006, Chile. The only white I’ve ever had that went down like a red. Alas, it must be a restaurant-only bottling, because I can’t find it on the Cono Sur site or anywhere online.

• Tree tomato (tamarillo) sauce. It’s everywhere, served on every table like ketchup in U.S. You’re usually served little rolls and you put it on that. With hot peppers, onion, cilantro and lime juice. Sometimes with chochos or lupini beans.

• Things we missed: Cuy — or guinea pig. Yes, a real delicacy here. Somehow we never got hungry, or bold enough, to try it. Also, it comes usually as a meal for two at about $20.

• Things observed: In the Andes highlands, you generally won’t find any heating or air conditioning. In our hotels there was no thermostat. That’s how even the temps are here — 70s or high 60s during the day. Some places may have a space heater to take the chill off.

• Don’t worry about money. Ecuador’s currency is the greenback — and coins. All is legal tender. Ecuador DOES mint some of its own coins, denominations same size as U.S. So these are mixed in with U.S. coins. Alas, vending machines back home won’t take the coins. I’ve tried.

• Driver/guides: This was perhaps our smartest move — finding and hiring driver-guides to take us to attractions near Cuenca and Quito at reasonable prices, about $10 an hour or a little more or less. We first checked some travel agencies and found that private drivers (even non-English speakers) went for $70-plus for a four-hour trip. Instead, we asked Jose, the desk clerk at Santa Lucia who said for he’d take us in his SUV the next day to Ingapirca, the country’s most well-known Incan ruins about 90 minutes north. He not only spoke good English, but answered our many questions throughout the trip. It was a delight. The next day we recruited him again to take us to a couple of villages to shop for crafts and collectibles and see more sights. In Quito, we hired a taxi to take us to Otovalo two hours away and wait a couple of hours while we shopped. The next day, a driver named Jorge who spoke a fair amount of English took us to the Middle of the Earth north of Quito to visit the equator and monument, then later showed us several important sites downtown.

Nancy and I started with that, and it’s spectacular. But we found so much more, like enjoying some of the world’s best coffee at its source, and  fruit like pineapple and mango that’s fresher than anything you’ve every tasted.

It’s been more than six months since we took you to the other side of the world, eastern Turkey, and that journey was unforgettable.

But come with us now to a place that’s not that far away, yet has its own exotica and romance.

Our trip started Tuesday, April 20, with a Delta flight from Detroit to Atlanta to Panama City.

Panama, the southernmost Central American country, is not that far by plane — a four-hour trip from Atlanta, not much farther than flying cross-country to California. We touched down at Tocumen International Airport, on the northeast edge of Panama City, late at night.

In keeping with our serendipity-plus-sense practice, we planned our trip weeks in advance, starting with a good airfare — less than $400 apiece and setting up accommodations the first night and night before departure, plus lodging at what we figured would be the apex of our trip, Boquete in the coffee-growing region.

And, of course, we arranged for a car rental to get us to all those serendipitous places we wanted to go.

Lodging for the rest of the nine-day trip, four nights, we’d figure out once we got in country. It’s a formula that’s worked well for us for decades, from trips to England in the 1980s to Europe, north Africa, and south and central America in the 1990s and 2000s.

Lodging choices we studied came from William Friar’s 2010 Moon Handbook on Panama, other guide books and lots of Internet searching on travel sites and checking reviews on TripAdvisor.com.

La Estancia, a B&B on Ancon Hill on the west side of the capital, was our first-night choice. For about $30 they provided a driver to pick us up at the airport and take us there — a good move considering our late arrival and our desire to avoid driving in the city. We’d been warned about the crazy motorists.

After all, Panama City is no sleepy backwater. With a metro population of 1.2 million, it’s the booming economic capital of central America. Its cityscape is like something out of a futuristic vision —dozens of high-rise buildings poking out of the hazy tropical panorama.

Ancon Hill is one of the many benefits the country got when the U.S. handed over the former Canal Zone in 1979. Site of 20^th-century military lodgings tucked into the lush canopy, the white wooden buildings with their screened porches still look like a great setting for a Humphrey Bogart movie.

The La Estancia B&B is in the Quarry Heights area of Ancon Hill. This is probably the best place to get started with a trip to anywhere in Panama. The little rooms are comfortable, air-conditioned and reasonable, at $75 for us. We quickly discovered that it’s a portal for American expats and other world travelers on their way into or out of the country. And the English-speaking managers will schedule all kinds of trips for you.

Our second-day focus was, naturally, a visit to the canal. Skipping this is like going to Paris and skipping the Eiffel Tower. A taxi took us there for a few dollars and we stayed for hours. Admission was $4 each, the “senior” rate.

A gleaming new (2000) visitor center gives a commanding view of the Miraflores Locks, the locks at the Pacific end of the 48-mile canal that links the Atlantic and Pacific and saves the world’s shipping fleets the time and expense of circumnavigating South America and Cape Horn. For that, they pay the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) an average of $90,000 per trip through the locks.

The canal’s history is fascinating and I’ll leave that to you to explore on your own. We stood on one of the lookout decks with a commanding view of the locks, and watched a dry-bulk ship named the Mimosa slowly enter the first of two locks.

Check our video to see how it works  — from closing of massive gates, to filling the lock with millions of gallons of fresh water, to the use of four specially built “locomotives” to pull the ship through a channel with literally only inches to spare on either side. Each ship passage is narrated in both Spanish and English on loudspeakers by a guide at the visitor center.

Among the hundreds of international visitors were dozens of Panamanian schoolchildren on a day trip — each dressed in their colorful uniforms and full of noisy energy.

An interesting aside I discovered as I’m writing this at home ­— the crew of the very ship we watched, the Mimosa, had gotten into some trouble in Australia. According to an April 19 post on lloydslist.com, “three crew members from the Panamanian-flagged Mimosa who were arrested for entering a restricted area of the Great Barrier Reef, were each ordered to pay $64,640 in fines.” The crew pleaded guilty to making an illegal transit through the environmentally sensitive reef.

Our favorite place to eat in Panama City, and what we recommend, is the open-air Mi Ranchito on the causeway. On a scorching day, we took a table under one of the giant palapas with a great view of the bay and downtown.

This was really our introduction to Panama’s cuisine. We shared a seafood appetizer, ceviche, and each had a whole corvina with vegetables. Delicious.

Of course, in all the sauna-like heat, the only appropriate libation was the cerveza, but which? The country has three major brands — from the light and fizzy Panama to the heavier Atlas, with Balboa somewhere in between. Nancy liked the Panama, and Balboa became my favorite. It was especially good for making a kind of michelada which we enjoyed later in Bocas.

Memorable trip experiences almost always involve meeting new people, and our first encounter was a lucky one — on the second day we met Dean and Joan, Virginia residents who have a home near Boquete. They were on their way back to the states for a visit.

Dean served with the U.S. military in Panama many years ago and really knew his way around. They gave us lots of tips for what to expect in Boquete, and we went out for dinner together to a restaurant on the Amador Causeway.

Several hours more driving gets us there, but stop. I need to tell you, dear reader, an apparently little-reported fact about travel in Panama — as wonderful as it is:

• Don’t expect to buy a detailed map and figure out how to get to place based on that, as you would in the U.S. and many other countries. There simply aren’t that many roads. The Inter-American is the travel backbone. A smattering of other highways branch north from there toward the mountains. There aren’t many cross-routes between them.

• Don’t expect to see road signs that help you find your way. Example: we take the Inter-American west to a major city, David. Another major route takes you north to Boquete, a half-hour away. No problem. Must be signs galore, since thousands of travelers go this way, right? Wrong. You’re supposed to know it’s the way based on the heavy traffic and the big stores choking the areas around the intersection. We had to stop at a gas station and ask an English speaker. He laughs. Yes, there’s no sign. You just have to know to turn at the Novey store. So we did, we found the way, and finally reached Boquete — pronounced BO-KET’-AY.

The Moon handbook calls Boquete a “a cute little town” but that’s in the eye of the beholder. It’s not Carmel By The Sea, or even a Swiss mountain village. There is a certain charm, for sure, but it’s central America, with its open-market busyness, cobbled-together construction, weedy yards and trash here and there. But you have to accept that in exchange for its benefits — friendly people, relatively cheap prices, local artesanias, and of course what locals insist is the world’s best coffee.

I could go on and on about Boquete, but let me list the highlights:

• Our three-night stay at the gorgeous Riverside Inn B&B, a mile or so north of Boquete on the rocky Palo Alto River. The rooms listed at nearly $200 were going for $80 in this off season, a real bargain. And Robert the manager looks after your every need. An eight-year transplant from Kansas City, he also runs the adjacent riverside restaurant, The Rock, where breakfast is served.

• Meeting and spending time with our fellow lodgers, Kathy, a physician in New York City, and her mother, Carolyn, from upstate New York. We had a lot of fun together, discovering Boquete, eating tipico at the Restaurante El Sabroson, strolling through the free Mi Jardin es Su Jardin flower gardens, and hiking up the mountain in hopes of spotting the Resplendent Quetzal bird, but instead — and even better — encountering the Ngöbe Buglé (NGAW-bay Boo-GLAY) coffee workers and their children in their little dwellings among the trees.

• Taking the $30 tour of the Ruiz coffee plantation, processing plant and store. Carlos the guide ­— a Ngobe whose English is flawless — is a fountain of facts on coffee production. You will never look at your morning coffee the same way after his tour. It’s a far more complicated and intense process that I ever imagined. We were joined here, too, by Kathy and Carolyn, and met a new friend, Michael, from Iowa, who was in town to study Spanish at the local language school.

• Discovering authentic Italian pizza at Il Pianista restaurant, served up by Giovanni and Doris on a stormy night, and relaxing with $1 beers while listening to Captain Pelon (Peter from Boston) on guitar do covers of ‘70s hits at Amigos Restaurant on a sleepy Sunday afternoon.

And I can’t end without one cautionary note ­ — if you come here, especially at this time of year, bring insect repellent and use it.  Don’t keep it in your luggage as I did. True, there were few mosquitoes or other biting insects, but around Boquete there are something called coffee flies and they loved biting me. They’re like “no-see-ums,” but boy can they leave a bite. I ended up with half a dozen itchy red splotches that are only now disappearing after a week.

And especially if you’re someone who may someday want to do as Nancy and I did, discover Panama by car, let me share some info that will be invaluable. As I indicated earlier, there are no detailed maps, mostly because there aren’t that many major roads and highways. And don’t go assuming that one big town connects directly with another.

I’m talking here about the two major tourist draws in western Panama — Boquete, in the mountains, and Bocas Town, in the island-studded archipelago in the northwest corner of the country on the Caribbean. As our Moon guide states, “it’s a terribly relaxing place, and at the same time it exudes a funky, romantic charm that has something untamed about it.”

In other words, it’s Caribbean. Boquete in the mountains looked more like, well, a temperate forested landscape. Bocas is all banana and plantain plantations, colorful wooden shacks built high on stilts, sunshine and an iridescently green landscape against a deep-azure sky and sea.

Christopher Columbus discovered the place while searching for a route to the Pacific in 1502, and the area was settled by the Spanish —oh yes, and lots of pirates.

It’s a kind of rough-hewn Margaritaville, and it takes time to piece together the layout. Bocas del Toro (mouths of the bull?) is the province. Isla Colon is one of the islands. Bocas Town on Isla Colon is where you want to head, but it’s not that easy to get there.

Now, many people (with money) just arrange to stay on one of the beautiful resorts in the islands, and fly in and out. Or come in by bus or car from nearby Costa Rica.

Turns out, we did it the hard way, by car from Boquete. Go figure.

Which takes me back to the connection problem. For some reason, in our early planning I assumed a direct route from Boquete to Bocas. But let me tell you, there is none. You have to head out of Boquete back toward the Inter-American Highway, and take a two-lane route called the Fortuna Road through the mountains for about three hours. It’s a winding but quite scenic trip. You end up at a gritty little backwater called Almirante.

The port has a run-down, industrial look, with young men cruising around on bicycles. And no signs. Exactly the kind of place to scare off tourists. And it nearly did. We were a few minutes from deciding to forget Bocas, when one of the bicycle boys, called boleteros, rapped on our closed window (A/C is a full-time must).

The Moon guide had pointed us to a fenced parking area for our car, near a dock with water taxis to Isla Colon. Our boletero knew just where it was and we followed him. Of course, he (and an additional friend) helped us cart our luggage onto the boat and didn’t hesitate to thrust palms forward. We figured $2 for him, $1 for his buddy. They wanted more, but hey.

Still, Nancy was nervous. The open speedboat was small and we had a half-hour ride into the open sea. As we settled into the seats and put on life vests, a young British woman named Rachael joined us and calmly assured us that all was well. Off we went, the outboard throwing up a huge spray, our two suitcases in the rear bouncing up and down. I kept looking back to see if they were still there. While talking over the boat’s roar, we found that Rachael is involved with a volunteer project in Colombia.

We stepped off into intense heat and humidity, pulling along our baggage and acting as if we knew where we were going. There were plenty of touts (boleteros) here, too, wanting to show us their hotel. The Moon guide mentioned a place at the far end of town, on the water, that looked good — Cocomo-on-the-Sea. We hailed a taxi, got there, unlocked a gate and I wandered through the place calling out for someone. Finally, this tall, bronzed, middle-aged American named Douglas shows up. Yes, we have a room. $65 just for you, with A/C. Perfect. Turns out, he’s from Middletown, Ohio!

So began our 24 hours in steamy, whacky Bocas Town where we discovered: waterfront living with a local family whose school-age children study on their thatch-covered dock; sharing breakfast with a peripatetic, aging British rock guitarist named Bill;  the newly opened Rip Tide restaurant, a boat you reach by walking out on floating platforms, that serves great calamari and shrimp; and shamelessly trolling the tourist-trap shops for mementos. Our big splurge: $22 for a hammock.

So here we are after eight days, on the far end of the country. Yep, back into our blue bug for a very long ride, back onto the Fortuna Road, then hours on the Inter-American Highway, through some torrential rainstorms, finally to stay for the night at the La Hacienda hotel in Santiago, halfway to Panama City. The final day’s ride was sunny and pleasant, and even the route through Panama City to the airport hotel for our final night’s stay was not as chaotic as we had feared. The two Sixt employees came to the hotel to pick up the blue bug, but slapped on a $25 charge for the extra expense. More grumbling, but worth it in the end.  Overall, the car cost $155 for a week. We put about $60 worth of gas into it (at more than $3 a gallon).

Looking back, we truly feel we got a good look at Panama, its people, culture, customs and food for the time we spent. It’s certainly a place that deserves a return visit. Places we missed and would like to experience: Kuna Yala or the San Blas Islands on the Caribbean, El Valle de Anton, another developing retreat for expats in the mountains in the center of the country, and finally the “pastoral paradise” Cerro Punta, on the other side of the extinct volcano, Vulcan Baru, from Boquete.

Hasta la vista, Panama!

Yunus, our cook/bellboy at Istanbul's Adora Hotel, offers a complimentary tray of sweets to go with our afternoon wine.

Two weeks of travel by plane, train, intercity buses and two car rentals made Turkey seem much bigger than it is — 300,000 square miles or one-tenth the 3.1 million square miles in the contiguous United States. Turkey could easily fit in the upper northwest corner occupied by Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

What makes it seem so vast and imposing, perhaps, is not only the sight of its snow-topped mountain ranges and cerulean Mediterranean coast, but knowing that our history is there, too, the centuries of occupation, the stories, the faith-building, the very building blocks of our humanity.

This journey by Nancy and me just dipped a toe into the deep and nourishing waters of, yes, our Turkish past — and enriched our own humanity.