Panama

Panama is the country Costa Rica regulars move on to. The forest is just as real, the prices are lower, and the crowds are thinner. Sloths live in ordinary city trees on Ancon Hill in Panama City, and the canal itself runs through protected rainforest. But the jungle stays worth flying for sit at the two ends of the country: the Bocas del Toro archipelago on the Caribbean side, and the cool coffee highlands around Boquete in the west.

Bocas del Toro is island jungle. Isla Colón's north shore, around Bluff Beach, Paunch and Big Creek, is where the cabins and treehouses in this directory stand, most of them a few minutes' walk from surf breaks and empty beaches, with howler monkeys, toucans and sloths passing through the canopy overhead. Everything arrives by boat or by the one road out of Bocas Town, and the pace is slow on purpose. Boquete, at about 1,200 meters in the shadow of Volcán Barú, is the opposite climate: cloud forest, rivers running cold off the volcano, coffee farms, and mornings that call for a sweater.

The dry season, which Panamanians call verano, runs December through April; the wet season runs May through November and is heaviest in October and November. Bocas keeps its own Caribbean calendar and can be sunny in September when the Pacific side is soaked. Fly into Panama City, then take the short domestic flight to Bocas or the hour-long hop to David for Boquete.