Speaking of Panama, we now have reviews posted for five of the best hotels in the country. For the most part you won’t find opulent luxury here that will blow you away, but it does look like the hotel industry in Panama is waking up to its potential finally.

In the past they just haven’t gotten enough visitors to warrant the creation of upscale hotels catering to affluent travelers. The Panamanian tourism officials still don’t seem to have much of a budget or a strategy to remedy this, but the people who own two of the hotels we’ve reviewed have taken things into their own hands, inviting prominent travel writers and agents down to check the country out and report back on what they see. Word is finally getting out that Panama has almost as much to offer as Costa Rica in terms of natural beauty, but with lower prices and fewer crowds.

Also, while Costa Rica’s San Jose is nothing to write home about, Panama City is the most cosmopolitan and well, “happening” city in Central America.

We hope to get wind of new luxury hotels in Panama that we can add to our reviews in the future, but meanwhile we suggest looking into a vacation there now, while you can beat the crowds and get the kind of deal you used to get in Costa Rica before word got out.

A quick congratulations to Christopher Baker, who has contributed hotel reviews in Costa Rica and Panama for Luxury Latin America. This past Monday the Society of American Travel Writers awarded Baker a Lowell Thomas Silver Prize for one of his guidebooks Moon Handbooks: Cuba.

Baker is no stranger to this recognition. In previous years he won awards from SATW six different times, in various categories. We like to say that the reviews in Luxury Latin America are written by experienced travel writers who can evaluate a hotel or travel tour with authority. Christopher Baker is one of the leading authorities out there on this region of the world and we are proud to have him as part of our ensemble of experts.