Luxury Panama Voyages

An archipelago of jade lagoons and Afro-Caribbean rhythm. From the marina, kayak to Red Frog Beach, snorkel the coral gardens off the Zapatilla Cays, and drift into Dolphin Bay where bottlenose pods surface at the bow. Wade among the cushion sea stars of Starfish Beach, then eat rondon stew in stilt- house Bocas Town. SeaDream III threads between the islands and stays for sunset, something the large ships anchored offshore can only envy.

Perhaps the voyage's most magical call: 350-odd palm-dot cays governed by the indigenous Guna themselves. Anchor off a single-palm islet, wade waist- deep to a sandbar with nothing but sea in every direction, and snorkel warm shallows over starfish. Buy intricate hand-stitched molas direct from Guna women and share fresh-caught lobster grilled on the beach. No jetty, no crowds, no big ship can enter, only a yacht like SeaDream III.

An uninhabited Pearl Island of talcum sand and warm turquoise, where television's Survivor once pitched camp. Drop the watersports marina and kayak, paddleboard or snorkel over coral straight from the swim platform, then laze on a beach with only your fellow guests for company. These waters made Panama's colonial fortunes in pearls; from July to October humpback whales breach offshore. A castaway idyll no large ship can access.

Cosmopolitan Panama City rewards a lingering stay. Stroll the restored plazas of Casco Viejo for rooftop cocktails against a skyline of glass towers, trace the colonial ruins of Panama Viejo, and take in Frank Gehry's kaleidoscopic Biomuseo on the Amador Causeway. Feast on just-landed ceviche and cold Balboa beer at the Mercado de Mariscos. Berthed at Fuerte Amador, SeaDream III sits minutes from the old town, not an hour's coach away.

Spanish treasure fleets once loaded silver from across the Americas at this small Caribbean bay, and the ruined stone forts that tried, and repeatedly failed, to keep Henry Morgan and Francis Drake out still ring the harbor today, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Black Christ festival each October draws pilgrims from across Panama to the town's small church. Reef and wreck diving in the clear bay, alongside a laid-back Afro-Colonial fishing village, round out a stop with more pirate history per square meter than almost anywhere in the Caribbean.

One of travel's great set-pieces, savoured from your own sun deck. Watch SeaDream III rise in the mighty Gatun locks, glide across the rainforest-fringed Gatun Lake past freighters queuing for their turn, then thread the sheer rock of the Culebra Cut. A canal historian narrates as howler monkeys call from the banks and the Bridge of the Americas marks the Pacific. An engineering wonder, experienced intimately rather than from a distant rail.