Panama is one of the most well-known Central American countries, and it is the home of the Panama Canal. The canal has made it an international transportation and business center with more than 13,000 boats passing through the canal each year. For this reason, Panama is often called the Crossroads of the World.

Did you know that Panama has some fascinating facts that everyone should know? Here are some that you might enjoy:

*Monkey meat is barbecued and sold on the streets.

*Panama has seven of Latin America’s top 10 highest buildings.

*You can drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean in just two hours.

*Panama has the second largest duty free zone in the world. (Hong Kong has the largest.)

*It has every type of landscape possible - mountains, jungles, deserts, forests, volcanoes and beaches.

*30,000 people died from malaria and yellow fever as they were building the Panama Canal. It cost 500 lives per mile to build it.

*The Panama Canal Railway was the first transcontinental railroad ever built. Between 1855 and 1867 the railway carried more than $700 million in gold, and they never lost a dollar.

*During the building of the Panama Canal Railway ,102,000 workers died. At one point they had to stop work because they didn’t have a single healthy worker.

*Every seven years they drain the locks of the Panama Canal in order to clean out the debris. The Panamanians enjoy this because fish get trapped inside, and free food is provided for the poor people.

*You seldom see flowers and orchids growing on the ground. Most of them grow in trees.

*Baseball is the most popular sport, but the people enjoy soccer and boxing, too.

*Panama is the only country that has two official currencies: the balboa and the US dollar. Their paper money is in dollars and the coins are balboas.

*It is the only place in the world where you can see the sun rise in the Atlantic Ocean and set in the Pacific Ocean.

*Panama is well-known for Panama hats, but did you know they are actually made in Ecuador?

*Panama is just a little bit smaller than the state of South Carolina, and it is the second least populated country in Central America.

With over 300 different species, Panama has a greater variety of birds than any other country in the world. The country boasts of more than 10,000 different species of plants, including 678 varieties of ferns, 1,200 different kinds of orchids and some 1,500 different trees.

Panama is a fascinating country. Just about everything about her is different from the other Latin American countries. She is the most well-known country of Central America because of the Panama Canal.