When you get to Panama City, two great places to lay your head are the Bristol Panama and the American Trade Hotel, which can be booked through Panama Vacations (www.vacationtopanama.com)

The Bristol Panama, a top-10 hotel in Latin America according to Conde Nast Traveler, is an art-deco inspired high rise in the city’s financial district, a four-minute walk from the El Carmen metro station and a quick cab or bus ride to Panama Viejo, the remaining part of old Panama City.

The American Trade Hotel in the Casco Viejo section of the city opened in 2013, the original building going up in 1917 and booming when the Panama Canal was being built and for decades beyond, falling into disrepair by the 1960s. It’s been renovated into a beautiful boutique lodging, set in an area far apart from the Bristol Panama’s urban core, located in the thick of the city’s historic district. At four stories it is the tallest in the neighborhood. When new a century ago, it was the tallest in the country.

A fun tour, which can be arranged through Vacation to Panama, is one to the San Blas Islands on the Caribbean side of the country, a group of 378 islands in the archipelago de San Blas. Only about 10 percent are inhabited, but on the larger ones you’ll find a group of native islanders known as the Guna.

We visited two of the islands: Crab Island, a tiny enclave populated with the Guna people, and Isla Aguja, an uninhabited island but a popular spot, one of the more developed islands with a variety of amenities, but still a wonderfully non-fancy place.

On Crab Island, so named for the abundance of the spiny creatures, the Guna number around 1,000, living in a seeming crowded cluster of thatched huts with dirt floors, narrow pathways winding between them all, a lush garden popping up here and there and everywhere natives who seem at once wary and welcoming. But who can blame them, with camera-toting tourists eager to record what to people from the West seems abject poverty. But as in many such places throughout the world, where people live day-to-day and off the land or sea, nowhere will you find people with bigger smiles.

Over at Isla Aguja, things can be fairly busy, as it’s one of the most popular islands for Panamanians on San Blas day trips, particularly on weekends.

On our weekday visit it was blissfully quiet and wonderfully relaxing, either by lounging on the gorgeous beach or walking through a grove of swaying palm trees.

Isla Aguja has a large kitchen, dining area, toilets and a variety of accommodation options. Best of all is the pristine, long white beach, one of the nicest in the sprawling island chain.

The most compelling part of our journey was walking with ex-gang members in the Esperanza Social Venture Club’s program.

On ours, I walked with former bad boy Samuel Palacio through Casco Viejo, a historic district in Panama City that has long been riddled with crime, much of it gang related. The 23-year-old runs with gangs no more, instead now running his own business, Delivery del Casco, which he performs on a bicycle delivering food and dry cleaning and other services to folks in the neighborhood, a far cry from his gang days that got him shot four times by age 16 and serving time in jail. He credited Esperanza with his turnaround.

“I was glad to hear about it,” Palacio said about Esperanza. “I decided to give opportunity to myself.”

The organization invests in the development and entrepreneurial endeavors of Casco Viejo’s ex-gang members, a 10-week intensive intervention program that graduates participants into the area’s restaurants and hotels, a small number of them – Palacio included – starting their own small businesses with investor seed money.

“Something was missing in social programs, there was nothing for young men,” said Matt Landau, Esperanza co-founder whose hotel customers would often be robbed by gang members. “We started this and it’s evolved into a movement.”

Esperanza also runs Fortaleza Tours, in which former members of the Ciudad de Dios gang take people on tours of the area, highlighting the improvements in the neighborhood, having already turned an alley, or “el callejon,” into an open-air food court.

It is a community effort: Neighboring restaurant Donde Jose worked as content mentor, teaching some of the boys to mix drinks which are served at the food court. Local photographer Tarina Rodriguez got them started by providing photos. In the first month of operation, the boys of Fortaleza respectably earned a respectable $2,800 for their work.

Our tour was guided by three ex-gang members now part of Fortaleza, who showed us their old stomping grounds, starting at the American Trade Hotel, an upscale lodging that had been abandoned for years, and was impromptu housing for squatters and gang members. Stories abound: One involves a gang member living in the then-ramshackle building who had to jump out of a second-story window to avoid being killed by another. The jumper is now a successful businessman.

They made no apologies for their past behavior, preferring to emphasize their present, which included showing us a hallway of the hotel emblazoned with old graffiti, now preserved as testimony to what this area had been.

We walked through narrow streets, encountering happy families out on them, feeling safer than they have for years. The guides talked about how this area 10 years ago was dangerous, with tourists being robbed and shot. Hard to imagine, the reminders hard to ignore: In one area next to another that is still plagued by gang violence that we were strongly advised to stay out of, children played near a building with walls pockmarked by bullet holes.

We made our way to the alleyway where lunch is served, fish, rice, beans and other local staples. Here was Nico Mercado, a former gang member who has a music studio up a blue-painted alleyway with colorful triangular banners flapping above.

In his gang days, he used to sing about violence, having always loved music. Now he makes CDs to sell, writing his own lyrics. He proudly showed us a video of his little boy singing.

“If not for Esperanza,” Mercado said, “this would not be. For me, I’d be in jail or dead or rich.”

Now he’s none of the above, instead happy and productive. For him, that’s the only wealth that matters.

For Palacio, there was no choice. In 2014, he said, the house he crashed in as a gang member burned down. Seven people died. He was lucky to not be one of them.

“I didn’t want to step back, and I have a baby now,” he said. “I overcame my environment, and have a family.”

For more information on Esperanza, including how to help, visit http://www.esperanzasvc.org/

The five-star stay has 36 rooms, featuring Italian marble bathrooms with soaking tubs, minibars, tea and coffeemakers, flat-screen high-def TVs and iPod docks. Airy, upgraded rooms have added skyline views. It has a full-service spa and a pool, a long rectangle of cool water uniquely tucked into a space between two wings of the building. The upstairs bar, named 8’58 for its geographic location, is roomy, but a best bet is the cozy outside lounge overlooking the city streets. Check out the Bristol Mule, but be aware of its potent kick.

Downstairs is Salsipuedes, the Bristol’s restaurant named for one of the city’s most notorious streets from back in the day. The menu reflects the city’s roots with a spicy menu that updates traditional regional fare with modern infusions of Panamanian ingredients, including cod fritters made smoky hot with habanero peppers; giant prawns with sherry consomme cucumber, salmon roe and passion fruit; crocodile rice soup thick with beans from the Chiriqui province; and roasted octopus with tangy green salsa.