The three villages that make up Mi Pueblitos each represent one of the main cultural influences of Panama. There is a Spanish village with whitewashed buildings surrounding a courtyard, an Afro-Caribbean village with more colorful Caribbean architecture, and an indigenous village of straw huts. The Spanish village has a church, schoolroom, telegraph office, and various other buildings to give you some flavor of what life was like during Spanish colonial times. The other two villages are more largely shopping areas, but it’s nice to stroll through all three villages.

In the Spanish area, we obtained some inexpensive T-shirts and a vibrantly colored table setting ($35). We spent the most time in the indigenous village, buying brightly colored molas (finely stitched square cloths, $10-$40, the nicest one we purchased depicted a cat jumping on a fish) and detailed tagua carvings ($10-$100, animal carvings made from the tagua nut). Part of the fun is just talking to the people—I almost bought one tagua carving of a frog, before the artisan told me that the one I was examining was made by his little brother and that his frog carving was much better. You'll also get to see these works of art as they're being made and in various states of completion. It's amazing to see a plain tagua nut transforming into brightly colored fish swimming around coral.

We actually didn’t buy much in the Caribbean area, but this area had it’s own live music. A man in a large straw hat was sitting on one of the benches strumming his banjo. I gave him a dollar to play a song for my fiancé, and we listened to the Banana Boat song and then danced to a Caribbean interpretation of Rock Around the Clock.

Some may find the artificial setup of three shopping villages a little too theme-park-esque, but we had a great time there. It was much easier than trying to find the real Indian villages—I know we would have gotten really lost doing that.