Though the U.S. dollar has recently strengthened a bit against the euro and the pound, the costs you face in England and on the continent are still pretty daunting. Europe is a fairly costly destination, and so are the airfares going there. This summer to Europe, you can expect to pay a minimum of $800 round-trip (and occasionally even more) to even close-in destinations, once you include government taxes and fuel surcharges.

So where should you take that two-week vacation?  Ever thought of Panama?  Reacting to a rumor about the low level of airfares going there, I recently spent an hour testing various dates on a succession of airfare search engines — Momondo (www.momondo.com), Dohop.com (www.dohop.com), Orbitz (www.orbitz.com), Travelocity (www.travelocity.com), Expedia (www.expedia.com), others. And the results were remarkable. At the height of the season to Central America (January through March), I occasionally found round-trip airfares from New York as low as $312 and $338. In the month of April, when traffic begins to slow to the tropics, I occasionally found dates on which I could fly round-trip to Panama City from New York City for as little as $278 round-trip. Flights from southern U.S. cities were even less. And heaven knows how low the fares will go once we enter the summer.

Though numerous dates were high-priced (say, $858 for a round-trip flight), a substantial number of them were priced at the low levels I’ve cited above. With fair persistence, you can easily find an airfare bargain.

Now obviously these cheap flights are those that make a stop en route to Panama City. But that’s a small price to pay for such low total costs of transportation. And once in Panama City, as I discovered on a visit about a year ago, prices (which are always in dollars; Panama uses the U.S. Dollar as its currency) are refreshingly low. 

In addition to the thrill of viewing the Panama Canal (the Miraflores Locks are a half-hour taxi ride from the center of Panama City), the city itself is quite a metropolitan place. And the nearby beaches, the markets, the villages housing an indigenous native population, the resorts and the museums, are always affordable to enjoy and easy to reach. The cost structure of Panama is half the level of Europe’s, and the budget-minded person can live inexpensively there. 

Give some thought to Panama, a destination that isn’t yet overrun with tourists, and is also regarded as an entirely safe place for the foreign visitor.