PanamaPassage

Panama Passage guide

Locations in Panama

Panama's two anchor provinces by agricultural output are Coclé in the central Pacific lowlands, a sugar-and-tomato belt whose capital Penonomé sits on the Inter-American Highway, and Los Santos on the southeastern peninsula, whose capital Las Tablas is the cultural heart of the Arco Seco dry arc and the country's Carnival capital.

What You Need to Know First

Coclé Province covers about 4,946.6 square kilometers of central Panama, with Penonomé as its capital and an economy centered on sugar and tomatoes.[1] Los Santos Province sits further southeast on the Azuero Peninsula, capital Las Tablas, and is the driest part of the country (the Arco Seco, “dry arc,” that runs between the Gulf of Panama and the central mountain range).[2] The two anchor provinces show the country’s range: Coclé is agricultural central-lowland Panama; Los Santos is the dry, cattle-ranching, folkloric south.

The Province-and-Comarca Grid

Panama is divided into ten provinces (Bocas del Toro, Coclé, Colón, Chiriquí, Darién, Herrera, Los Santos, Panamá, Panamá Oeste, and Veraguas) plus three indigenous comarcas (Guna Yala, Emberá-Wounaan, and Ngäbe-Buglé) that enjoy constitutional status equivalent to provinces. Each province is divided into districts (distritos), and each district into corregimientos; the smallest unit, the corregimiento, is the unit of local municipal government. Veraguas is the only province in Panama with coastline on both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.[3]

City Anchors

The country has a strong urban hierarchy. Panama City (Distrito de Panamá, Panamá Province) is the national capital and primary population center, with the canal-facing province of Panamá Oeste across the bridge of the Americas. Colón, on the Caribbean end of the canal, is the country’s second port and free-trade zone. David (Chiriquí Province) is the third-largest city and the commercial hub of the western highlands. Santiago (capital of Veraguas), Chitré (capital of Herrera), and Las Tablas (capital of Los Santos) anchor the interior.

Regional Patterns

The Caribbean side (Bocas del Toro, Colón, Guna Yala, and parts of Veraguas) gets the rain and the reef; the Pacific side (Panamá, Coclé, Herrera, Los Santos, Chiriquí) has the cities, the beaches, and the dry arc. The highland towns in Chiriquí, around Boquete and Volcán Barú, sit well above the coastal lowlands and stay springlike year-round. The Azuero Peninsula, made up of Herrera, Los Santos, and the southern tip of Veraguas, is the cultural heartland for folkloric music and Carnival traditions and the part of Panama where the dry-season landscape most resembles the rest of Central America’s Pacific lowlands.

Azuero Peninsula: Complete Travel Guide

The Azuero Peninsula is the large southward prong of land on Panama's Pacific coast, made up of the provinces of Herrera and Los Santos together with the southern tip of Veraguas. It is the country's cultural heartland (the centre of Panamanian folklore, cattle ranching, and Carnival), and its dry, sun-baked coast is the beach-and-surf counterweight to the rain-soaked Caribbean side. This guide covers how the region fits together and how to choose where to go within it.

Best Beaches in Panama: Pacific and Caribbean

Panama has two beach coasts, and they are genuinely different: the dry, sun-baked Pacific shore (the Arco Seco of Coronado, the Azuero, and Pedasí) and the wetter, reef-and-rainforest Caribbean shore of the Bocas del Toro archipelago. This guide compares them, explains how to choose between them, and points to the specific beach destinations covered on their own pages.

Bocas del Toro: Islands, Surfing, and Nightlife

Bocas del Toro is Panama's Caribbean archipelago, a scatter of forested islands, shallow bays, and reef lying off the country's north-western coast. The province of the same name takes in the Bocas del Toro Archipelago, Almirante Bay, the Chiriquí Lagoon, and the adjacent mainland, and the visitor economy runs out of the town of Bocas del Toro on Isla Colón (the base for island-hopping, surfing, reef snorkelling, and the nightlife that gives the town its reputation).

Boquete: Coffee, Cloud Forest, and Expats

Boquete is a small mountain town in the westernmost part of Chiriquí Province, about 60 kilometres from the Costa Rican border, lying on the Caldera River at roughly 1,200 metres elevation. The altitude gives it a cooler climate than the lowlands, which is the single fact that explains almost everything about the town: the coffee, the cloud forest, and the foreign retiree community that has reshaped it over the past two decades.

Chiriquí Grande: The Pipeline Port on the Chiriquí Lagoon

Chiriquí Grande is a small corregimiento on the southern shore of the Chiriquí Lagoon, on the Caribbean side of Panama, and despite its name it sits in Bocas del Toro Province, not Chiriquí. It is the northern, Caribbean terminus of the Trans-Panama pipeline, the port where Pacific-side oil once crossed the isthmus to reach tanker ships, and a place whose population has tracked the boom-and-bust of that trade.

Chiriquí Province Overview

Chiriquí is Panama's westernmost province, wedged against Costa Rica and the Pacific, and it is the country's second-most-developed province after Panamá. Its capital, David, is Panama's third-largest city, and the province splits cleanly into two landscapes: hot lowland commercial belt and cool highland coffee-and-farm country around Volcán Barú.

Chitré: Cultural Capital of the Azuero

Chitré is the capital of the Panamanian province of Herrera and the main city of the Azuero Peninsula. It sits in the north-east of the peninsula as the region's commercial hub, its main banking centre, and its transport node (the place where the road in from the Inter-American Highway arrives, and the practical base from which the rest of the Azuero is explored).

Coclé Province: Central Panama's Agricultural and Pacific Coast Heartland

Coclé Province straddles central Panama from the continental divide down to the Pacific, and it is the country's agricultural engine dressed up as a beach destination. The capital, Penonomé, sits almost at the geographic centre of the country on the Inter-American Highway; inland is sugar and tomato country, and the coast is the closest developed beach belt to Panama City.

Colón City: Challenges and Potential

Colón is a city and seaport on Panama's Caribbean coast, beside the Caribbean Sea near the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal, and it is the capital of Colón Province. It has traditionally been known as Panama's second city, and its story is the story of the canal corridor: founded in 1850 as the Atlantic end of the Panama Railroad, raised to national economic importance by the canal and the free zone, and now a city working through a long, visible decline alongside that legacy.

Colón Province: Caribbean Coast and Free Zone

Colón Province is Panama's Caribbean-facing province, occupying the Atlantic side of the canal and the coast around it. Its capital, the city of Colón, is the country's second city, and the provincial economy runs on three engines that all sit on the Caribbean shore: the Colón Free Zone, the Panama Canal's Atlantic entrance, and the banking sector, alongside a rainforest and reef coast that is the tourist counterpart.

Coronado: Beach Living and Expat Hub

Coronado is a coastal city and resort on Panama's Pacific coast, about 87 kilometres south-west of Panama City, in Panamá Oeste Province. It was the first resort development in Panama, founded in 1941, and over the decades it has grown into the hub of the central Pacific beach coast, the principal beach-living and expatriate community in the country, and the service centre for the string of beach towns that run along the Arco Seco shore west of the canal.

Darién Province: Adventure and Caution

Darién is Panama's easternmost province, a vast 11,896.5 km² wedge of rainforest and river running to the Colombian border, with La Palma as its capital. It is the wildest and most remote part of the country (the home of the Darién Gap, where the Pan-American Highway simply stops), and it carries both a vast UNESCO World Heritage national park and a current, official high-risk travel advisory. The title is literal: Darién is genuine adventure, and it requires genuine caution.

David: Chiriquí's Capital City

David is the capital of Chiriquí Province and the largest city in western Panama, the country's third-largest city overall by population and GDP, and the largest one outside the Panama City metro. It is the working commercial hub of the western third of the country: most visitors do not come for David itself but pass through it on the way to Boquete, the coast, or the Costa Rican border.

El Valle de Antón: Crater Town

El Valle de Antón (generally called El Valle, or Anton's Valley in English) is a town of about 7,600 in the province of Coclé, and its defining feature is its setting: it lies in the flat, wide caldera of the 6 km-wide El Valle volcano, which is inactive but shows evidence of eruption as recently as about 300,000 years ago. That origin, at roughly 600 metres elevation in the central mountains, gives El Valle the cool climate, the dramatic ring of crater rim, and the distinctiveness that have made it one of Panama's principal weekend and nature-tourism towns.

Gamboa: Rainforest Research Town

Gamboa is a small town on the Panama Canal, on a sharp bend of the Chagres River at the point where it feeds Gatun Lake. It was one of the handful of permanent Canal Zone townships (built in 1911 to house employees of the Panama Canal and their dependents), and it is now, after the canal-era population peaked and receded, the principal rainforest-research base in Panama, sitting at the edge of the protected watershed forest that feeds the canal.

Herrera Province: Pottery, Sugarcane and the Azuero Interior

Herrera Province is the landlocked interior of the Azuero Peninsula, and the smallest of Panama's provinces by area. It is run from Chitré and is the source of two things the rest of the country recognises instantly: Seco Herrerano, the sugarcane spirit distilled at Pesé, and the pre-Columbian-style pottery that is the best-known ceramic work in Panama.

Hot Springs of El Valle de Antón

El Valle de Antón, generally shortened to El Valle, is a town of about 7,600 people in Coclé Province, built inside the flat, wide caldera of the six-kilometre El Valle volcano. At about 600 metres of elevation it is cooler than the Panamanian lowlands, which is the original reason it became a weekend escape, and the volcanic geology beneath the caldera is the source of the thermal hot springs that give the page its focus.

Isla Coiba: Getting There and What to Do

Isla Coiba is the largest island in Central America, a 494 km² landmass off the Pacific coast of Veraguas Province in the Gulf of Chiriquí. It is the core of Coiba National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a major marine protected area in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. This guide covers the practical side, how to get there, what to do, and how to think about a visit, because the island's deep geography and biology live on dedicated pages elsewhere in this section set.

Isla Contadora: Pearl Islands Escape

Isla Contadora is a small Panamanian island on the Pearl Islands archipelago (Archipiélago de las Perlas) in the Gulf of Panama, and it is the most-visited of the Pearl Islands (the one with a domestic airport, regular flights from Panama City, and the infrastructure that makes it the practical entry point to the archipelago). Its name records its colonial-era role: it was where the Spanish counted the pearls harvested from the surrounding islands.

Isla Escudo de Veraguas: Pygmy Sloth Island

Isla Escudo de Veraguas is a small, isolated Caribbean island, and despite its name it is part of Bocas del Toro Province, not Veraguas. It is the exclusive habitat of the pygmy three-toed sloth (Bradypus pygmaeus), it carries eleven hectares of mangrove forest and a hundred hectares of coral reef, and it is traditionally considered the birthplace of the Ngöbe-Buglé people.

Isla San José: Pearl Islands Wilderness

Isla San José is the second-largest island of the Pearl Islands archipelago, off Panama's Pacific coast, a privately owned, 44-square-kilometre wilderness of rugged shoreline and more than fifty beaches, thousands of wild pigs and deer, and a documented Second World War history as the site where United States soldiers tested chemical weapons from 1945 to 1947.

Isla Taboga: Day Trip from Panama City

Isla Taboga, the "Island of Flowers," is a small island in the Gulf of Panama about 20 kilometres off the coast of Panama City. It was founded in 1524 as the town of San Pedro, making it one of the oldest European settlements in the Americas, and it is the closest beach destination to the capital, a roughly 30-minute ferry ride from the Amador Causeway. That combination of proximity, history, and a walkable island setting is what makes Taboga Panama's principal day-trip island.

La Chorrera: Capital of Panamá Oeste Province

La Chorrera is the capital of Panamá Oeste Province and one of the larger cities in Panama, sitting about 30 kilometres south-west of Panama City on the Inter-American Highway. It is the commercial hub of the province, the place where the western outskirts of the capital give way to the agricultural interior and the Pacific beach corridor, and the self-styled home of Bollo and Chicheme.

Las Tablas: Carnival and Folklore

Las Tablas is the capital of Los Santos Province on the Azuero Peninsula and the town most identified in Panama with Carnival and folklore. It sits in the Arco Seco, the country's dry arc, and it is the cultural counterweight to Chitré (smaller, more traditional, and the place where the Azuero's festival traditions reach their most elaborate form).

Los Santos Province: The Dry-Arc Heartland of Azuero

Los Santos Province occupies the southern half of the Azuero Peninsula, and it is the driest and most culturally self-conscious stretch of the Arco Seco. Run from Las Tablas and founded in November 1569, it is the province most Panamanians picture when they think of the colonial rural interior: open cattle land, folkloric festivals, and the Pacific beaches of the southern coast.

Nueva Gorgona: Pacific Beach Town in Panamá Oeste

Nueva Gorgona is a beach town and corregimiento in Chame District, Panamá Oeste Province, sitting about an hour west of Panama City on the Pan-American Highway. It is the first real beach community on the Pacific corridor out of the capital, squeezed between Chame and Coronado, known for its 4.2-kilometre beach, the Malibu surf break, and a fish market that draws weekenders from the city.

Panama Island Hopping: Complete Guide

Panama is one of the better island-hopping countries in the Americas because it offers genuinely different archipelagos across two seas. The Caribbean side holds the Bocas del Toro islands (reef, rainforest, and surf), while the Pacific side holds the Coiba marine reserve, the Gulf-of-Panama day-trip island of Taboga, and the Pearl Islands. This guide compares them and explains how to choose and combine them.

Panamá Oeste Province: The Pacific Beach Corridor West of the Capital

Panamá Oeste Province is the ring of land west of Panama City, the newest of Panama's provinces, run from La Chorrera. For most visitors it is the beach corridor: the chain of Pacific-coast towns from Nueva Gorgona through Coronado to San Carlos that is the closest developed shoreline to the capital and the heart of the country's retirement and second-home market.

Panamá Province: The Metropolitan Core

Panamá Province is the province that contains Panama City, the national capital, and it is the political, financial, and demographic core of the country. The province as it now exists is the product of a recent split, the five districts west of the canal having been carved off to form Panamá Oeste Province on 1 January 2014, which left it centred on the capital and the eastern side of the canal corridor.

Pedasí: Surfing, Fishing, and Whales

Pedasí is a district of Los Santos Province at the south-eastern tip of the Azuero Peninsula, and the Pedasí coast is the surf and sport-fishing focus of the region. The district capital is a small ranching town a few kilometres inland, and the shore running out from it, culminating in the well-known surf bay of Playa Venao at its western end, is the beach destination that has put the Azuero's Pacific coast on the map.

Penonomé: Coclé's Capital at the Centre of Panama

Penonomé is the capital of Coclé Province, sitting in the geographic centre of Panama on the Inter-American Highway. It is a working market and administrative town of about 22,000 people, founded in 1581, and it is the natural provisioning stop for anyone driving between Panama City and the Azuero Peninsula or up to El Valle de Antón.

Playa Venao: Surf and Beach Destination

Playa Venao (also written Playa Venado) is a crescent-shaped surf bay at the western end of the Pedasí coast, in Los Santos Province on the south-eastern tip of the Azuero Peninsula. It is the most consistent and best-known surf break on the Azuero's Pacific shore, a reliable south-swell bay with left and right breaks over a sandy bottom, and it has become the surf-and-beach anchor of the whole Pedasí coast.

Portobelo: Historic Caribbean Town

Portobelo is a historic port and corregimiento on Panama's Caribbean coast, the seat of Portobelo District in Colón Province, about 32 kilometres north-east of the city of Colón. It was established in 1597 for its deep natural harbour and became one of the two Atlantic ports of the Spanish treasure fleet, and the ruined fortifications that defended it are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the core reason this small town of 4,559 people draws visitors today.

Puerto Armuelles: Chiriquí's Pacific Port

Puerto Armuelles is a city and corregimiento on Panama's Pacific coast in western Chiriquí Province, hard against the Costa Rican border, and it is the seat of the Barú District and the second-largest city in Chiriquí. It was built in 1928 by the United Fruit Company as a banana-port company town, it carries the nickname "the petroleum capital of Panama" for its oil port, and it is the classic case of a company town that outlived its company.

San Carlos: The Quieter Pacific Beach Alternative

San Carlos is a Pacific beach community in Panamá Oeste Province, sitting about an hour south-west of Panama City along the Inter-American Highway and roughly twenty minutes down the coast from Coronado. It is the quieter, less-developed stop on the beach corridor (the place people go when they want the same Pacific shoreline as Coronado but with fewer people, less commercialisation, and more local character).

Santa Catalina: World-Class Surfing

Santa Catalina is a small fishing and surf village along Panama's Pacific coastline in the province of Veraguas, about 240 kilometres south-west of Panama City. It is known for two things that flow from the same stretch of coast: La Punta, a noted Central American point break, and its role as the departure point for every authorized boat tour to Coiba National Park, the UNESCO-listed marine reserve offshore.

Santa Fe: Veraguas Mountain Town

Santa Fe is the capital of the Santa Fe District in Veraguas Province, a mountain town at about 430 metres of altitude, close to the continental divide and just 60 kilometres from the Caribbean, yet connected to the Pacific side only by the paved road back to the Pan-American Highway at Santiago. Founded around 1560, it is one of the older interior settlements of Panama and a destination for hiking and bird watching.

Santiago: Veraguas Capital

Santiago de Veraguas is the capital of the province of Veraguas, in the Republic of Panama, and the district of the same name. It sits in the countryside next to the Pan-American Highway, roughly halfway between Panama City and the city of David, which makes it the natural transport and commercial hinge of central Panama, the place travellers pass through and provision at on the long run west along the Inter-American corridor.

Tolé: Chiriquí Highland Town

Tolé is a corregimiento in Tolé District, Chiriquí Province, and the seat of that district, a western-Chiriquí highland town founded in 1775 as San Miguel de Tolé by Franciscan missionaries. It sits on the Inter-American Highway on the historical cattle-driving route between Chiriquí and Panama City, and its district is the site of the contested Barro Blanco Dam on the Tabasará River.

Veraguas Province: Panama's Only Dual-Coast Province

Veraguas Province is the only Panamanian province that touches both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and that single fact shapes everything about it. Run from Santiago de Veraguas and founded in 1508, it runs from the Caribbean Mosquito Gulf across the continental divide to the Pacific, a province of cattle ranches in the lowlands, cloud forest in the highland town of Santa Fe, and a Pacific coast that guards the approach to Coiba.

Volcán and Cerro Punta: Highland Farming Communities

Volcán and Cerro Punta are the two highland farming towns of the Tierras Altas District in western Chiriquí, sitting on the old lava flows of Volcán Barú at roughly 1,400 metres. They are Panama's cool-climate breadbasket (the onion, potato, carrot, and strawberry country that supplies grocery stores nationwide) and the quieter, less-touristed counterpart to Boquete on the volcano's western side.

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