Destination: Panama

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Our Favorite Festivals

Some of Panama’s most colorful celebrations are found on the Península de Azuero, where the legacy of colonial Spain lives on. Other memorable celebrations are in Portobelo, Boquete and in the Comarca de Kuna Yala.

Feria de las Flores y del Café, 10 days in January, Boquete
Carnaval, four days prior to Ash Wednesday (February or March), Las Tablas and Panama City
Feria de Azuero, late April or early May, Villa de Los Santos
Corpus Christi, 40 days after Easter (May or June), Villa de Los Santos
Nuestra Señora del Carmen, July 16, Isla Taboga
Fiesta de Santa Librada and Festival de La Pollera, July 21, Las Tablas
Festival del Manito Ocueño, third week of August, Ocú
Feria de La Mejorana, September 23–27, Guararé
Festival of Nogagope, October 10–12, followed by the Kuna Feria, October 13–16, Isla Tigre
Black Christ Festival, October 21, Portobelo

Best Historical Reads

For such a small country, Panama has a voluminous history, as evidenced by the many books about the pirates, the visionaries and the demagogues who’ve all left their mark on the narrow isthmus.

Old Panama and Castilla Del Oro, CLG Anderson
The Sack of Panama: Sir Henry Morgan’s Adventures on the Spanish Main, Peter Earle
Panama: Four Hundred Years of Dreams and Cruelty, David Howarth
The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, David McCullough
How Wall Street Created a Nation: JP Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt and the Panama Canal, Ovidio Diaz Espino
Emperors in the Jungle, the Hidden History of the US in Panama, John Lindsay-Poland
Panama: The Whole Story, Kevin Buckley
The Noriega Mess: The Drugs, the Canal, and Why America Invaded, Luis Murillo
America’s Prisoner: The Memoirs of Manuel Noriega, cowritten with Peter Eisner
A People Who Would Not Kneel: Panama, the United States, and the San Blás Kuna, James Howe

The famous & the infamous

The lure of this lush country has been felt by some of history’s most fascinating – and notorious – characters. Panama’s most famous sojourners and residents include the following:

Christopher Columbus, whose only attempt at founding a colony in the New World failed miserably in present-day Veraguas.

Francis Drake, who between raids on Spain’s gold-filled warehouses in Nombre de Dios managed to find the time to sail around the world – the first Englishman ever to do so.

Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who was the first European to lay eyes on the Pacific – and was later involved in a scandal that led to his beheading.

Ferdinand-Marie de Lesseps, who followed his success at Suez with the tragic failure of the Panama Canal endeavor.

Paul Gauguin, day laborer on the Panama Canal and struggling artist, who nearly chose Isla Taboga over Tajita as his new island home.

Graham Greene, whose ongoing love affair with the country led to his invitation to attend the signing of the Carter–Torrijos treaty, which returned the canal to Panama in 1977.

Ruben Blades, the off-and-on Panamanian resident, who is a Grammy Award–winning, Harvard-educated lawyer who acted in several Hollywood films and even ran for president once (placing third).

Frank O’Gehry, the highly acclaimed architect whose love of Panama will soon be manifest in the Biodiversity Museum.

Valentín Santana, who is king of the Teribe – the only group still governed by a monarch in all of the Americas.

Manuel Noriega, one of Florida’s most infamous prisoners and a recent Baptist convert who awaits his release, likely in 2006.

Travelling to Panama?
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