PanamaPanamá

Before 1500 the isthmus was home to Chibchan-speaking chiefdoms such as the Cueva and Ngäbe; gold-working cultures at Sitio Conte produced plaques and figures now in museums. Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the isthmus in 1513 and became the first European to see the Pacific from the Americas.

Panama City, founded in 1519, became the transit point for Peruvian silver: treasure crossed on the Camino Real and the Chagres River to Portobelo, where fairs loaded the Spanish fleets. The wealth drew pirates; Henry Morgan sacked the city in 1671, and it was rebuilt on the peninsula now called Casco Viejo.

Panama joined Gran Colombia on independence from Spain in 1821 and remained a Colombian province. The US-built Panama Railroad (1855) carried Gold Rush traffic, and France's attempt at a canal under Ferdinand de Lesseps collapsed in 1889 after thousands of workers died of yellow fever and malaria.

In 1903 Panama separated from Colombia with US naval support and signed a treaty granting the US a Canal Zone 'in perpetuity'. Riots over the flag in the Zone in January 1964 are remembered on Martyrs' Day. General Omar Torrijos negotiated the 1977 treaties with Jimmy Carter; after the 1989 US invasion that removed Manuel Noriega, the Canal passed to Panama on 31 December 1999.

The US began work in 1904 under engineers John Stevens and George Goethals. The decisive steps were sanitation — Dr William Gorgas's campaign against mosquitoes — and damming the Chagres River to create Gatún Lake, so that ships climb 26 m through locks instead of passing at sea level. The Canal opened on 15 August 1914.

About 80 km long, it takes a ship 8–10 hours. The 2016 expansion added the larger Neopanamax locks at Agua Clara and Cocolí, which use water-saving basins. Fresh water is the constraint: each transit draws on Gatún Lake, and a severe drought in 2023–24 forced cuts in daily crossings.

Canal tolls are the state's largest single income. The Canal Authority is planning new reservoirs (the Río Indio project) to secure water, a contentious issue for the farming communities affected (check progress).

Panama has about 4.5 million people. Most are mestizo, but Afro-Panamanians descend from two waves: enslaved Africans of the colonial period (the congo culture of Portobelo) and English-speaking West Indians who built the railroad and Canal. Many of the latter were long treated as outsiders; their descendants are central to Colón and Bocas del Toro.

Seven Indigenous peoples make up over a tenth of the population. The Guna rose against the police in the 1925 Tule Revolution and won the autonomy that became the Guna Yala comarca, with its own General Congress. The Emberá and Wounaan live along Darién rivers, and the Ngäbe, the largest group, farm and pick coffee in the west.

Chinese, Indian, Jewish and Arab communities arrived with the railroad, Canal and free zone, and give Panama City its mix of shops and temples.

Panamanian cooking is a crossroads cuisine. Sancocho — chicken soup with ñame and culantro — is the national comfort food, with rice and plantain in every form alongside.

Fresh corvina ceviche in plastic cups is the snack of the Mercado de Mariscos. Breakfast brings hojaldras, carimañolas and fried tortillas with white cheese.

Afro-Antillean cooking on the Caribbean side uses coconut, fish and spice, and on Guna islands meals are fish, coconut rice and plantain. Seco, a sugarcane spirit from Herrera, is drunk with milk, and Boquete's Geisha coffee sells at record prices.

When the isthmus rose about 3 million years ago, it joined the continents and split the oceans, triggering the Great American Biotic Interchange of animals between north and south. The Biomuseo on the Amador Causeway tells this story.

Rainforest still lines the Canal: Soberanía National Park and Pipeline Road are among the best birding sites in the world, and the Smithsonian has studied Barro Colorado Island since 1923. The Darién forest is one of the largest in Central America.

Offshore, Coiba National Park protects an island that was a penal colony until 2004, now a diving area with sharks and rays; humpback whales from both hemispheres visit the Pacific coast.

The Darién Gap is the only break in the Pan-American Highway between Alaska and Argentina. Between 2021 and 2024 hundreds of thousands of migrants crossed it on foot towards the United States, facing armed groups and river floods; numbers fell sharply in 2025 (check). It is not a travel route, and parts of Darién are under advice against all travel.

Guna Yala shows another model: tourism on Guna terms, with community-run island lodges, fees paid to the General Congress and rules on photography and building. Rising seas are forcing some island communities to move to the mainland; Gardi Sugdub's residents moved in 2024.

For visitors, Panama is straightforward: dollars, a hub airport, good hospitals in the city and short flights. The main planning points are cash for the islands, the Darién and the rainy season.