Canal Safaris and Remote Archipelagos Forge a Modern Paradise Pairing in Panama
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- A new nonstop from Southern California puts Panama City six hours away, revealing a modern capital where revamped Casco Viejo, top restaurants and speakeasy-style bars anchor an energetic urban escape.
- Beyond the famed Panama Canal locks, visitors now pair stadium-style viewing and IMAX history with Lake Gatún boat safaris spotting monkeys, sloths, crocodiles, toucans and a WWII-era crane with L.A. ties.
- From Bocas Town’s waterfront bars to remote eco-lodges and pounding Playa Paunch surf, Bocas del Toro offers Indigenous cacao tours and powdery national-park islands in a still-intimate Caribbean archipelago.
It had been a long time since my last visit to Panama. But when Copa Airlines launched another nonstop flight from Southern California to Panama City in 2025, the slender Central American nation suddenly appeared on my travel radar again.
Most appealing was the thought of being able to fly there (and back) in one shot rather than via another city, as long layovers and unexpected delays seem almost inevitable these days. And paradise was only six hours away – that’s around the same time it takes to fly to Hawaii. Done deal!
But that wasn’t the only surprise. Panama was light years different than the last time I visited (while researching a book on the Pan-American Highway). It was more modern, easier to get around. There were so many new urban and outdoor adventures. Plus, great restaurants, exceptional hotels, super-friendly locals and an ever-alluring Latin-American ambience.
The Old Town Got A Makeover
Friends who had recently visited Panama City said, “you’ve gotta stay in Casco Viejo,” which is the colonial old town. Located on a peninsula that juts into the ocean, it was founded by the Spanish in 1673, often raided by pirates, and gained new importance as the Pacific side anchor of the Panama Canal when the big ditch was completed.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, many of the neighborhood’s vintage buildings are preserved as historic landmarks or have been creatively refashioned into hotels, restaurants and bars. A lot of the transformation is recent. For instance, the Sofitel Legend Casco Viejo hotel was largely destroyed during the U.S. invasion of 1989 and remained a bombed out ruin until 2016, when it was restored into what many consider Panama City’s best place to spend the night.
Panama City boasts six restaurants ranked among the top 100 in Latin America including sublime dining experiences in the old town like Caleta and Fonda Lo Que Hay. It’s also got a groovy bar scene, hangouts like La Pulperia with its wicked margaritas and the craft beer at neighboring La Rana Dorado.
Seeking a deeper dive into the local culinary scene, I did a walking tour with Ana Patricia Zubieta from Food Tours Panamá. We started with a typical local breakfast of yellow corn tortillas, hojaldra (fried bread), salchichas guisadas (stewed hot dogs) and queso blanco del país (country cheese) at the historic Café Coca Cola, which takes its name from the fact that Americans working on Panama Canal construction flocked there to sip the ice-cold soft drink. From there we breezed through the Salsipuedes flea market, popped into an amazingly well stocked Asian grocery store in the tiny Chinatown neighborhood and finished the foodie adventure with a ceviche and calamari lunch at Restaurante El Marinero in the fish market.
Zoning in on the Canal
One of the engineering wonders of the 20th century, the Panama Canal stretches 40 miles across the isthmus between the Caribbean and Pacific (yep, the entire nation is just 40 miles wide). For those who weren’t paying attention in high school history, the canal reduced oceangoing travel time between the U.S. East Coast and California by around six weeks.
Visiting the canal is kind of a “must do” for any first time visitor to Panama City. When I made the pilgrimage the first time, the only thing to see or do was watch ships pass through the famous Miraflores Lock. Nowadays there’s a range of visitor experiences, from an IMAX movie narrated by Morgan Freeman, shopping for Panama Canal swag and sports-stadium-style bleachers to watch the maritime action.
It’s pretty cool to watch the “mules” (small electric locomotives) guide a giant ship into the lock and then see that ship slowly sink to Pacific Ocean level as water is released from the lock. But an even cooler experience is a wildlife safari on Lake Gatún.
Gatún is a massive inland waterbody that ships must navigate between locks at either end of the canal. Much of its shoreline is undeveloped and shrouded in pristine rainforest. This buffer zone was conceived as a natural deterrent to attacks on the canal, but over the years it’s evolved into a wildlife wonderland best explored by boat by the likes of Ancon Expeditions.
Both our skipper and guide had remarkable eyes for wildlife, animals camouflaged by the thick jungle that I might never have spotted on my own. Among the animals we saw on the three-hour cruise were white-faced capuchin and howler monkeys, two-toed and three-toed sloths, crocodiles and cute little marmosets. There was life in the air too, like caracara falcons and keel-billed toucans.
There was even quirky history, a massive floating crane nicknamed “Herman the German” that was originally used to service Nazi U-boats during World War II. Seized by the U.S. Navy after the war, the metal behemoth saw duty in Los Angeles for many years before relocating to the Panama Canal where it does hefty lifts for maintenance and construction.
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Paradise Found: Bocas del Toro
From Panama City, it’s around a one-hour flight to the Bocas del Toro archipelago in the Caribbean. The group includes six large islands and more than 250 smaller bits and bobs encircled by coral reefs, mangrove swamps and white sand strands.
Columbus and his son Fernando were the first “tourists,” with a 1502 landfall during which they met with the Indigenous peoples and promptly named the main island after himself (Isla Colón). Given its many secretive bays and inlets, the archipelago was a natural lair for pirates. But Bocas didn’t really gain the attention of the outside world until the late 20th century, when surfers discovered its gnarly waves.
The only reasonable way to get there is flying. But thanks to a short runway that can only take smaller aircraft, tourism is still relatively small. Among only a handful of proper resorts are Tranquilo Bay Eco Adventure Lodge, which shares a remote rainforest locale with Isla Bastimentos National Park, and La Coralina Island House, an upscale Balinese-style hotel and spa on Isla Colón.
La Coralina overlooks Playa Paunch, the archipelago’s most celebrated surf break. I was warned from the start it’s not for newbies — during the January-March surf season, the waves easily reach 10 feet and just below the surface is a jagged coral reef. But there were plenty willing to take the risk, and luckily, I could watch it all from the poolside terrace at La Coralina.
While there were plenty of reasons to linger on the hotel grounds — like shamanistic wellness treatments, rainforest yoga, exquisite piña coladas and tuna poké at the beach club — you can’t really say you’ve “done” Bocas until you explore other parts of the archipelago.
Bocas Town offers excellent waterfront bar hopping, as well as boats to other islands, like my excursion to visit the Indigenous community on Isla Cristóbal. Descendants of those who encountered Columbus, the island’s Ngäbe people cultivate cacao, which eventually ends up as chocolate sold around the world.
Tatiana Perez and her seven-year-old son Angel guided me through the community cacao plantation, where I could taste freshly made chocolate prepared by village women and dig into a chicken and tropical fruit lunch at an open-air restaurant tucked into the cacao grove.
From there we headed to the tiny Zapatilla Islands, so called because they resemble a pair of sandals when viewed on a map. Part of the national park, the islands boast talcum-powder-fine beaches and incredibly clear turquoise water.
It took around an hour to cruise back to Bocas Town, plenty of time for me to contemplate how Panama had changed since my first visit... and start planning my next adventure in Central America’s “Land Between the Seas.”
