Isla Taboga

I hadn’t expected Isla Taboga to feel this far from Panama City given that the ferry ride is barely forty minutes, but distance here isn’t measured in kilometers. We stepped off the boat into a town with no cars beyond a handful of maintenance vehicles, narrow sandy lanes instead of paved streets, and a white colonial church — said to be one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, dating to the 1520s — anchoring a plaza where a small herd of goats was grazing with total indifference to visitors.

The nickname, Isla de las Flores, comes from the bougainvillea and hibiscus that spill over nearly every wall and fence on the island, an explosion of color against whitewashed houses that makes even the most ordinary side street look composed for a postcard. I spent an hour just walking the lanes behind the main beach with no destination, which is really the correct way to experience Taboga — it rewards aimlessness more than any itinerary I could have planned.

The island’s history carries more weight than its sleepy present suggests. Francis Pizarro used it as a staging point before his conquest of the Inca Empire, and centuries later Paul Gauguin briefly worked here at a canal-company job before abandoning it for painting — a fact the locals mention with evident pride despite the artist having, by most accounts, hated his time on the island. From the hill above town, the view stretches back toward the Panama City skyline and the endless line of container ships queued at anchor, waiting their turn through the canal, a genuinely strange juxtaposition against the quiet below.

When to go: The dry season, January through April, gives the calmest ferry crossings and the best beach weather. Weekends bring day-trippers from the capital in large numbers; a weekday visit keeps the lanes as quiet as they deserve to be.