Pedasí

Pedasí is the kind of place that makes you suspicious of your own contentment, because nothing about it should work quite this well and yet it does. It sits at the southeastern tip of the Azuero Peninsula, a full day’s drive from Panama City by the standards of most itineraries, which has kept it from the wholesale development that swallowed similar coastal towns elsewhere in Central America. The main street is short, the church at its center modest, and the pace of life so unhurried that our first afternoon there consisted almost entirely of sitting on a porch watching iguanas cross the road with what looked like deliberate slowness.

The town’s fishing heritage is still very much alive rather than a museum piece — pangas come in loaded with corvina and dorado most mornings, and a stall by the market sells fish so fresh the vendor was still cleaning the morning’s catch when we bought it. We had it grilled that night at a small family-run place with three tables, no sign, and a recipe for ceviche marinated so long in lime it had turned nearly opaque. I’ve eaten ceviche across three continents at this point and this version, entirely unglamorous in its setting, remains one I think about.

Pedasí also functions as the gateway to two of the peninsula’s best natural sites — Isla Iguana’s reef and seabird colonies a short boat ride offshore, and Playa Venao’s surf break twenty minutes down the coast road — without itself feeling like either a dive shop town or a surf town. It has instead settled into something more general and more livable: a scattering of expats running small guesthouses, a strong cattle-ranching tradition inland, and an annual pilgrimage of sea turtles nesting at nearby Isla Cañas that draws far fewer visitors than it deserves.

When to go: The dry season, mid-December through April, is most reliable for beach days and boat trips. If sea turtles matter to you, the nesting arribadas at Isla Cañas run roughly August through November.