Author: Sebastian Pieper

Angelo Solanilla’s boats are ready. Just minutes from the coast, humpback whales are arriving in Panamanian waters, and the tour operator from the Azuero Peninsula isn’t waiting for travelers to find him. He’s bringing the experience straight to the capital’s most visited historic district. A new pedestrian zone showcase in Casco Antiguo is putting destinations like Pedasí, Boquete, and Isla Caña directly in front of the more than 100,000 tourists who have already entered Panama this year, marking a deliberate pivot away from the well-worn paths of Panama City toward the country’s less-traveled interior provinces. A Strategic Stage in the…

A single hectare of Panama’s tangled mangrove forest can trap four times more carbon than a towering tropical forest on land, a biological superpower that turns these coastal wetlands into prized blue carbon vaults. On July 26, as the world marks the International Day for the Defense of the Mangrove ecosystem and to recover mangroves, officials and communities are staring at a hard truth: the country has already lost roughly half of its original mangrove cover, and the race to save what remains is accelerating. The date honors environmental activist Hayhow Daniel Nanoto and was fixed by UNESCO in 2015,…

Barely 285 travelers passed through the Enrique Adolfo Jiménez Airport in the first five months of this year, yet its location at the doorstep of one of the hemisphere’s busiest free trade zones has business leaders pushing for a dramatic overhaul. Representatives from the Colón Free Zone want to wrest control of the terminal from Panama’s main airport operator and fold it into a sprawling logistics expansion already reshaping hundreds of hectares next door. A Terminal Stuck in Low Gear Official data from Tocumen S.A., the state entity that manages Panama’s airport network, reveals just how quiet the Colón airfield…

A creek in northern Panama had its natural flow violently twisted, its banks clawed apart by crude tools and its water siphoned away. When authorities closed in on the Río María Prieto waterway on July 25, 2026, they found a group of people actively extracting gold from the streambed, leaving behind a swath of devastated terrain. The surprise enforcement action, undertaken by the country’s specialized environmental task force, netted six individuals and a cache of equipment that painted a stark picture of how unlicensed mining continues to gnaw at Panama’s ecosystems. Environmental Devastation Along Río María Prieto The operation was…

Inside the vaults of Panama’s National Bank, a set of electoral records from Venezuela’s 2024 presidential vote sits under lock and key. For Panamanian officials, those documents are more than paper, they represent the presidency of Edmundo González and a roadmap back to democratic legitimacy. Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha pointed to that physical evidence during an interview from India on Tuesday, making it clear that Panama will not restore diplomatic relations with the government led by Delcy Rodríguez anytime soon. “We keep the tally sheets that certify Edmundo González’s victory in the July 28, 2024 elections in the vaults of…

Every day, nearly 74 million gallons of treated drinking water vanish beneath the streets of Panama Oeste, never reaching a single family, school, or business. The staggering loss, which represents half of the province’s daily production, has pushed officials to launch an emergency repair blitz in Arraiján, a district where chronic shortages and dismal water pressure have become a way of life for thousands. Crews with heavy equipment rolled out to Loma Cová alongside the Pan-American Highway this week, kicking off an aggressive campaign to patch more than 150 leaks and pipe fractures that for years have bled the region’s…

A bright Aeroregional jet broke through the coastal haze this week and landed at Scarlett Martínez International Airport, carrying more than just inbound tourists. It delivered a long-awaited direct link between Ecuador and Panama’s Pacific Riviera, a sun-soaked stretch that has often played second fiddle to the capital’s Tocumen hub. With the new Quito-Río Hato Flight, now, officials say that dynamic is about to shift dramatically. The Pacific Riviera’s Growing Air Gateway Sitting just minutes from the all-inclusive resorts and white-sand beaches of Coclé province, the Río Hato airport has traditionally handled seasonal charters and a handful of regional connections.…

“This system doesn’t work.” The blunt admission from Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino landed like a hammer on the desk of a nation long frustrated by bureaucratic paralysis. Facing reporters, he pulled no punches about the state’s institutional rot, then pivoted to a deadline that could redefine his presidency: 2027, the year he intends to convene a Constitutional Assembly Overhaul. Mulino’s gamble is as audacious as it is risky, a bid to cement his legacy by rewriting the country’s political rulebook before his term ends. For months, the president has teased structural reforms, but his latest remarks mark a definitive…

Panama City’s historic quarter will trade honking horns for the beat of tamboritos this Sunday, July 26, 2026, as the Casco Peatonal returns with its most ambitious lineup yet. More than 150 businesses, museums, and independent artists are joining forces to turn the cobblestone streets of San Felipe into a sprawling, walkable festival that stretches from the iconic Arco Chato all the way to the seafood market and beyond. The initiative, which has steadily grown into a beloved monthly tradition, now anchors a broader push to reclaim public space in the capital’s oldest neighborhood while giving locals and tourists a…

The needle moves with precision, guided by real-time images, and a liver tumor shrinks without a single large incision. For patients at Panama’s National Oncology Institute Cancer Hospital, such minimally invasive miracles now come with an unprecedented seal of approval. This month, the institute became the first public oncology hospital in Latin America to earn accreditation from the International Alliance for Services in Interventional Oncology, an organisation based in Vienna that sets the global benchmark for image-guided cancer treatments. The journey to this recognition wasn’t a brief sprint. It spanned more than two years of relentless audits, protocol overhauls, and…