Panama City

The US dollar has circulated as legal tender since 1904, and anyone arriving with dollars doesn't need a currency exchange. The balboa is pegged 1:1 and exists only as coins, the same size and weight as American ones, which mix in your change without anyone noticing. Approximate ranges for 2026: coffee at a fonda $1–2 and at a specialty café $3–4.50; full fonda lunch $4–7; dinner at a mid-range restaurant $15–30 per person; cocktail at a Casco rooftop $9–15; Balboa or Atlas beer at a neighborhood bar $1.50–2.50; metro $0.35–0.50; city ride by app $4–8; hostel $15–25 and mid-range hotel $70–140 a night. Cards are accepted at almost all formal businesses, but fondas, taxis, markets and carts take cash only. Carry $1, $5 and $10 bills, because $50s and $100s are refused almost everywhere for fear of counterfeits. The 7% ITBMS is usually built into the price, and hotels add a 10% lodging tax. Many restaurants already add a 10% “servicio” to the bill, so check before leaving more of a tip; in taxis, no tip is expected.

Tocumen, Central America's biggest hub

Tocumen International Airport (PTY) is about 24 km east of downtown and is Central America's biggest hub, home base of Copa Airlines, with two terminals since T2 opened in 2022. An official taxi to Bella Vista or the Casco costs about $30–40 on a flat zone fare, agreed before getting in. Uber and InDrive also serve the airport, picking up at the marked terminal spot. Metro Line 2 has a branch to the airport: check on arrival whether it's running on your date. There's also a bus along the Corredor Sur, cheap and slow, only worth it if you're in no hurry. Domestic flights and flights to Guna Yala leave from Albrook Airport (PAC), right by the city, next to the Gran Terminal de Transporte and Albrook Mall.

Metro by card, taxis by zone and the train to Colón

The metro is the city's most predictable transportation. Line 1, opened on April 5, 2014, was the first in Central America and runs north–south, from Albrook to Villa Zaita; Line 2, from 2019, runs east to Nuevo Tocumen. Line 3, a monorail to Panamá Oeste, is under construction and expected around 2028. Payment is by Metro/Metrobús card only, bought at station machines, because no turnstile accepts cash, and the same card works on the red Metrobús buses. The “diablos rojos,” the old hand-painted buses, were pulled from the capital around 2010–2011 and survive on the outskirts. Street taxis have no meter and charge by zone, with the price agreed through the window before you get in. Sharing a ride with strangers is normal, and anyone who doesn't know that may think the driver took a wrong turn when he just went to pick up another passenger. Traffic jams up from 7am to 9am and from 4pm to 7pm. The city is walkable in patches (Casco, Amador, Cinta Costera, El Cangrejo) and uncomfortable on foot elsewhere, with broken sidewalks, heat and rain. You can rent bikes on the Amador Causeway. The Panama Canal Railway links the capital to Colón in about 1 hour, with a single early-morning departure on weekdays, for about $25 each way.

In Panama City the risk is predictable, by address and by hour, and what usually affects visitors is street theft; violence against tourists is rare. The tourist core of the Casco Antiguo is patrolled, including by tourist police, and walkable until late. The streets that run west toward El Chorrillo change character within a block and shouldn't be crossed on foot, not even by day. After dark, avoid Curundú, El Chorrillo, parts of Santa Ana and El Marañón and the area around the Albrook Terminal. San Miguelito and Río Abajo call for local company at night. The common scams are the taxi that “has no change” or charges a foreigner's fare, the fake guide who approaches you at the entrance to Panamá Viejo and the inflated bill at a rooftop bar with no menu in sight. Ask for the printed menu and check the “servicio.” Don't flash your phone on Avenida Central or at metro exits at rush hour, and don't leave anything visible in a rental car. At night, calling an Uber or InDrive costs a few dollars and solves almost everything. Tap water is drinkable in the capital, unlike in Bocas del Toro, and the emergency number is 911.

Greet before you ask

Say “buenas” when entering a shop, elevator, bus, office or waiting room, and “permiso” to get past someone. Going straight to the request without greeting reads as rude, not efficient.

Use “usted”

The formal address is standard with strangers of any age, including among young people, and only changes once the other person switches first. In a work setting, use the title (licenciado, ingeniero, doctora) if someone is introduced that way.

Agree on the taxi fare through the window

Street taxis have no meter and the fare is by zone. Ask “¿cuánto es la carrera hasta…?” before opening the door; getting in first and asking after is the fastest way to pay double.

Dress for the air conditioning

Offices, restaurants, buses and the metro run between 18 and 20°C, against 32°C on the street. Bring an extra layer even on a sunny day, and note that tank tops and flip-flops, common on the street, aren't well received in offices, banks and churches.

Canal: 6% of GDP and a symbol of sovereignty since 1999

The canal accounts for about 6% of GDP and has been a symbol of national sovereignty since 1999. Jokes about “the Americans' canal” or about who should control it land very badly, even among people who disagree with each other.

Ask before photographing people

In Panamá Viejo, in the Casco and in working-class neighborhoods, photographing residents, children or Guna vendors without asking is considered offensive. With Guna artisans, the photo is usually negotiated along with buying a mola.

A ship at Miraflores at any hour

Thinking you can see a ship at any hour at Miraflores. Transits concentrate roughly between 9am and 11am and between 3pm and 5pm. Arriving at noon costs the same price for an empty chamber and a terrace under the blazing sun.

The 1519 ruins and the 1673 city

Confusing Panamá Viejo with the Casco Antiguo. They're two separate sites, eight kilometers apart, with the ruins of 1519 to the east and the walled city of 1673 to the southwest, so check which of the two is on the tour before booking.

Picking a hotel for the skyline

Choosing a hotel just for the skyline: the most photogenic buildings have no sidewalk. Anyone who wants to walk should stay in the Casco, El Cangrejo or Bella Vista.

Walking from downtown to the Casco at night

Walking from downtown to the Casco along the waterfront at night. The route skirts the edges of Santa Ana and El Chorrillo, and the change in atmosphere happens within a block; an app ride costs $4 to $6.

Only big bills, no metro card

Arriving with only big bills and no metro card. $50 and $100 bills are refused at fondas, taxis and markets, and no metro station takes cash at the turnstile. The card costs about $2 at the station machines, and it's worth buying before you need it.

¿Qué xopá?

What's up? Panamanian slang formed by flipping the syllables of “qué pasó,” used among acquaintances

Buenas

Hi / good day: a neutral greeting for any time, said on entering anywhere

¿Cuánto es la carrera hasta…?

How much is the ride to…? The required question before getting into a street taxi

Chuleta

Wow / darn: an interjection of surprise or shock, literally “chop”

Vaina

Thing, thingy, deal: used for any object or problem whose name doesn't come to mind

Ahorita

In a little while: can mean five minutes, three hours or never, and no one finds that contradictory

The coastal plain and the isthmus lying flat

The city occupies a narrow coastal plain on the eastern side of the canal's Pacific entrance, with isolated forested hills within the urban fabric: Cerro Ancón is 199 m high and the Metropolitan Natural Park protects about 232 hectares of forest. Here the isthmus runs east to west, and the canal crosses it from northwest to southeast: as a practical consequence, the Pacific entrance sits further east than the Atlantic one, and in Panama City the sun rises over the Pacific Ocean.

The tide, the wetlands and the climate

The bay is shallow, with an enormous tidal range by tropical standards, up to about 5–6 m on the Pacific side versus about 30 cm on the Caribbean side: at low tide, kilometers of mudflats appear, forming the wetlands of the Bay of Panama, a Ramsar site and a stopover for millions of migratory birds. The climate is tropical savanna, with a dry season from December to April and a rainy one from May to December.

The 30-km line and the expansion

The urban grid is a 30-km line along the coast, because the Canal Zone blocked growth to the west until 1999: the city moved in stages from Panamá Viejo (1519) to the Casco (1673), then to Calidonia and Bella Vista in the early twentieth century, to Paitilla and Costa del Este from the 1990s on, and to the Cinta Costera landfills, opened in phases since 2009. Only after the canal's handover did expansion jump across the interoceanic highway toward Arraiján and La Chorrera, today the fastest-growing area.

Rubén Blades and the salsa of “Pedro Navaja,” 1978

Music is where the city best explains its own mix. Rubén Blades was born in 1948 in the Guachapalí neighborhood, next to the Casco, and turned salsa into urban storytelling with “Pedro Navaja” in 1978; he was minister of tourism from 2004 to 2009 and a presidential candidate in 1994. Danilo Pérez, a jazz pianist trained in Panama and Boston, created the Panama Jazz Festival in 2003 and a foundation that brings music education to public schools. It was also here, in the 1980s, among descendants of the canal's West Indian workers, that Jamaican dancehall became reggae en español with El General and Nando Boom, the direct line that leads to reggaeton. Alongside all that plays the música típica of the interior, with accordion and saloma, heard at any party and on much of the radio.

From colonial Casco to the bungalows of Balboa and Ancón

The city is physically stratified in layers of empire, and you can cross them in one afternoon. First comes the Spanish grid of the Casco, the wooden bungalows and lawns of the former Canal Zone in Balboa and Ancón, and finally the towers of Paitilla and Costa del Este, built from the 1990s onward. The former Fort Clayton military base became, in 1999, the Ciudad del Saber, with universities, NGOs and regional offices of UN agencies. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has operated in the country since 1923, headquartered in Ancón, with a field station on Barro Colorado, an island in Lake Gatún that was isolated when the lake filled in 1914. Today it's one of the most studied stretches of tropical forest in the world.

Boxing, baseball, faith and nights that start at 10pm

In sports, the idol is boxing: Roberto Durán was born in El Chorrillo in 1951 and the city's arena bears his name, and in baseball the country produced Rod Carew and Mariano Rivera. In religion, Catholicism is the majority, with a growing evangelical presence and Anglican and Baptist churches of West Indian origin in Río Abajo; World Youth Day in January 2019 drew hundreds of thousands of people and funded the restoration of the cathedral. Nightlife is split between the rooftops of the Casco, the bars of Calle Uruguay and the neighborhood cantinas of El Cangrejo, and it starts late, because before 10pm the places are empty.

“The Tailor of Panama,” John le Carré (1996)

A novel about the city of middlemen, rumor and money in transit on the eve of the canal handover in 1999. The 2001 film adaptation, with Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush, was shot in Casco Antiguo and in Colón.

“The Path Between the Seas,” David McCullough (1977)

The full story of the canal between 1870 and 1914: the French failure, the 1903 separation, the Gatún engineering and Gorgas's sanitation campaign. It's the book that explains why the city is shaped the way it is.

“Siembra,” Rubén Blades and Willie Colón (1978)

The album that made salsa a street narrative, written by a Panamanian born two blocks from the Casco. “Pedro Navaja” tells the story of an entire neighborhood in seven minutes and still plays in the city almost fifty years later.