Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
holiday periods of Christmas, New Year, Carnaval and Holy Week, when flights and hotels
in popular tourist spots are at a premium.
You'll avoid the crowds and the mark-ups in the
rainy season
(
invierno
, “winter”), which
stretches from May to December. Although the mountainous and rainforested regions in
Panama are best avoided during the wettest months, since peaks are constantly swathed in
cloud and tracks are boggy, if you stick to the lowland areas on the Pacific coast, the down-
pours, while frequent and intense, rarely last more than a few hours at a time, leaving plenty
of sunny, dry periods to enjoy. In particular, the otherwise parched Azuero Peninsula offers
much more picturesque scenery during its understated rainy season.
By contrast, the
Caribbean coast
receives almost twice as much rain as the Pacific, with
virtually no recognizable dry season. Regional variations impact here too: the Trade Winds
(at their strongest Dec to mid-Feb) make the water choppy and outer islands inaccessible in
Bocas del Toro and Kuna Yala, while Bocas enjoys two relatively dry spells around March
and October.
