One of the simplest pleasures of traveling through Panama is walking into a little restaurant, roadside stand, market or beach café, looking at a handwritten menu and seeing a list of fruit juices you've never heard of.
Forget the giant international soft drink companies for a moment.
In Panama, fruit gets turned into a drink.
You'll hear them called jugos naturales or chichas, and they are part of everyday life. They might be made with water and ice, blended with milk, sweetened with sugar, or simply served as fresh as possible. The selection changes with the season, which means that the drink menu can be a little different every time you travel through the country.
And that's half the fun.
Maracuyá: The Tropical Wake-Up Call
If you only try one unfamiliar fruit juice in Panama, make it maracuyá, or passion fruit.
It is intensely aromatic, sweet and sharply sour at the same time. The little black seeds floating around inside the pulp are part of the experience, although many places strain them out before serving.
Ice cold, maracuyá juice is almost ridiculously refreshing.
After walking around Panama City in the heat, hiking through the jungle or spending several hours on a beach, a glass of cold passion fruit juice can feel like somebody just turned the air conditioning on inside your body.
It's also one of those flavors that doesn't need much explanation.
You take a sip and immediately understand why Panamanians love it.
Guanábana: The Creamy One
Guanábana, or soursop, is completely different.
The enormous green fruit looks rather intimidating, covered in soft spikes, but inside is creamy white flesh with a sweet and slightly tangy flavor.
Guanábana is particularly good when blended with milk, producing a thick, almost milkshake-like drink.
The flavor is difficult to describe. Depending on who you ask, it tastes like pineapple, strawberry, banana, citrus or something completely its own.
That's part of the fun of tropical fruit. You can spend five minutes trying to identify the flavor and still not quite get there.
Tamarindo: Sweet, Sour and Completely Addictive
Tamarindo is one of the classic flavors of Panama.
The fruit itself comes in brown pods containing a sticky pulp with a powerful sweet-and-sour flavor. Turn that pulp into a cold drink and you get something completely different from ordinary orange or pineapple juice.
Tamarindo has a sharpness that makes it particularly good in Panama's heat.
It is also one of those drinks that can surprise visitors. You might see a dark brown liquid and assume it will taste heavy or strange.
Then you take a sip.
Sweet. Sour. Tangy. Refreshing.
Suddenly the entire glass is gone.
Nance: The Great Dividing Line
Then there's nance.
Nance is one of the fruits that separates adventurous travelers from people who would rather stick with pineapple.
The little yellow fruit has a powerful aroma and a very distinctive sweet, sour and almost funky flavor. In juice form, nance produces one of the more unusual drinks you'll encounter in Panama.
Some people absolutely love it.
Some people take one sip and immediately order a mango instead.
There isn't much middle ground.
But if you're traveling through Panama and see chicha de nance, try it at least once.
You can always order something else afterward.
Marañón: Drink the Cashew Fruit
Here's another fascinating one.
Most people know the cashew nut, but the nut is actually attached to a fleshy fruit known as the cashew apple, or marañón.
The fruit is juicy, aromatic and sweet-tart, but it doesn't keep particularly well. That makes fresh marañón juice a particularly interesting thing to encounter while traveling in the tropics.
It's the sort of drink that reminds you that fruit doesn't have to travel halfway around the world in a refrigerated shipping container to become something delicious.
Sometimes it just needs to grow nearby and get thrown into a blender.
Pineapple: Simple but Fantastic
You might think pineapple juice is too ordinary to get excited about.
Don't make that mistake in Panama.
Fresh pineapple juice can be spectacular when the fruit is properly ripe. It is sweet, acidic, intensely aromatic and incredibly refreshing when served cold.
Pineapple is also used to make arroz con piña, a traditional Panamanian drink that combines pineapple with rice and can be prepared in several different ways. Some versions are blended and strained while others retain more of the rice.
It is a perfect example of something you'll encounter repeatedly while traveling in Panama: taking a familiar ingredient and turning it into something you probably didn't expect.
Mango: A Glass Full of Summer
When mangoes are in season, you'll find them everywhere.
Markets fill with them, trees become overloaded with them and roadside vendors suddenly have an abundance of fruit that needs to be eaten before it becomes too ripe.
Mango makes an excellent juice because it is naturally sweet, fragrant and thick.
You may find it blended with water for a refreshing juice or with milk for a richer batido.
And there is a huge difference between drinking freshly blended ripe mango and drinking something that came out of a carton.
One tastes like mango.
The other tastes like someone once heard about mango.
Watermelon: The Ultimate Hot-Day Drink
Watermelon juice might be one of the most refreshing things you can order in Panama.
It's light, naturally sweet and packed with water, making it particularly appropriate when you're wandering around in tropical heat.
Unlike thick guanábana or mango drinks, watermelon juice feels almost weightless.
It's the drink you want when you're sitting somewhere with sweat running down your back and the sun is beating down.
Cold watermelon juice, plenty of ice and a shady chair can solve a surprising number of problems.
Papaya: Surprisingly Good as a Drink
Papaya is another fruit you'll encounter frequently in Panama.
It has a soft, sweet flavor and makes a thick smoothie or juice, particularly when blended with milk.
Papaya is less acidic than passion fruit or tamarind, so it's a good choice if you want something mellow and sweet rather than something that attacks your taste buds.
And because papaya grows so well in tropical climates, it is a familiar part of Panama's fruit culture rather than an exotic novelty.
Mora: A Taste of the Mountains
Travel into Panama's higher elevations and you may encounter fruit drinks that feel completely different from the flavors associated with the lowlands.
Mora, often translated as blackberry, makes a dark, sweet-tart drink that can be particularly good in the cooler mountain regions.
It's an interesting reminder that Panama isn't just tropical beaches.
The country's elevation changes dramatically, and the fruit available in the cooler highlands can be quite different from what you'll find on the Caribbean or Pacific coast.
A cold mora drink while sitting in the misty mountains around Chiriquí is a completely different experience from sipping pineapple juice beside the ocean.
Cítricos: More Than Just Orange Juice
Panama also has plenty of citrus-based drinks.
You'll encounter naranja, limón, mandarina and sometimes toronja, or grapefruit. There are also more unusual combinations involving different citrus fruits.
Lemonade is particularly common and can be incredibly refreshing when made with fresh juice rather than a powdered mixture.
And don't be surprised if the balance between sweetness and acidity varies considerably from one place to another.
That's part of the charm.
A Panamanian fruit drink isn't necessarily a standardized product. One restaurant might make it sweeter. Another might make it more acidic. Someone else might throw in more ice.
You're getting someone's version of the drink.
Corozo: The Beautiful Red One
If you encounter corozo juice, pay attention to the color.
The small palm fruit produces a striking reddish-purple drink with a tart flavor that can remind people of cranberry.
It is particularly associated with tropical and rural areas and isn't necessarily something you'll see on every restaurant menu.
That's what makes discovering it fun.
You aren't simply ordering "fruit juice."
You're finding out what fruit happens to be available in that particular part of Panama.
The Secret Is Asking What Is Fresh
One of the best strategies when traveling around Panama is not to decide what juice you want before you arrive.
Instead, ask:
"¿Qué jugos naturales tienen?"
What natural juices do you have?
The answer might be pineapple.
It might be passion fruit.
It might be guanábana.
Or it might be something you've never heard of.
If they tell you it's a fruit you've never tried, order it.
That's how you discover things.
Chicha Doesn't Necessarily Mean What You Think
Travelers familiar with other parts of Latin America sometimes hear the word chicha and immediately think of a fermented or corn-based beverage.
In Panama, however, the word is commonly used for fresh fruit drinks. Panamanian usage includes a wide range of fruit-based refreshments made with water and sweetener.
So when you see chicha de maracuyá, chicha de tamarindo or chicha de nance, you're generally looking at a refreshing fruit drink rather than something alcoholic.
It's one of those little cultural details that makes traveling through different Latin American countries so interesting.
The same word doesn't always mean the same thing.
The Best Juice Might Be the One You Didn't Order
Perhaps that's the real pleasure of drinking natural fruit juice in Panama.
You aren't just buying something to drink.
You're sampling whatever the country's tropical landscape happens to be producing at that moment.
One week you might become obsessed with maracuyá.
Then somebody hands you a glass of guanábana.
A few days later you discover tamarindo.
Eventually somebody convinces you to try nance, and you're forced to decide whether you love it or think it tastes completely bizarre.
That's what makes Panama's fruit drinks so much more interesting than a menu full of standardized soft drinks.
The country is literally growing the ingredients outside.
So when you're traveling through Panama, find a little restaurant, roadside stand, market or beach café, sit down and ask what is fresh.
Order something you've never tried.
And when that enormous glass of ice-cold tropical fruit arrives, take your first sip.
You may have just found your new favorite drink.