There’s a strange thing that happens when you start planning a trip through Panama. You open a map and immediately see the big names: Panama City, Bocas del Toro, Boquete, Santa Catalina, El Valle, San Blas, maybe Coiba. You start connecting the dots like you're planning a military campaign. Three nights here. Two nights there. Four nights on the islands. And before you know it, you've built an itinerary so packed that you’ll need a vacation afterward to recover from your vacation.
But here's something worth knowing before you arrive: some of Panama's most memorable experiences can happen in the places you didn't originally plan to visit.
Panama is full of small towns, mountain communities, beaches, rivers and jungle areas that don't necessarily dominate travel guides. They may not have ten famous attractions or a giant neon sign announcing that you've arrived. Sometimes there's just a bus stop, a few local shops, a trail disappearing into the forest and someone telling you, “There's something cool over there.”
Those are the moments worth paying attention to.
One of the great things about backpacking through Panama is that you don't always need a huge attraction to have a great day. You might wander through a small town, find a little restaurant, sit down for lunch and end up talking with someone for an hour. You might follow a road because it looks interesting and discover a spectacular viewpoint. You might hear about a waterfall from someone at your hostel and suddenly abandon your carefully planned afternoon.
Panama rewards curiosity.
This is particularly true in the mountains. The highland areas around places such as Boquete and the surrounding regions can feel completely different from the tropical coast. The vegetation changes, the temperatures can be cooler and the landscape becomes ridiculously green. Roads wind through mountains, clouds drift across the valleys and tiny communities appear around corners that you probably wouldn't have noticed on a standard tourist itinerary.
Then there are the rivers.
Backpackers often think of Panama in terms of beaches and islands, but the country's rivers can be just as impressive. In the mountains and jungle, you'll find waterfalls, swimming holes and rocky river valleys where you can spend an afternoon surrounded by nothing but forest. Sometimes getting there is half the fun, particularly when the “trail” appears to have been designed by someone who believes walking in a straight line is boring.
And that's another reason not to schedule every minute of your trip.
Transportation in Panama can be wonderfully unpredictable. A journey that looks simple on a map may involve several connections, and smaller destinations may have limited transportation options. Instead of seeing this as a problem, treat it as a reason to leave some breathing room in your itinerary. Missing one connection shouldn't destroy your entire trip because you've already booked something expensive three hours later.
Give yourself space.
If you love somewhere, stay another night.
If you hate somewhere, move on.
If someone recommends somewhere you've never heard of, investigate.
And if your hostel suddenly has a group of people heading somewhere interesting, don't be afraid to change the plan.
That's often how backpacking stories happen.
Nobody tells their friends about the perfectly executed bus connection they made six months ago. They tell them about the day they accidentally ended up in the wrong town, met some interesting people, discovered an incredible swimming hole and somehow made it back before dark.
There's also a practical reason to explore beyond the famous destinations: you get to see a more everyday version of Panama.
The famous tourist areas are beautiful, but they don't necessarily show you what daily life looks like across the country. Small towns can give you a completely different perspective. You see people going about their normal routines, local restaurants serving food to regular customers, buses arriving and leaving, kids playing football and communities that aren't built entirely around tourism.
And suddenly Panama becomes more than a collection of attractions.
It becomes a country.
That's probably the biggest secret for anyone planning a backpacking trip here: don't confuse having a good itinerary with having a good adventure.
Your itinerary should get you into Panama.
After that, leave a little room for Panama to surprise you.
Because somewhere between the famous destinations, the random bus stops and the roads you almost didn't take, you might discover the place you end up talking about for years.
And you probably won't find it on the first page of Google.