🇵🇦 Panama · Cordillera Central and Coclé
The Pearl Islands are a cluster of more than a hundred islands and islets in the Gulf of Panama, out in the Pacific and only a short hop from Panama City. Famous since colonial times for their pearl beds, today the archipelago is a paradise of pale-sand beaches, turquoise water and abundant marine life, still far less developed than Panama's Caribbean side and, for the most part, untouched.
The best-known islands are Contadora, the most touristy and the easiest to reach, and Isla del Rey, the largest in the group, but the archipelago takes in dozens of other islands and islets of real beauty, some of them famous as the setting for international survival TV shows. What you come for is idyllic beaches, excellent snorkeling and diving, fishing, and one of the finest places in the country to watch humpback whales in season.
This guide covers the practical side of the Pearl Islands: the main islands, the things to do on the water (beaches, snorkeling, diving, whales), how to get there and get around, where to sleep and eat, and tips for putting together an escape to this corner of the Panamanian Pacific.
The Pearl Islands, in the Gulf of Panama, owe their name to the pearl wealth the Spanish exploited from the 16th century onward, with the tragic use of enslaved labor. Legendary pearls came out of these waters. Today the archipelago is a destination of untouched beaches, marine life and whale watching.
Read the full history ↓The province of the capital and the Canal: from the first city on the American Pacific (1519) to the modern skyline of Panama City, with the Casco Viejo and Panamá Viejo — World Heritage Sites — and the Miraflores locks.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
One of the most famous pearls in history came out of these islands. They called it La Peregrina: a teardrop-shaped pearl the size of a pigeon's egg, found by an enslaved diver on the archipelago's oyster beds in the middle of the 16th century. That man won his freedom in exchange for the jewel, which crossed the ocean to adorn queens of Spain, then Napoleon III and, four centuries later, the neck of the actress Elizabeth Taylor, to whom Richard Burton gave it after buying it at a Sotheby's auction in 1969 (the jewel would go under the hammer again for more than 11 million dollars in 2011). Behind that dazzling story lies another, far darker one, and it explains why these islands in the Gulf of Panama carry the name Las Perlas.
The Pearl Islands were formed geologically as an extension of the relief of the Panamanian isthmus, producing more than a hundred islands and islets scattered across the Gulf of Panama, in the Pacific. Before the Europeans arrived, these islands were known to and frequented by Indigenous peoples of the area, related to the cultures of Panama's central Pacific, who came to fish and to harvest the great pearl-oyster beds that abounded here.
The first Spanish explorers, already settled on the isthmus after the founding of Santa María la Antigua del Darién, heard of these pearl-rich islands through Indigenous accounts long before Vasco Núñez de Balboa laid eyes on them himself. That reputation for pearl wealth preceded the conquistadors' arrival and would shape the archipelago's later history.
The name 'Las Perlas' took hold quickly in colonial maps and paperwork, displacing any earlier Indigenous name, in a pattern repeated across much of the conquest of the Americas: the commercial value of a resource ended up christening the territory that held it.
The Pearl Islands, in the Gulf of Panama, owe their name to the enormous wealth of their pearl-oyster beds, known to the Spanish very soon after Vasco Núñez de Balboa reached the Pacific Ocean in 1513. The discovery of these pearls set off an intense extraction that would mark the archipelago's history for centuries.
Pearl harvesting rested on forced labor: first that of the Indigenous population, decimated by violence and disease, and then, on a massive scale, that of enslaved Africans, made to dive to great depths in extremely dangerous conditions. This history of exploitation and suffering is a dark and unavoidable part of the archipelago's past, bound up with the colonial system and the slave trade.
Legendary pearls came out of these waters and reached the courts of Europe, among them outsized specimens that were set into Spanish royal jewels. The pearl trade made the archipelago an important enclave, with islands such as Contadora - where the pearls were counted - or San Miguel, on Isla del Rey. That pearl legacy, with all its splendor and its tragedy, is the historical backdrop to a place associated today with natural beauty and tourism.
Beyond the pearl trade, the archipelago gradually filled with communities that lived from fishing and the sea. Isla del Rey, the largest of the group and one of the biggest islands in Panama, holds villages such as San Miguel, of Afro-descendant roots and fishing tradition, which keep alive a way of life tied to the ocean and the mangroves.
The archipelago's geography - more than a hundred islands and islets, many of them uninhabited - produced a territory of great beauty and, at the same time, one relatively remote from the development of the isthmus, which was concentrated along the Canal corridor. That distance helped preserve much of its beaches and ecosystems in their natural state until recent times.
Its nearness to Panama City, however, made the archipelago fertile ground for tourism and second homes, especially from the 20th century onward. While some islands stayed traditional fishing communities, others - Contadora above all - turned toward tourism, producing today's contrast between untouched islands, fishing villages and tourist enclaves.
In 1979, Contadora Island gained international notoriety when it became the temporary refuge of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, deposed after the Islamic Revolution, who spent time on the island at the invitation of Panama's then leader Omar Torrijos. That episode put the tiny island on the front pages of the world's press and began to link it with international diplomacy.
A few years later, in 1983, Contadora was once again the stage for international politics when it hosted the creation of the 'Contadora Group', a diplomatic initiative driven by Panama, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela to seek a negotiated way out of the armed conflicts shaking Central America (Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in particular) at the height of the Cold War. The group laid the groundwork for later peace processes in the region and earned the island a place in Latin American diplomatic history.
That twin fame - as an exclusive hideaway and as a seat of regional diplomacy - established Contadora as the best-known and most developed island in the archipelago, drawing hotel investment and turning it into the tourist gateway to the rest of Las Perlas.
More recently, several islands in the archipelago became known worldwide as the setting for survival television shows, which showed their untouched beaches and crystalline water to international audiences, including seasons of formats such as 'Survivor' filmed on various islands of the group. That media exposure reinforced the archipelago's image as a natural paradise of the Panamanian Pacific and drew fresh global tourist interest.
Today the archipelago's tourism rests on its beaches, its marine life - ideal for snorkeling and diving - and on humpback whale watching: between July and October the whales cross these waters to breed after migrating up from the southern hemisphere. Contadora holds the bulk of the hotel infrastructure, while islands such as Saboga and parts of Isla del Rey keep a more rural, more fishing-oriented character.
The challenge ahead is to develop that tourism sustainably, preserving the marine and mangrove ecosystems and benefiting the island communities, in a setting that still largely retains the untouched quality that makes it so appealing next to the country's more crowded beach destinations.