🇵🇦 Panama · Azuero Peninsula and the Pacific
Santa Catalina is a small fishing village on the Pacific coast of Veraguas that has earned a big name for two reasons: its waves and its sea. On one hand, it's one of the most famous surf destinations in Central America, with a powerful, high-quality wave that draws surfers from all over the world. On the other, it's the gateway to Coiba Island, Panama's greatest marine natural treasure and one of the best dive destinations in the tropical Pacific, a Unesco World Heritage Site.
It's a rustic, laid-back, backpacker-friendly place, with no luxury and no big resorts, where the plan is simple and perfect: surf, dive, snorkel, sail among paradise islands, watch marine life and switch off at the slow pace of the Pacific. Being so close to Coiba, with its reefs, its sharks, its turtles, its manta rays and its astonishing biodiversity, makes Santa Catalina a dream for anyone drawn to the underwater world.
This guide walks you through Santa Catalina with a practical, warm eye: its celebrated surf wave, the diving and the trips out to Coiba Island, the beaches, the fishing and village life, plus how to get here, get around, sleep and eat. If you're after surf, diving and marine nature in the raw, far from mass tourism, Santa Catalina is your place in Panama.
For most of its history, Santa Catalina was a quiet, isolated fishing village on the Pacific coast of Veraguas Province, an area of farming, cattle and fishing traditions, far from the country's main centers. Life revolved around the sea and fishing, in a setting of great natural beauty but hard to reach. Its great transformation came through two things: surfing and Coiba Island. From the last decades of the 20th century and, above all, in the 21st, Santa Catalina was discovered by surfers, who found on its coast one of the best waves in Central America, which put it on the world surf map and drew a growing community of travelers and backpackers. Almost in parallel, nearby Coiba Island (which for much of the 20th century had operated as a feared penal colony, which paradoxically kept its nature almost intact) was turned into a national park after the prison closed, and in 2005 Coiba National Park was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site for its extraordinary marine biodiversity. Santa Catalina then established itself as the main departure point for Coiba, adding diving and marine ecotourism to surfing. And so the old fishing village became an international destination for surfers, divers and nature lovers, while keeping its rustic, relaxed character. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The only province with coasts on both oceans: land of the chief Urracá and of Santa Fe in the mountains, with Santa Catalina — a surfing mecca — and Coiba Island, a World Heritage Site and marine sanctuary of the Pacific.
Read the history of Veraguas →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Santa Catalina lies in Veraguas Province, a region of west-central Panama with a long history. Veraguas holds a singular place in the history of the Americas: its name is tied to the family of Christopher Columbus (the title 'Duke of Veragua' was granted to his descendants), in memory of the coasts the navigator sailed on his fourth voyage. The province is also the only one in Panama with coastline on both oceans, the Pacific and the Caribbean.
For centuries, Veraguas was a region of farming, cattle and fishing traditions, with towns turned toward the fields and the sea. On its Pacific coast, places like Santa Catalina were small, isolated fishing villages, hard to reach, where life ran to the rhythm of the tides and small-scale fishing, in a setting of great natural beauty but far from the country's main circuits.
That traditional Santa Catalina, modest and turned toward the sea, kept a low profile for a long time. Nothing suggested that this quiet fishing village would become an international destination. Its transformation would come through two things few people then imagined as tourism engines: the waves off its coast and the nearby, and feared, Coiba Island.
The story of Santa Catalina is inseparable from that of nearby Coiba Island, Panama's largest island, and that story has a chapter as dark as it was, paradoxically, providential for nature. For much of the 20th century, Coiba Island operated as a feared penal colony, a prison where dangerous inmates and, at various points, political prisoners were sent, under very harsh conditions. The island earned a grim reputation and a byword for isolation.
That use as a prison had, however, an unexpected and fortunate consequence for the environment: for decades, access to Coiba was restricted and the human presence confined to the prison and its immediate surroundings. While in many other parts of the country and the world nature was retreating before development, intensive fishing or deforestation, Coiba remained largely untouched. Its forests, its shores and, above all, its waters and reefs stayed practically pristine.
So the feared prison acted, without meaning to, as a protective barrier that preserved a genuine natural paradise. When the penal colony finally shut down and the island could be opened to other uses, what appeared before the world's eyes was an exceptionally well-preserved treasure of land and marine biodiversity, a rare case in the tropical Pacific. That unintended legacy would be the foundation of Coiba's future and, with it, of Santa Catalina's.
The first great engine of Santa Catalina's transformation was surfing. As surfing spread across Central America and surfers went hunting for new waves on little-explored coasts, someone discovered that the shore at Santa Catalina hid an exceptional wave: powerful, high-quality and consistent, over a rock bottom, capable of rivaling the best in the region.
The fame of the Santa Catalina wave grew, above all in the last decades of the 20th century and the early 21st, until the village became a known name on the international surf circuit. Surfers from Panama and from all over the world began arriving, drawn by its waves, and the fishing village started adding hostels, surf camps, surf shops, board rental and restaurants, gradually building a rustic but adequate tourism infrastructure.
That was the origin of Santa Catalina's present character as a backpacker and surf destination, relaxed and cosmopolitan. Surfing brought the first travelers, gave the village an economic life beyond fishing and laid the groundwork for its tourism profile. That first wave of visitors would soon be joined by another draw, which would complete the village's rise: the opening of Coiba to ecotourism.
Santa Catalina's second great engine arrived with the reinvention of Coiba Island. After the penal colony closed, the island's destiny changed entirely: instead of a prison, it came to be recognized and protected for what its isolation had preserved, namely its extraordinary nature. Coiba and the waters around it were declared a national park, protecting a vast archipelago and a marine area of the highest ecological value.
International recognition came in 2005, when Unesco inscribed Coiba National Park on its World Heritage List, citing its exceptional marine and terrestrial biodiversity. Coiba's waters hold one of the greatest concentrations of marine life in the tropical eastern Pacific (sharks, manta rays, turtles, huge schools of fish, corals) and the island preserves endemic species and well-conserved forests, the fruit of its long isolation. For sheer richness, it is often compared with destinations such as Cocos Island or the Galápagos.
Opening Coiba to ecotourism and diving, once it was protected, turned Santa Catalina into its main gateway, since it is the nearest and most practical point on the coast for heading out to the island. So the appeal of surfing was joined by that of diving and marine nature tourism, drawing divers and sea lovers from around the world. The combination of both callings, surf and Coiba, sealed Santa Catalina's place on Panama's tourism map.
Today, Santa Catalina is an international destination for surfers, divers and lovers of marine nature, which nonetheless keeps its character as a small, rustic, easygoing village. The combination of its famous wave and its role as the gateway to Coiba Island has made it a meeting point for travelers from all over the world, drawn by a plan that is simple and powerful: surf, dive, sail among paradise islands and switch off to the rhythm of the Pacific.
The village built a tourism infrastructure in keeping with its style: hostels, surf camps, guesthouses, a few hotels, restaurants (fresh seafood and the international cooking brought by travelers), surf shops and dive centers. But it kept a simple profile, with no luxury and no big resorts, and limited services (ATMs are scarce and it's wise to bring cash), which for many is precisely part of the charm: the authenticity of a place that hasn't been entirely overrun.
Santa Catalina thus represents the most maritime, adventurous and relaxed face of Panama. Its history weaves together the old fishing village, the grim but providential Coiba prison that preserved a paradise, the discovery of its waves by surfers and Coiba's elevation to World Heritage. For today's traveler, it's a destination where nature (the waves and the sea around Coiba) takes the leading role, in one of the most authentic and dazzling corners of the Panamanian Pacific.