Bocas del Toro is on all of the must-see travel lists for Panama. This Caribbean archipelago, near Panama’s border with Costa Rica, has been the next big thing in tourism for years. With its sandy beaches, clear waters and laid-back culture, Bocas del Toro definitely seems like a sure thing.
Well, I’m here to ruin it for you. I’m the guy putting up a big beach umbrella to block your sun. The jellyfish that stings your leg during a snorkeling tour. The little kid who pees in your hotel pool.
In my opinion, Panama’s next big thing in tourism just isn’t worth it. This is why I think you shouldn’t visit Bocas del Toro.
The Striking Banana Workers
The first, and probably most important, reason to avoid Bocas del Toro is the civil unrest currently going on there. Maybe things will calm down by the time you’re reading this blog post, but as of summer 2025, Panama has been engulfed by a series of major protests.
As I write this, workers for Chiquita Banana are striking in Bocas del Toro. Protesters are accused of looting, setting up road blocks and even stealing rental cars at the airport. The strike started in response to proposed cuts to retirement benefits. In response to the strike and protests, the government of Panama has taken a page out of the Bukele playbook by declaring a state of emergency and suspending constitutional rights.
Chiquita Banana is objectively one of the world’s most evil corporations. Back in the day, Chiquita was known as the United Fruit Company. I won’t get into all of the United Fruit Company’s evil deeds here, but they include overthrowing democratically elected governments, supporting dictators and murdering union organizers. The company changed its name to Chiquita in 1984, but the change was only cosmetic. Chiquita pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization in U.S. court in 2007.
Most recently, in Panama, the banana conglomerate responded to the strike in Bocas del Toro by firing 5,000 employees. Chiquita is one of the largest employers in the area, so the mass firing is leaving the whole region in the lurch. No wonder they’re angrily protesting.
This blog, for what it’s worth, fully endorses and supports the striking banana workers and protesters in Panama.
However, a period of political unrest might not be the best time for a beach vacation. Potential safety issues aside, how awkward would it be to try and plan a snorkeling tour while your guide and boat driver are likely very stressed about the future of their livelihoods and their country?
The Town is Full of Drunk Kids
The strikes and protests won’t last forever, though. The workers will either win back their jobs and defeat the pension reform, or the government will come in and crush the movement with an iron fist. While I genuinely hope for the first option, it’s safe to say the unrest won’t last forever.
So, let’s assume you’re reading this and the strikes and protests have calmed down. I’ve been to Bocas del Toro twice now, and I wouldn’t go back.
For one thing, Bocas is most definitely a young person’s destination. The town is filled with hundreds of Europeans, Israelis and North Americans in their late teens and early twenties. They wander the streets wearing bikini tops and sunburns and honestly, I just can’t relate to them anymore.
At a certain age you reach a point when you don’t understand youth culture. That’s okay. Those kids probably don’t understand my hilarious Simpson’s references. While I no longer worry about being young and hip, it’s still strange to be in a place surrounded by people you just don’t relate to.
Young people also like to party. I enjoy a snifter of port at Christmas, but I definitely no longer enjoy getting drunk. The main attraction in Bocas del Toro seems to be “Filthy Friday”: a massive, town-wide, pub crawl where the hordes of teenage backpackers fill the streets and get rip roaringly drunk. Sketchy dudes on bicycles ride around the crowds slinging weed and coke. It was like an international spring break.
Filthy Friday didn’t exist when I visited Bocas del Toro in 2013. I still got quite drunk, but it was with a small group of people I’d met at the hostel. Aside from a handful of party hostels across the bay, the whole town went quiet by 10pm. We tried sipping on beers in the park, but a local policeman politely cleared us out. That’s much more my speed.
Bocas del Toro Has Become Expensive and Gentrified
Public drinking laws aren’t the only thing that’s changed in Bocas. Ten years ago, the town still had local businesses nestled between the tourist shops and souvenir stalls. You could find local restaurants selling plates of fresh caught fish for under five dollars, and there were plenty of run-down budget hostels.
Today, the town is infested with upscale, glammed up vegan cafes, and over-priced ‘gastro-markets.’ Whatever those are.
Accommodation in Bocas del Toro today is dominated by foreign owned resorts and chains, like the ubiquitous, Israeli owned, Selina. These places are geared towards affluent digital nomads and, I don’t know, rich kids blowing through their trust funds.
It’s a sad story that unfortunately repeats itself the world over. Bocas del Toro was once a charismatic, quirky place. Hipster backpackers started heading there for its laid-back charm and cheap prices. Those hipster backpackers put it on the map, which led to a wave of popularity and development that destroyed the quirks and charm that made it a cool place to visit in the first place.
What remains is an overpriced, tacky, touristy beach town that looks and feels like every other overpriced, tacky, touristy beach town.
Tourism as a Neo-Colonial, Extractivist Industry
Obviously, this gentrification sucks for me as a traveler. It sucks for me that a place I loved visiting years ago has become just one more soulless digital nomad destination.
If the changes in Bocas suck for me, I can’t imagine how much more they suck for the local people.
Sadly, the development of tourism in Bocas del Toro has followed a pattern began by the Spanish ever since Columbus set eyes on the islands in 1502. The region was, and is, home to a large indigenous population, mainly the Ngöbe. These indigenous people traditionally held land communally, and had very different ideas of property ownership than Europeans. During the 1980s and 90s, the Panamanian government passed a series of laws that essentially took that communal land and sold it off to the highest bidder.
Ever since then, Bocas del Toro has become a playground for foreign developers and hotel chains. They scrambled for land and devoured property to build the resorts, restaurants and hip coworking spaces that stand today. This tourism development was supposed to be good for the locals, who were told there would be jobs and opportunities.
Unfortunately, most of the jobs that have been created have been shit jobs. The local people, especially the Ngöbe, are often stuck doing menial labor like housekeeping and maintenance. The lowest paid, lowest skilled work. All the high paying jobs either go to educated, English-speaking Panamanians or foreign workers.
Those foreign workers come in to work as bartenders, receptionists or party promoters. Those European girls in short shorts promoting Filthy Friday, for example. You might also picture the hostel “volunteer” who works in exchange for room and board. Since they’re paid under the table, their wages are untaxed. The poor Ngöbe, however, have to pay taxes on income that is regularly less than minimum wage. Tourism jobs are also often seasonal, and unstable.
That’s where the sketchy dudes on bicycles selling weed and cocaine come in. Drugs were virtually unheard of in Bocas before the tourism boom. Now, it’s big money due to high demand from young partyers. And drug dealing is far more lucrative than working as a housekeeper. Or a banana picker, for that matter. In the end, less than 25% of the income generated by tourism actually stays in the country.
The closer you look at it, the more the hyper-exploitative tourist industry in places like Bocas del Toro starts to resemble the hyper-exploitative banana industry of the United Fruit Company. Or the hyper-exploitative colonialism of the Spanish.
Some Final Thoughts on Bocas del Toro, Tourism, and First World Guilt
Exploitation, greed and imperialism aren’t exclusive to Bocas del Toro. The world is sadly full of similar tragic stories.
Panama’s recent wave of protests aren’t necessarily directly about exploitative neo-colonial tourism, but the issues are related. Striking banana workers simply want to be treated with dignity and to live a good life. They don’t want some foreign corporation to come in and treat them and their country like shit. I think that’s more than fair.
Who knows what will happen after these protests subside. Will Bocas return to its perpetual state as the “next big thing” in Caribbean tourism? Will all the tourists and fancy hotels and yoga studios empty out and leave it worse off than it was before? Or will it go back to some semblance of what it was ten years ago?
Honestly, I can’t say that it was an undiscovered gem or an example of sustainable tourism when I first visited. I saw the sketchy dudes selling drugs back then. I remember the party hostels and the construction. And I’m probably one of those travel hipsters whose partly responsible for Bocas’s destruction. But things just felt so much worse in 2024.
The archipelago has a long, fascinating history. The culture is an intriguing blend of Latino, indigenous and Afro-Caribbean influences. Yet, nobody cares. The hip, young, hot backpackers all just want to party. The international developers just want to make as much money as possible.
It also makes me sad that traveling and exploring new places, something I truly love, can be such a horrible, hyper-exploitative industry. I guess this is the ultimate moral question under capitalism. How can we reconcile spending money on things we enjoy with the fact that those things are produced by very evil means?
Can I be a moral person traveling when the tourist industry is so exploitative? Can I be a moral person when I ate a Chiquita banana on my cereal this morning for breakfast?
I don’t know.
For now, I guess all I can do is try my best. And keep writing long, rambling, blog posts about travel and morality under late capitalism. In the meantime, I can simply suggest you avoid Bocas del Toro. There are other beach destinations out there. Panama’s Santa Catalina, for example. They may still raise the same thorny moral questions, but at least you can avoid Freaky Friday.
Find out which travel destinations in Panama I actually do recommend here: Panama City Travel Guide: It Has a Canal and Some Other Things
