Panama
Sarigua National Park
Panama's driest place: red sand, petrified trees, and a settlement seven thousand years old.
The earth cracks into plates that run toward a shimmering horizon, and heat blurs the line between ground and sky. Sarigua is the driest area in the entire country, a red-sand and salt-flat landscape that looks airlifted from another continent into the green Azuero.
This was mangrove once; human intervention and the salt-heavy environment turned close to 8,000 hectares into what the park itself calls a large salt lake in recovery. What the stripping exposed is remarkable: at the La Mula site, remnants of human activity reach back to 5000 BC, among the oldest settlements in the country, with traces running from ancient fishing camps to the first signs of agriculture. Three trails, Las Dunas, Armadillo and Las Piedras de Gato, cross ground studded with petrified trees and fractured rock, and an archaeological exhibition holds the finds. Iguanas, birds and butterflies are working their way back in, which makes Sarigua a double lesson, in deep human time and in what soil never forgives.
Solo
Walking the cracked flats early, alone with wind and petrified wood, is one of Panama's strangest and most thought-provoking mornings.
Couple
Pair the otherworldly landscape at first light with an afternoon of Azuero culture: La Arena's bakeries and Chitré's easy provincial streets.
- Sarigua is the driest area in the entire country, reddish sand and salt flats where mangrove once stood.
- The La Mula site preserves human activity dating back to 5000 BC, one of the oldest settlements in the country.
- Petrified trees and fragmented rock line three walking trails: Las Dunas, Armadillo and Las Piedras de Gato.
- Close to 8,000 hectares form a salt lake in recovery, with iguanas, birds and butterflies moving back in.
Nothing is sold out on the flats, so carry water and save the appetite for La Arena, the village whose bakeries built Herrera's artisan-bread reputation.
Herrera also distils seco, Panama's national spirit, from local sugarcane; a small glass closes an Azuero day properly.
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