Travel Guide Yaviza

Bordered by the Chico and Chucunaque rivers, this town of less than 5,000 inhabitants is located 97 km from the Colombian border. It is populated mainly by Afro-Panamanians and a few Embera and Wounnan families. People make a living from petty trade and the cultivation of plantains and avocados. The Pan-American Highway, which has covered more than 12,500 km from Alaska, comes to an inglorious halt here, only to resume at Turbo in Colombia, but the cantinas provide a noisy, alcoholic atmosphere day and night. A tour of Yaviza will take you little more than an hour, with a stop at the ruins of Fort San Gerónimo, built in 1760 and destroyed by the Gunas twenty years later, and a crossing of the Río Chucunaque on an impressive suspension bridge. At the muelle , you'll watch the pirogues being loaded with goods of all kinds: sacks of rice, bottles of oil, crates of beer, bottles of gas, cans of petrol, chickens, pigs... The boats then head off into the depths of the Darién to supply isolated villages.