Farallón

The Farallón (far-ah-YONE) area, which starts about three kilometers west of the Santa Clara turnoff, didn’t get much attention until the Colombian-owned Decameron hotel chain built a mammoth resort there in late 2000.

Before then, Farallón was just a quiet fishing village with a pretty beach that attracted some weekenders. Next door is a large airstrip built years ago by the U.S. military, since this is one of the driest places in Panama. In the 1980s it was the site of a Panamanian military base that housed some of Noriega’s elite troops. U.S. forces wiped out the base during the 1989 “Just Cause” invasion.

Now, suddenly, it’s the hot beach destination. The Decameron refers to this area as Playa Blanca, the name of one stretch of beach here, but most everyone in Panama still thinks of the area simply as Farallón. The Spanish Barceló chain opened its own resort down the beach in 2003, and new condominium buildings are sprouting up as far as the eye can see. The days of Farallón and the other sleepy beach villages around here seem numbered.

As with its neighbor, Santa Clara, the beach is lovely and it’s a wonder it was neglected so long. There are a few other simpler and cheaper places to stay and eat in the village of Farallón and around the town of Río Hato, back on the Interamericana, a few kilometers farther west. Río Hato is the nearest semiurban center, but it’s down at the heels and has little to offer other than a few services. The presence of the new resorts hasn’t helped it much, a fact the townspeople still grumble about.