Forget everything you’ve heard about Panama’s rainy season being something to avoid. After five years of calling Playa Guanico home and running La Chantin, a small surf retreat on Panama’s wild Pacific coast, I’ve learned that the so-called “green season” from May to November isn’t the consolation prize—it’s the main event.
Most travel guides will tell you that rain comes predictably in the afternoons. That’s tourist brochure nonsense. The reality is messier, more spontaneous, and infinitely more rewarding. Some days you’ll wake to torrential downpours that clear by noon. Other days, the sky threatens all morning then delivers nothing but humid stillness. And sometimes—the best times—you’ll surf glassy waves while warm rain falls directly on your face.
The Real Green Season
Here’s what actually happens when the rains arrive: Panama transforms into a completely different country. The dust settles, literally and figuratively. Rivers that were barely trickling become rushing torrents. Waterfalls that existed only in local memory suddenly appear around every bend. The air smells like earth and growing things instead of exhaust and dry heat.
In Guanico, where I’ve watched this transformation year after year, the green season brings a particular kind of magic. Waves clean up in ways that would make Indonesian surf breaks jealous. The surrounding jungle explodes with life. Howler monkeys get louder. Birds you’ve never seen before appear in flashes of impossible color.
But here’s the thing no one tells you: the green season isn’t about adapting to inconvenience. It’s about discovering a rhythm that’s been lost to the perpetual summer of tourist Panama.
Where to Actually Go (Not Where Everyone Else Goes)
The Azuero Peninsula’s Wild Pacific Coast
While everyone else scrambles for the same mountain retreats and Caribbean islands, the Azuero Peninsula’s Pacific coast remains gloriously overlooked during green season. This is where you’ll find the Panama that existed before cruise ships and resort developments—raw, unfiltered, and utterly transformative.
Playa Guanico sits at the end of a bumpy road that keeps casual visitors away. What you’ll find here isn’t Instagram-perfect white sand—it’s something better. Black volcanic beaches that stretch for miles without a single high-rise. Waves that work in any swell direction. And a community of locals who’ve been surfing these breaks since before anyone thought to call it a “surf destination.”
At La Chantin, we’ve built our entire philosophy around this off-season magic. Our guests aren’t here to escape the rain—they’re here to embrace it. They wake up to the sound of waves and howler monkeys, not alarm clocks. They surf uncrowded breaks, then retreat to hammocks when the weather decides to do something dramatic.
The green season here means cattle egrets following the horses across flooded fields. It means surf sessions where the only other people in the water are local fishermen checking their nets. This is Panama stripped of its tourist veneer, presented in its most honest form.
Playa Cambutal, just up the coast, offers a slightly more developed (though still wonderfully rough) experience. The waves are bigger, the scene is more established, but the green season still empties it of crowds. You’ll share breaks with turtle and locals, not tour groups.
What makes Cambutal special during green season isn’t just the uncrowded waves—it’s the way the entire ecosystem comes alive. The surrounding hills turn impossibly green, and every morning brings the possibility of spotting wildlife that only emerges during the rains.
Both Cambutal and Guanico operate on what I call “green season time”—a rhythm dictated by weather, tides, and the natural world rather than rigid schedules. This is where Panama’s green season reveals its true character: not as a season to endure, but as a season to surrender to.
What Actually Happens Here
The green season strips away the performance of travel. You can’t schedule every moment when weather has a say. You can’t photograph every sunset when half of them are obscured by rain clouds. You have to be present, flexible, and open to whatever the day brings.
In Guanico, this means morning surf sessions that might last twenty minutes or four hours, depending on conditions. It means afternoon horseback rides that might end in a sprint back to shelter, everyone laughing and soaked. It means evening conversations that stretch long into the night because there’s nowhere else to be.
This is travel that breathes. That leaves space for spontaneity, for actual rest, for the kind of experiences that don’t fit into carefully curated social media posts.
The Practical Reality
Here’s what you actually need to know:
The humidity is real. Embrace it. Some of the best adventures happen when you stop trying to stay perfectly dry.
Internet is spotty. Especially in places like Guanico. Consider it a feature, not a bug.
Transportation takes longer. Rivers rise, roads get muddy, plans change. Build flexibility into your itinerary.
Mosquitoes exist. But they’re not the apocalypse that guidebooks suggest. Good repellent and long sleeves at dusk will handle most situations.
Prices are genuinely lower. Not because the experience is worse, but because fewer people are competing for the same resources.
Why This Matters
The green season isn’t a compromise—it’s a choice. It’s choosing depth over breadth, authenticity over comfort, presence over productivity. It’s choosing to travel in a way that supports local communities year-round rather than just during peak season.
In Guanico, we see travelers who arrive tense and scheduled, then leave relaxed and spontaneous. They came for the waves but discovered something else: a way of being that doesn’t require perfect conditions to be perfectly satisfying.
Panama’s green season won’t give you guaranteed sunshine or predictable days. But it will give you something rarer: the chance to experience a place as it actually is, not as it performs for tourists.
And maybe that’s exactly what travel should be.
Margaux founded La Chantin in Playa Guanico, where she’s spent five years learning to read the rhythms of Panama’s Pacific coast. When she’s not hosting guests or surfing, she’s probably sitting in a hammock, listening to the rain, and wondering why anyone would want to be anywhere else.
