Contadora Island

The Pearl Islands were home to Indigenous peoples before the Spanish arrived. Vasco Núñez de Balboa named the archipelago for its pearls on his discovery of it in 1513, and within two years the islands' original inhabitants, led by their chief Terarequí, had been wiped out. Contadora, "the one that counts" in Spanish, became the island where the pearls harvested across the archipelago were counted and sold to the Spaniards. In the years that followed, the islands were frequently used by pirates. Early in the 20th century an epidemic among the pearl oysters killed most of them, and the pearl trade dwindled.

The island's modern history began as a holiday retreat. In 1979 the exiled Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, briefly lived on Contadora, having spent much of his fortune on property there. In 1983 the foreign ministers of Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela first met on the island to launch a peace initiative for the wars in Central America, which took the island's name as the Contadora Group. Its work led to a Document of Objectives in 1983 and the Contadora Act on Peace and Co-operation in 1984.

Later decades brought tourism and television: the archipelago was the setting for three seasons of the American edition of Survivor, and many of the crew stayed on Contadora during filming. A ferry from Panama City began in 2010.

Contadora has little of the folk culture of the mainland's villages; it is above all a holiday island, shaped by its villas, its hotels and the visitors who come for its beaches and its waters. Its identity rests on its name and its past — the pearl counting of the Spanish era, the pirates of the archipelago, the Shah's exile and the peace initiative that carried the island's name around the world in the 1980s.

The archipelago is a world-renowned fishing destination, and sport fishing is a large part of the island's appeal, with catches including sailfish, blue marlin, wahoo, mahi-mahi, grouper, amberjack and roosterfish. Snorkelling over the rock and coral formations and watching the whales that arrive from June to October are the other draws.

Many of the people who work on Contadora live on neighbouring Saboga, and the rhythms of the island follow the ferry, the weekend arrivals from the capital and the seasons of fishing and whales.

Contadora is one of the most populated of the Pearl Islands despite its small size: it covers about 1.39 square kilometres, the eleventh largest island of the archipelago, but its population of 253 at the 2000 census placed it third. It is the archipelago's best-known island, a resort island with an airstrip, hotels and many homes owned by wealthy Panamanians.

Tourism is the island's economy, through its hotels, rented villas, boat trips and fishing, and most resort workers live on nearby Isla Saboga. A daily ferry links the island with Panama City and with Saboga, while private yacht charters come and go from the mainland.

Life on Contadora is quiet outside the busy weekends and holidays. The airstrip's runway crosses the whole width of the island, and the beaches — Playa Larga, Playa Galeón, Playa Canoa, Playa Caracol, Playa Cacique, Playa de las Suecas and others — are all within a short distance of one another. One large hotel on the north side has closed, a reminder that the island's fortunes depend on the flow of visitors.

Food on Contadora comes largely from the sea around it. The waters of the Pearl Islands yield red snapper, mahi-mahi, wahoo, grouper and roosterfish, and the island's restaurants serve fish fried with patacones, twice-fried green plantain, or as ceviche, prepared in Panama with lemon juice, chopped onion, celery and cilantro.

Beyond seafood, menus follow the Panamanian staples: arroz con pollo, rice with coconut, stewed beans and sancocho, the chicken soup thickened with ñame and flavoured with culantro that is the national dish. Breakfast may be hojaldras, a fry-bread, or carimañolas, cassava fritters stuffed with beef.

Sweet things and drinks are the same as on the mainland: raspao, shaved ice, and chicheme, a drink made from pounded maize, are Panamanian favourites, the local lagers are Balboa, Atlas and Panamá, and seco is the national spirit. Panama also grows some of the world's most prized coffee, the Geisha variety from the Chiriquí highlands around Boquete, whose beans set auction records.