Taboga Island

Vasco Núñez de Balboa is credited with reaching Taboga and its islet El Morro in 1513. The island was first named San Pedro, and its present name is said to come from an Indigenous word, aboga, meaning abundant fish. In 1524 the Spanish priest Hernando de Luque founded a small village by the shore, San Pedro de Taboga, and with the settlers built the church, claimed to be the second oldest in the hemisphere. Fresh water and a sheltered anchorage made the island a useful stop for ships bound for Panama City.

When Henry Morgan sent troops to the island in 1671 to plunder it, they are said to have drunk all its wine and done little other damage. In 1819, during the wars of independence, the royalist island was attacked by the privateer corvette Rosa de los Andes, which destroyed the village and the church founded by Luque. In the 19th century Taboga and El Morro became a resting point for travellers heading for the west coasts of North and South America, with a fort, a 100-metre shipyard and services run mainly by British companies; the population reached 1,568 in 1870 and 3,130 by 1896.

In 1887 the French painter Paul Gauguin, who had worked on the French canal and fallen ill, was sent to Taboga for treatment before moving on to Martinique and, later, Tahiti. Today the island lives mainly from visitors drawn by its beaches so close to the capital.

Taboga is known as the Island of Flowers, and its village keeps the feel of a small, devout seaside community. Life revolves around the Church of San Pedro, and the islanders, known as Taboganos, celebrate numerous religious festivals through the year, among them San Pedro, the patron saint, the Virgen del Carmen, the Passion of Christ in Holy Week, and Carnival.

The island's place in the country's imagination comes from its closeness to the capital. For residents of Panama City it is one of the favourite escapes, a place for the beach, walks, fishing and boat trips, and the plaque on the main beach recalling Gauguin's stay links it to a wider story of the French canal and the travellers who passed this way. The view from the island's highest point, back across the water to Panama City, is part of its appeal. Tradition holds that Isabel Flores de Oliva, later Saint Rose of Lima, was born on the island in 1586, and in Panama she is known as Santa Rosa de Lima, la Tabogana.

Taboga has a small population of about 1,600 people, most of them in its single village. The island lies about 20 km from the capital, and its daily rhythm follows the boats that link it to the Amador Causeway, busiest when the day visitors are on the island.

Tourism is the main source of work, through the small restaurants, the guesthouses and small hotels, the beach vendors and the boatmen who take visitors around the island and to the pelican refuge. Fishing and boat charters also draw city residents, and local guides arrange whale-watching and fishing trips by boat. With about 1,600 residents, the island is far quieter than at its 19th-century peak, when it counted more than 3,000 people and supplied passing ships with stores, workshops, bakeries and lodgings.

The island's nature is part of its life. The Taboga group, including the neighbouring islands of Urabá, Taboguilla and Chamá, is an Important Bird Area because of its breeding colonies of brown pelicans, and the far side of the island is a refuge for them.

Taboga's eating is simple and centred on the sea. Most of the island's restaurants are in its small hotels, with a couple more on the main street. The village's small restaurants serve the Panamanian seaside staples: fried whole fish with patacones, twice-fried green plantain, and ceviche, commonly made from corvina and prepared with lemon juice, chopped onion, celery and cilantro. Rice comes with almost every meal, often arroz con coco, cooked with coconut milk, or arroz con pollo.

On the beach, vendors sell drinks and snacks to day visitors. Sancocho, the chicken soup thickened with ñame and flavoured with culantro, is the national dish, and breakfast may be hojaldras, a fry-bread, or carimañolas, cassava fritters stuffed with beef.

The island's name, said to mean abundant fish, still suits it: fishing remains one of the reasons people come. Street and festival treats include raspao, shaved ice, and chicheme, a drink made from pounded maize, and the usual drinks are local lagers and seco, Panama's national spirit.