Playa Farallón (Playa Blanca)

For years, few people visited the long stretch of white beach between the fishing villages of Santa Clara and Farallón because it lay beneath a military base used by Panama's national guard. Access to the area was restricted. The base saw heavy fighting during the 1989 U.S. invasion, and for much of the 1990s its buildings, pockmarked with bullet holes, were slowly being covered with jungle. Everything changed at the beginning of the 21st century, when the Colombian hotel chain Decameron opened a massive resort here and began promoting it as "Playa Blanca" (White Beach). Panamanians still use the Farallón (fahr-ah-YOHN) name. Now the area has an 18-hole golf course, a growing number of condos, a second all-inclusive resort on the other side of the Farallón River, a third under construction at this writing, and others on the drawing board.