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Looking to go beyond Panama's capital city and famous canal, David Amsden road-trips between the notoriously narrow country's Pacific and Caribbean coasts, encountering secret villages, untouched isles, and new-wave retreats

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A dammed river at El Otro Lado resort in Portobelo

In Portobelo, a lush village on Panama’s Caribbean coastline where the line between history and myth can feel faint, Sandra Eleta is known as the Great Witch.

A wry and regal 83-year-old whose striking photos of the town’s Afro-Panamanian community have made her one of the country’s most celebrated artists, she has lived for over 50 years in an eclectic compound teeming with folkloric murals, feathered masks, and mirrored canvases. The works, some of which are arranged shrine-like, reflect Eleta’s reverence for the area’s descendants of enslaved Africans from the Congo, who were first brought to Panama by Spanish colonialists in the 1500s. As I enter the property, long run as an informal artists residency and hotel called La Morada de la Bruja—The Witch’s Abode—Eleta greets me with an embrace, a chilled red wine, and words that carry the whiff of a mantra.

Preparing for a swim on Guna Yala, an autonomous archipelago in Panama

“While here,” she says, “you are free to do whatever you'd like to do.”