Isla Iguana Tour

Isla Iguana Tour

  • Destinations
  • Things to do

Transportation

Many of our tours and activities offer transportation pick up & drop off options from several locations and destinations. Options vary by tour, see “BOOKING REQUEST” for full details.

Don't see what you're looking for?

Trustpilot 5 of 5 rated service

Isla Iguana Day Tour

  • Azuero Day Tours
  • Boat Expeditions
  • Nature & Wildlife
  • Wildlife Observation

Discover a secluded paradise and wildlife refugee.

Isla Iguana is a short 25-minute boat ride from Pedasi, but it’s like a different world. Isla Iguana is a secluded paradise, considered a wildlife refugee, inhabited only by rare birds, giant lizards and purple and red crabs. It is a snorkeling and diving paradise as it has the biggest area of well-preserved coral reefs in the Gulf of Panama with 14 different coral species, more than 350 tropical fishes and over 200 species of invertebrates. In addition, five species of marine turtle come to the island to lay their eggs from April to September and humpback whales swim around these waters from June to November to mate. In this full day tour, you will also have the opportunity to relax in its white sand beaches or swim in its turquoise water. At the end of the tour, you will enjoy a delicious lunch in a local restaurant in the town of Pedasí.

isla iguana pedasi tours

Tours Isla Iguana

isla iguana pedasi tours

Top ways to experience nearby attractions

isla iguana pedasi tours

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Dr. Marquita S. Blades

Also popular with travellers

isla iguana pedasi tours

Tours Isla Iguana - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

isla iguana pedasi tours

Tour Isla Iguana Pedasí (Playa El Arenal)

$ 80.00

  • Descripción
  • Valoraciones (0)

Tour Isla Iguana, Pedasí

Información a tomar en cuenta: 

Punto de encuentro: Playa El Arenal, Pedasí Hora: desde las 8:00 a.m. Duración del tour: 5- 7 horas máximo

El punto de encuentro para el inicio del viaje es en Playa El Arenal, desde las 7:00 a.m.. Es importante llegar a tiempo para el registro de la hoja de zarpe.

Llevar su cédula o pasaporte, se deberá presentar  en el proceso de registro de zarpe y migración.

Una vez completada la hoja de zarpe, el  capitan del bote los llevará hasta donde esta el bote para iniciar la visita a Isla Iguana.  El recorrido en lancha hasta la isla toma alrededor de 20 a 40 minutos, al llegar a la Isla  deben acercarse a la oficina del guardaparque para el registro de visita.

El pasadía en la isla tiene como máximo la salida a las 4:00 p.m.  el horario de salida del grupo debe coordinarse con el capitán Deben regresar al punto donde los dejó el bote para abordar nuevamente. Al llegar a la playa el Arenal, donde está el restaurante, podrán bañarse y cambiarse en una zona que tiene un costo de $1.00 por persona.

Reserva: Abono: USD 10.00 por persona

Para reservar su cupo para el tour puede hacer su abono por banca en línea, yappy, deposito en Banco General,  también por tarjeta de crédito o débito (VISA o MasterCard), el saldo pendiente lo cancela solamente en efectivo el día del tour.  Antes de realizar cualquier abono escribanos al correo [email protected] o WhatsApp +507 6310-2352 para confirmar la disponibilidad.

Datos importantes:

Si estás planeando un viaje a Pedasí para disfrutar del tour a Isla Iguana, aquí te dejamos algunos datos importantes que debes tener en cuenta antes de partir:.

  • Llevar documentos personales, cédula o pasaporte (obligatorio).
  • No se permite el ingreso de bebidas alcohólicas, cigarrillos, altavoces, mascotas, drones. Sin embargo, puedes llevar tus cooler con refrescos y snacks, sombrillas y sillas de playa, y bloqueador solar.

Valoraciones

No hay valoraciones aún.

Tu dirección de correo electrónico no será publicada. Los campos obligatorios están marcados con *

Tu valoración  *

Nombre  *

Correo electrónico  *

Guarda mi nombre, correo electrónico y web en este navegador para la próxima vez que comente.

Productos relacionados

isla iguana pedasi tours

Tour Avistamiento de Ballenas y Visita a Isla Iguana Pedasí (Playa El Arenal)

isla iguana pedasi tours

Tour Avistamiento de Ballenas y Visita a Isla Iguana Pedasí

Welcome! We hope to see you soon :)

How to Find Us

(507) 6676-5151

Libelulas Pedasi

Isla Iguana VIP

$ 10.00 – $ 120.00

Visit Isla Iguana in style with all the comfort you need. This VIP tour includes transfer from Playa Arenal to Isla Iguana in a boat with life jackets and certified captain.

Description

Additional information.

  • Reviews (0)
  • Beach chairs: each person will have their own beach chair.
  • Snorkeling: snorkel and mask will be given to each client in a sealed bag.
  • Snacks: lunch box with sandwich, fruit, water and soda.
  • Lunch: after the tour there will be a served lunch in Mangle restaurant which includes fish or chicken with rice, salad, potatoes or patacones. Vegetarian options are available.

Available: year round. Time: 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

What to bring? Bathing suit, sunglasses, aqua shoes or flip flops, towel, sunscreen, change of clothes (optional) and ID.

Important information: clients need to drive to Playa Arenal. Round trip transport is available for an additional fee of $10 from Pedasi or $70 from Playa Venao. Prices of a private tour are for 2, if there are more than two adults please select the additional person option for every adult. Children pay a lower rate.

There are no reviews yet.

You must be logged in to post a review.

Related products

isla iguana pedasi tours

Whale Watching Tour (Pedasi)

Language English / Inglés

Search Tours & Activities

Choose destination, iguana island snorkeling.

Iguana Island Snorkeling Previous Image

Transfer to Playa El Arenal in Pedasí, where your boat takes you to Iguana Island, famous for its white sand beach, crystal waters, exten-sive mangrove forests and coral riffs. On the island you will explore a hiking trail that crosses the island from East to West to observe iguanas and marine birds. Then you can relax in the beach and enjoy your lunch before going back to mainland.

  • Observe the iguanas and marine birds.
  • Explore a hiking trail that crosses Iguana island from West to East.
  • Explore the different coral reefs and the colorful sub-marine world snorkeling.

AVAILABILITY

Start location.

Chitré

END LOCATION

Tour language.

English and Spanish

Related places and things to do

Previous Related places and things to do

Iguana Island Tours

Explore all tours in Herrera

Explore all tours in Herrera

Explore all tours in Pedasi

Explore all tours in Pedasi

Explore all tours in Los Santos

Explore all tours in Los Santos

Water Activities

Water Activities

Explore all tours in Panama

Explore all tours in Panama

Detailed description.

Isla Iguana or Iguana Island is the top natural attraction of the Azuero Peninsula offering the only white sand beach of that region and beautiful crystal clear waters. Isla Iguana is a secluded paradise, considered a wildlife refugee, inhabited only by rare birds, giant lizards and purple and red crabs. It is located 8km off the shore of the village of Pedasi and it is accessed only by boat. The wildlife refuge of Isla Iguana was founded in 1981 and includes over 50 hectare of land and water. The island is a snorkeling and diving paradise as it has the biggest area of well-preserved coral reefs in the Gulf of Panama with 17 different coral species, more than 350 tropical fishes and over 200 species of invertebrates. In addition, with a bit of luck you can observe five species of marine turtle and hump back whales swim around these waters from June to November. The island is home to the biggest breeding colony of frigate birds in Panama. During their mating season (winter) the male birds squat on their nest with their inflatable throat sacks. The female birds (only have white throats) fly over them. But besides the frigate birds there are more than 20 other bird species to which the island is their home. This island offers two beaches to choose from: El Cirial, the main and larger beach, and El Faro, smaller and more secluded. El Cirial has calm waves and is perfect to soak up the sun and take a nice swim in their amazing waters. El Faro has stronger currents but is more popular for snorkeling. There is a hiking trail you can follow to go from one beach to the other. One interesting fact about the island is that it was used as a practice bombing range by the U.S Air Force during World War II, leaving huge craters across the island that you can still see, especially if you do the trail or from the lighthouse in the middle of the island. Experts believe that they might be some unexploded ordnance in the waters and if a scuba diver should find them, they need to leave it untouched and reported to the authorities. In the 90’s there were two 1,000 pound unexploded bombs found in the waters and it was decided to detonated them under secure conditions to avoid any mishap in the future. Please consider, that there are no restrooms nor any other facilities on the island.

Tour Tickets (may vary by date)

Tour itinerary.

Tour Departure

- Transportation from / to Chitré. - Bilingual tour guide. - Entrance fees. - Traditional lunch. - Water.

Recommended

- Swim suit. - Towel. - Hat. - Sunscreen. - Sunglasses. - Camera.

Cancellation Policy

Price is valid for groups of minimum 4 persons from/to Chitré. Contact us for rates for smaller groups, different pick-up points (Pedasi, etc.) and our monthly specials.

Reviews in English (0)

All review are of our traveller friends. Join the conversation!!

No review yet... Be the first!

people looking at this tour at the moment.

Request a Reservation

Ask a question about this tour, ask tiqy a question, tiqy 24 hour support, tiqy verified operator, tiqy guarantee, free date change, book online, my favourite tours list.

Chat / Email / Call

Chat / Email / Call

  • Facebook Live Chat 🡪
  • Send Tiqy a Message or Email 🡪

Send Tiqy a Message or Email

Send Tiqy a message or write email to [email protected]

We aim to respond to all contact requests within a few hours.

We have received your information. Thanks!

Tiqy Telephone Support

Hours: Monday - Saturday: 9.30am to 5.30pm

We have email and chat support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

isla iguana pedasi tours

Refugio de Vida Silvestre Isla Iguana

Pedasí, golfo de panamá, océano pacífico oriental tropical, publicaciones, pedasí.

Díaz, Marco L. y Eduardo Moscoso. Diagnóstico Ambiental y Turístico de Pedasí, Provincia de Los Santos. Informe Síntesis. Documento elaborado para la visita a Pedasí de su Excelencia Sra. Mireya Moscoso, Presidenta de la República de Panamá. Domingo 19 de septiembre de 1999. Ingemar Panamá, Iguana Tours y Grupo Conservacionista de Pedasí.

turismo pedasi

Díaz V., Marco L.  1994. Análisis Ambiental de la Contaminación por Basura Doméstica en el Ecosistema Costero-Marino y en las Pesquerías de la Región de Pedasí (Provincia de Los Santos).  Borrador del Informe Final.  Fundación PROMAR.  21 de octubre de 1994.  230 pag. Capítulos 1; 5; 6; 7; y Anexo 3.

  • Share full article

isla iguana pedasi tours

An Arsenal of Mysteries: The Terrifying Allure of a Remote Caribbean Island

Why had immigrants, seekers and pilgrims been drawn for centuries to the treacherous shores of Mona Island? I set off to find out.

In Cueva Lirio. Even after many decades, the island’s sculptural inner terrain can be difficult to navigate. Credit... Christopher Gregory-Rivera for The New York Times

Supported by

By Carina del Valle Schorske

Carina del Valle Schorske is a contributing writer for the magazine. She spent four days on Mona Island, where, among other things, she climbed a ladder made of driftwood to report from a cave.

  • Published March 20, 2024 Updated March 21, 2024

Every year, I spend a month or two in Puerto Rico, where my mother’s family is from. Often I go in winter, with the other snowbirds, finding solace among palm trees. But I’m not a tourist, not really. I track the developers that privatize the shoreline; I follow the environmental reports that give our beaches a failing grade. I’m disenchanted with the Island of Enchantment, suspicious of an image that obscures the unglamorous conditions of daily life: frequent blackouts, meager public services, a rental market ravaged by Airbnb. Maybe that’s why I turned away from the sunshine and started to explore caves with my friends Ramón and Javier, seeking out wonders not yet packaged for the visitor economy. I’ve been learning to love stalactites and squeaking bats, black snakes and cloistered waterfalls — even, slowly, the darkness itself.

Listen to this article, read by Almarie Guerra de Wilson

Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.

The Greater Antilles and the Yucatán Peninsula form one of the most cavernous regions in the world, and many of these grottos contain precolonial inscriptions. But no other site can match the density of designs found on Mona, a semiarid mesa halfway between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The island is ringed by sheer cliffs and honeycombed with miles of subterranean passageways. Most of the inscriptions are tucked away in the so-called dark zone, far from access to the upper world, congregating around rare pools of freshwater. More accessible chambers harbor other histories: an Incan vase filled with gold coins, shards of a Spanish olive jar stained with the oldest wine in the Americas. In one cave, a foreign visitor from the 16th century carved a kind of commentary alongside ancient petroglyphs: “ plura fecit deus .” “God made many things.” I kept repeating the phrase to myself like a mantra, trying to impose divine order on the contradictions of the New World, the only world I’ve ever known.

isla iguana pedasi tours

Mona now “belongs” to Puerto Rico (and thus to the United States), but the island has always retained a certain rugged self-possession, rising fatherless and fully formed from the sea like an American Aphrodite. The archaeologist Ovidio Dávila famously described the island as “a floating fortress”: remote, inhospitable, an arsenal of mysteries. But Mona also teems with life: flowering cactuses, swirling flocks of seabirds, orchids and iguanas and frogs found nowhere else on Earth. Hawksbill turtles from as far away as Panama crawl onshore to nest under the summer moon. Enormous basket sponges and gorgonian corals cling to the sea wall. Many migrant species rarely seen from Puerto Rico proper come close to shore: dolphins, pilot whales, tiger sharks, bluefin tuna, flying fish. Mona’s remote beaches receive tribute from faraway waters, as if this might be the secret center of the world.

But for many Puerto Ricans, Mona is a legendary backwater, the punchline for a whole genre of jokes: Your political enemies “couldn’t even win the mayor’s race on Mona,” the socialists should “go live with the iguanas,” the Supreme Court might consider setting up “its little theocracy” over there. Like Robinson Crusoe, even locals who should know better view this other island as a blank slate for exile or utopia. Of course, Mona wasn’t always an abstraction. Before Europeans wandered west, Indigenous people settled the island as early as 3000 B.C. When Columbus first came to Mona in 1494, there was a community cultivating a marvelous variety of fruits and tubers from a thin fringe of arable soil on the island’s western side. Indigenous people continued to survive on Mona for another hundred years — much longer than elsewhere in the region — taking refuge in the island’s mysterious interior. Since then, the island has hosted a vivid procession of conquistadors, conversos, maroons, priests, pirates, prisoners, guano miners, military men, treasure hunters, scientists and refugees.

‘God made many things’ — so many more than the Old World predicted!

Now Mona is a protected nature reserve, and the only residents are park rangers. Researchers and amateurs alike must apply for a permit from Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural and Environmental Resources in order to travel there. Hunters come to subdue the feral descendants of goats and pigs introduced by the Spanish. Scuba divers wander the reefs.

But the Mona Passage — fast-flowing, shark-infested, one of the roughest stretches of water in the world — remains a troubled crucible of imperial traffic. Every year, migrants from Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic crowd small boats and try to make the dangerous crossing to Puerto Rico, the local gateway to the American dream. Many drown, uncountable bodies at the bottom of the sea. Hundreds wind up stranded on Mona, abandoned by smugglers looking to cut corners on the journey, then deported by authorities within days. Even those who visit Mona for recreation sometimes stumble into the island’s traps. In 2001, a Boy Scout got lost and died of dehydration. Just last month, a hunter disappeared near a well-known cave not far from camp.

Why did these frightening stories seduce me? If so many people were willing to suffer the island’s torments, I figured they must be suffering for something: freedom, beauty, maybe even wisdom. The travel industry sells the Caribbean as a gentle paradise where the workers of the first world can escape to rest at last on the shores of an infinite resort. But Mona remains incompletely mastered, a wilderness where you won’t be welcomed, where it’s still possible to lose your way and lose your life.

“This curious world,” Thoreau wrote, “is more wonderful than convenient,” and his words came to me as I gathered my hiking boots and helmet, laxatives and Dramamine, batteries, baby wipes and safety wardrobe of neon orange. After nearly a year of bureaucratic tribulations, I was finally going to Mona. The two most popular tour companies never wrote me back, so I planned the trip with Jaime Zamora, a freelance guide who had been exploring the island for more than 40 years. But it was better this way. I liked the purity of his passion and his disdain for institutions. Instead of a website or brochure, he directed me to a private Facebook group where he maintained a meticulous archive of old maps, news clippings and personal photographs of artifacts he found on the island: a creamy conch shell with a hole drilled through it, the ornamental handles of a broken urn.

In December, the stars suddenly aligned: Our permits were approved, the seas calmed and we pulled a team together. I crossed Midtown with cash in my coat to wire to a boat captain named Mikey. My friends Ramón and Javier came through; so did my friend Elisa. Our photographer, Chris, would bring his partner, Andrea. Jaime recruited some old comrades: Chito, Manuel and Charlito, the cook. The ecologist Hector Quintero, known as Quique, signed on and suggested we might invite Tony Nieves, who had recently retired from 33 years as Mona Island’s director. Finally, Jaime texted to say the moon would be full for our visit: “In one week,” he promised, “your magic will begin to shine.”

The boats arrived at the pier in Joyuda, on the western shore of Puerto Rico, near dawn. We were relieved to discover that the sea was quiet: “ plancha ’ o ,” the captain said, like an ironed sheet, only this gracious once or twice a year. He warned me not to get the wrong impression: “ Mona no es así .” Still, I could feel it when we crossed into the Mona Passage proper, where the waters of the Atlantic and the Caribbean come together in a cauldron of treacherous crosscurrents. The prow began to jump across the waves, so that we had to brace hard against the railing to keep our tailbones from bruising. I realized I had never been this close to the water for this long — I always approached Puerto Rico from above — and I tried to imagine the first people who came this way, rowing with no land in sight, searching the sky for congregations of clouds, the sign of green things breathing.

Over the last several years, I’d been unlearning the standard narrative about precolonial history. In Puerto Rico, the Department of Education still promotes the tired narrative that the people who greeted Columbus were simple and docile, with a rudimentary culture. But Reniel Rodríguez, an archaeologist, told me that the recent research is very clear: The migrants who left Central America and the Amazon basin to populate our archipelago were great mariners, like the Polynesians, navigating by stars and currents and wind patterns. Over generations of migration, they formed multiethnic polities and maintained vast trade networks: jade from Guatemala, gold and copper alloys from Colombia, jaguar’s teeth from continental jungles. None of these materials arrived by accident. As we bumped along, I wondered what it was like to bring, say, a passel of guinea pigs from Colombia to Puerto Rico in the bottom of a wide canoe.

The oldest carbon-dated evidence of human habitation on Mona dates from about 2800 B.C. They were probably attracted to the island’s majestic underworld. Indigenous mythology names symbolic caves as the great cosmic incubators, giving birth to the moon, the sun and the archipelago’s first people. Mona’s residents filled the caves with signs. The island was never a land of milk and honey, so its importance must have been strategic and spiritual rather than strictly productive: Ovidio Dávila imagines “a meeting point and tribal crossroads,” hosting chiefs and traders, “parliaments and pilgrimages.” The rigor of the journey to Mona conferred a kind of gravity on every human drama that unfolded on the mesa’s barren stage.

It took a long while for Puerto Rico to fall out of view, and hours more for Mona to appear, so that I felt suspended in time as well as space. I could imagine the Spanish ships prowling the Caribbean, snatching people from the Lesser Antilles and the coast of South America to “replenish” their depleted work force. I could imagine the first coffle of stolen Africans that would arrive in Santo Domingo. This passage still teems with human traffic. No one who worked these waters — our captain, the Coast Guard, local fishermen — wanted to talk to me about what they’d seen. Édouard Glissant was right: Even the brightest voyages bring to mind the depths of the sea, “with their punctuation of scarcely corroded balls and chains.”

I had taken off my glasses, foggy from the spray, so at first I wasn’t sure if the smudge of cream in the corner of my eye was just a trick of light. But then Quique pointed in the same direction, and the distant citadel began to shine — first the pale naked flanks of the highest cliffs, and then, slowly, the regions shadowed with underbrush. The island’s shape sharpened: a thin slice of stone floating like a cataract on the dark iris of the sea.

When we finally moored at Playa Pájaros, I woke up from my precolonial daydream. The beach was covered in trash. Quique blamed austerity: The Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, like all government agencies, has been defunded to prioritize the debt. There wasn’t money, anymore, to service the island properly. The rangers live on the other side, at Playa Sardinera, so our camp — Playa Pájaros — was wilder, both more private and more neglected. I was ashamed of my disappointment, realizing that it revealed some measure of willful naïveté: I knew the currents of the Mona Passage carried seeds and shells from far-off places, so why not shoes, plastic bottles, rubber tubing?

Still, there were hermit crabs and lizards creeping among the sea grapes, as there had been for millions of years, and wild cotton along the edges of the cliffs. Ramón helped me hang my nylon hammock from two sturdy trees, and I thought of the cotton slings — hamaca , an Arawak word — woven by the people of Mona, so finely made that the Spanish set them to work as suppliers for the imperial machine. I had never slept in a hammock before, but after the roughness of the voyage, it felt natural to sway, gently, and I dropped into a deep slumber for an hour, until I could hear Jaime pacing and singing, summoning us to our first cave.

If there had ever been a trail to Cueva Caballo, there wasn’t anymore, and so we had to shake the sleep from our senses in order to climb, almost crawl, through thorned bushes and over jagged limestone up toward the mouth of the cave. I was surprised to find a paved road just inside, punctuated by the rusted remnants of carts and rails. Tony explained how Cueva Caballo was mined for guano in the 19th century, when Western powers realized the nitrates in bat feces made it very good for gunpowder and fertilizer. The workers slept right here, among piles of excrement dredged up from the darkness. Eventually, they went on strike for lack of water. There was still fresh guano in Cueva Caballo — the color and texture of finely ground coffee — and the smell of ammonia saturated the tighter chambers, so that we passed through them quickly and sought out crevices in the stone where we could catch currents of fresh air.

“ Hay un chorro de formaciones ,” Jaime said, and it was true: The walls of the cave seemed to undulate like water, and a glittering white powder frosted the figures, crystallizing in chandeliers and sliding over smooth hills of stone like a gown over the hips of a beauty queen. “ Sorbeto ,” Tony told me it was called, as Jaime moved through the cave seeking his favorite free-standing sculptures and addressing them by his own private names: “ Huevo Frito ,” “ Dragón .” He was looking for “pearls,” the perfect mineral spheres that form over centuries in pools beneath dripping stalactites, especially one particular pearl he called “ La Cabeza, la perla más hermosa de toda la isla .” Tony, subtly competing, told me he had walked through every chamber in these caves — “ to’ completo ” — and was the only one who never lost his way on Mona.

Still, even after many decades, I could see how Jaime and Tony hesitated between branching passageways, retreating into memory’s inner topography before disappearing behind a blind curve. So many of the conversations I caught on tape were merely directional: “ Vamos pa’llá, ” “ No, más adelante, ” “ Y dónde está Javier? ” Cross-talk, muffled laughter. Jaime told me they sometimes stumbled upon the skeletons of goats that died lost in the labyrinth. We learned to listen for one another’s voices.

‘Yo la adoraba,’ he explained helplessly.

In Cueva Caballo, Jaime cried out: “ Se la robaron, Tony! ” When we found him, he was kneeling in front of what looked like an empty altar. La Cabeza — a glittering stone in the shape of a skull on a slender neck — had been carefully decapitated. There was a market for that kind of thing: Manuel said he had seen small-time hustlers selling stalactites on the roadside in the Dominican Republic. Even in the dim light of our headlamps, I could see Jaime’s face turn red, and I was worried he might cry. “ Yo la adoraba ,” he explained helplessly, using the word that blurs the boundary between love and worship. “If I were an Indian, this would be sacred for me.”

The older men in our group often spoke as if they had taken the place of Indigenous people. Jaime wore a necklace strung with three finely polished beads of shell and stone that he took from a cave years ago. Chito analyzed our dynamics as a “clan.” And Quique summoned scientific theories: Had I heard of epigenetics? How Native Americans transmitted the traumas of starvation, displacement and genocide across generations? Puerto Ricans, he continued, must be carrying our own ghosts. I was wary of these analogies, but I could also understand their emotional logic. Our guides had lived through “ el carpeteo ,” the U.S. government’s campaign against the Puerto Rican independence movement, when activists were surveilled and imprisoned, when close comrades turned out to be snitches. They were nostalgic for whatever came before the colonial encounter, when the islands they loved were sovereign. When we got back from Mona, Quique gave me a thumb drive of scientific documents and a short essay he wrote himself, simply titled, “Colonies Are There to Be Exploited.”

I struggled to absorb the intensity of information directed at me. Elisa, often at my side, said it was like standing next to a fire hose. Buried treasure, political intrigue, grand theories, deaths and disappearances. I was missing so much, but at least I could record the poetic names and properties of local plants: tourist tree, for its red and peeling bark, the cactus called snowball for its crown of white fuzz and thorns, the plumeria called alhelí cimarrón . In the mornings when it bloomed you could close your eyes and almost find your way across the island by following its fugitive perfume. Tabaco marino , rolled and smoked, might get you a little high. Chicharrón , higo chumbo , coca falsa . Jaime and Tony often returned to the same refrain: “ Eso es de aquí na’ más .” Only on Mona. Some of these species were immediately striking: The Mona land iguanas were enormous, with the terrible dignity of dinosaurs, and we had to fight them off whenever we took sponge baths by the cistern. Others seemed modest, enchanted only by the spell of our attention.

On the long, hot walk to the ruined lighthouse, Jaime and Tony peeled off, and Chito told me they were tired and had gone to camp. But on our way back, hours later, we came upon Jaime sitting in a patch of meager shade along the road. Our guides had finally found Psychilis monense, Mona Island’s endemic orchid, and Jaime was waiting to introduce us to this natural wonder. Last time he was on Mona, he spent an afternoon searching in vain, but this time — this time, just for us — she had revealed herself and would step into her stardom. Jaime had been so patient, had shown such fortitude, and now he was almost trembling with urgency as he guided us to the spot, off road, that he had marked with his staff so he wouldn’t lose the little flower.

The flower was indeed so little that I almost missed her, a bit of pale silk no larger than my thumbnail on the end of a long bare stem. When I bent the stem toward me to specify her beauty — a purple striped calyx, a clutch of green buds — I was worried it might snap. The tiniest dancer. How strange, I thought, to be so rare and lonely — endemic, endangered, the only flower in the stony field — and at the same time so unremarkable. Or was my own perceptive power unremarkable? My own capacity for feeling? Sometimes, reading research papers on Mona, I was baffled by the effort people made to catalog the most minute phenomena: the scientists in scuba gear who explored a dangerous underwater chamber in order to photograph “the curious case” of a cave-dwelling shrimp called Popeye. But I knew that the argument for protecting Mona depended on the meticulous accumulation of empirical evidence for the island’s singularity. And that love is not love without detail, without risk, without a touch of madness.

I tried to bring the intensity of attention I’d seen among our guides to the library. So much of my formal and informal education had rushed through the conquest of the Caribbean — especially Puerto Rico — as if the Spanish and then American invasions had been so successful that they erased not only the history of those who came before but also the muddy footprints of their own trajectory. Many primary sources confirmed the familiar narrative of unrelenting violence. The archaeologist Alice Samson drew my attention to an inventory of merchandise from Mona: “ grillones con un indio preso ” — shackles with a prisoner attached. But reading the colonial chronicles, I also felt a strange suspense, as if these encounters might have gone another way, as if the future I am living now had not yet been foretold.

Mona’s particular history dramatized the chaos and contingency of those early decades. The island’s location on the route between Santo Domingo and Spain made it a crucial supply station and entrepôt for slave trading. Juan Ponce de León imported roughly 80 captives to ramp up production of pan casabe , the durable flatbread made from yuca that was a staple of the Indigenous diet. Soon, Mona became the breadbasket for the whole colonial campaign: gold mines in Puerto Rico, armadas cruising for slaves, salt and pearls from Aruba to Venezuela. The women of Mona manufactured cotton ropes that might have been used — I can only speculate — to hoist sails, corral horses and bind the wrists of child brides.

But even at this high point of exploitation, Mona retained an ambivalent independence. Very few Spaniards took up permanent residence. Instead they installed Indigenous overseers and left the fragmented community to find its own working rhythm, to sustain traditions and experiment with new religions. Many of these people — colonizers, native islanders and captives from distant territories — would not have had a common language. Together, they had to learn to grapple with their new position at the center of apocalyptic change. They brokered deals with English and French raiders, they formed Creole families and they fled the violence of the island’s coast for caves in the interior, not far from the ceremonial ball courts.

Mona was never abandoned for long. Exiled islanders returned to fish, forage and visit sacred sites as their ancestors did for thousands of years. Sailors sick with scurvy came to gather oranges gone to seed. All through the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates frequented the island, making the surrounding waters some of the most perilous in the Atlantic world. The researcher Walter Cardona told me how Blackbeard, the notorious English buccaneer, used Mona to barrack twice-stolen Africans, reselling them on the black market once they became “acclimated” to hard labor. At the height of the Haitian Revolution, rebels moored ships along Mona’s coast. The island had become both a prison and a sanctuary, contested terrain where empire’s exiles hashed out new identities. In a recent article, Cardona included a photograph that Tony took of a skeleton recovered from Sardinera: DNA testing revealed a young man of African and Arawak ancestry, just a teenager when he died, maybe a maroon himself. Or maybe this was just wishful thinking, my desire for a story with a taste of freedom in it.

Something about the photograph — the arrangement of bones, the knowledge that Tony had touched them — made the limits of my reading obvious. I had come to Mona to go beyond the syllabus, and wasn’t it already working? Every feather and every grain of sand seemed like evidence. Every jagged window framing the sea looked like a wound torn open. Even the drooping casuarinas — imitation pines imported from Australia — seemed to lament their own story of displacement and adaptation. But there was one cave on Mona I still wanted to visit. Maybe seeing colonial signatures in stone would help me bridge the gap between the authority of documents and the testimony of the senses.

The entrance to Cave 18 was luminously pale and multicolored: blue, pink, yellow, the skyscape of a Renaissance painting. Right away, we had to bend at the waist, feeling our way through a wide, dim tunnel until it opened into a larger chamber. We were in the dark zone now, so that it wasn’t possible to go without our headlamps. Probably, the foreigners who visited this cave would have had to rely on local guides, the way I was now relying on Tony. I tried to let my senses adjust to the environment. This was my favorite kind of cave — not a cathedral but a chapel, damp and close as a pair of cupped hands. Later, reading Alice Samson’s analysis of Cave 18, I would learn that I had walked past the word “ entra ,” repeated three times in the same crude hand: a 16th-century visitor trying to formalize a route the first artists had established by feel, through the ceremony of repeated gestures.

The first signs I noticed myself were undulating lines traced into the soft, crumbly walls near eye level — “finger fluting,” Tony called it, an Indigenous technique common on Mona, where many caves are frosted with “ sudor de roca ,” as if stone, like human skin, could breathe and sweat. “Careful,” he warned me: It was easier to erase the delicate designs than it had been to create them.

I had just found an Indigenous petroglyph drawn high up on the curving ceiling — a round face with ornamental earrings — when Tony let out a small cry and beckoned me closer. This was the line I’d read about: plura fecit deus . The first word was written in perfect cursive, but the other words were messy, as if the writer had underestimated the effort it would require to inscribe his message. There’s no exact match for the Latin phrase in the religious writing of the period, so Samson suggests we take it at face value, as “a spontaneous response” to the cave itself. “God made many things” — so many more than the Old World predicted! Pineapples, manatees, reefs so thick with fish that boats could barely row to shore. Songs longer than books, clans ruled by women, caves that flickered with a thousand tiny faces peering out from the stone. Even familiar things, like Spanish melons, seemed transformed on Mona, swollen by the relentless sweetness of the sun. Was this not revelation? I tried to imagine landing here after months on a leaking caravel — outnumbered, now, by foreign people, encircled by charismatic foreign signs, compelled to register my wonderment with the sharpened point of a rusty nail.

Or maybe it was the other way around, and some of the crosses carved into the stone were made by mestizo conversos trying to reconcile competing cosmologies in the artistic language they knew best. Walter Cardona had combed the colonial literature for information on Mona’s Indigenous leaders, and he emerged with a document from 1517 listing every resident of the Sardinera village, many with hybrid names that reflected hybrid lives: Juan Yahagua, Francisco Maguatica, Isabel Bocoana, Luisica Guacoyo. Some of them might have kept visiting old sites of ceremony. Some of them might have shown strangers those hidden pathways and sacred chambers. Some of them might have disappeared together, preferring internal exile to the forced surrender of the island’s secrets.

When I met Walter Cardona in person, he told me he once spent nearly 10 hours in Cave 18, trying to catalog every human mark that was made there. Satisfied after his long effort, he announced, out loud, that he wasn’t planning to return. But the cave wouldn’t let him leave: “Something took me and threw me against the rock,” and he stayed there, pinned and paralyzed, for several moments before he realized he had spoken too soon. This was not a history you could finish. I remembered something I heard Tony say in a documentary: “No one can say they know Mona completely.” He was talking about space — the island’s intricate topography — but I was thinking about time.

Cave 18 is not a diorama, and Mona is not a museum. People still traverse these subterranean passageways in search of things they need: knowledge, freedom, temporary cover. Quique’s uncle was a rumrunner during Prohibition, or so the story goes, storing caches of liquor in caves. Now drug traffickers work the age-old route between South America and the Caribbean, stopping over on Mona to stash parcels of cocaine. And then, of course, there are the migrants: When Elisa and I arrived in Aguadilla, the airport guard told us how his father, a hunter, had stumbled upon a Dominican family in Cueva Negra, seeking shelter from the midday sun, trying to imagine an alternative to turning themselves in.

On the way back down from Cave 18, Tony walked us along Playa Mujeres, a dreamy stretch of white sand where sea turtles come to nest. We spotted the tracks of the animal’s soft, angled fins in the white sand. I took off my hiking boots to soothe my blisters in the surf. This beach seemed so much gentler than Playa Pájaros, I told Tony — and this, he replied, was why so many migrants landed here. Just a few weeks earlier, on Dec. 1, coyotes abandoned a group of 48 Haitians right where we were walking. Hundreds of migrants wind up on Mona every year — when the seas are calm, they come every week — and from all walks of life. There are doctors and ballplayers, mothers with babies and pets. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are both in crisis, Tony told me, and Puerto Rico seems to promise a more dignified style of poverty, perhaps a backdoor to U.S. citizenship.

The rangers at Sardinera gestured toward the graveyard of boats left behind on the island: “This is trash for us.” No one comes to clean up the evidence of Mona’s ongoing role in the underground economy. I walked closer to get a better look. Some had whimsical names like La Niña Coqueta that reminded me of slave ships called Friendship or Hope. The Middle Passage haunts these supposedly voluntary journeys. The rangers told me some coyotes throw menstruating women overboard so the sharks won’t track the smell of blood on the boat. When I see footage of migrants on Mona — lining up for food or singing a hymn in Kreyòl while they wait to be deported — I think of all the rebels, maroons and twice-sold people who made this island their temporary home.

The next day was our last on Mona, and we moved with a strange synchronicity, as if we had been rehearsing all along for a final performance. Like the other people thrown together there, we were beginning to fashion a shared culture of jokes and symbols, rhythms of rest and collective labor. Most of the footpaths through the coastal forest had been erased by recent hurricanes, so we had to open new corridors together, using our feet and knees to tamp down the underbrush and our hands to snap back dry branches. Jaime took me and Elisa to a heart-shaped chamber filled with impossibly velvety sand, talking us through what I can describe only as a matrimonial ritual. “Close your eyes,” he directed. “Can you hear that? The pulsing?” Now, he said, we belonged to Mona. We knew he practiced these lines on other people before, but we didn’t mind. Later, I told Elisa about a pictograph of a bird I’d seen in Cueva Lucero in Puerto Rico, and how Reniel, the archaeologist, identified an almost identical pictograph in other caves in the Dominican Republic. Jaime’s poetic repetitions were like that bird: a technology for creating community among people who might never meet.

That night, the moon was so completely red that it left a trail of blood across the sea. I wondered if the sky was always staging these operatic scenes behind scrims of light pollution. Not a scientific way to think, of course. The moon remained the moon regardless of our position or perception — mostly, if not completely, impervious to our corrupting touch.

But I still thought of all the natural wonders that had faded in the centuries since colonial contact. The chronicles suggest that all of Puerto Rico’s bays once glittered with bioluminescence. The afternoon sky would go dark when massive murmurations of green parrots from El Yunque blocked the sun. It was tempting to imagine they could skim the cream from the Milky Way and drink it. But I also knew that future generations would look back in wonder at what we have now, helpless with rage over what we’ve ruined.

Everyone went to sleep early. We knew that it was unlikely we would return to Mona together, and that even if we did, the island would be different: the infrastructure even more degraded, or worse, privatized. On our way back, there were flying fish, rainbows in the foam, bachata on the radio. Then the police stopped our boat — a reminder that government resources are always directed to limiting, rather than facilitating, the movement of people across the archipelago. I tried to keep Mona in my sightline the whole time, so that I could perceive the precise moment when the island disappeared. Or maybe that wasn’t possible. I blinked. I could already feel the fragile bonds among the people on the boat starting to loosen. I knew such losses were ordinary: Most contact is fleeting, most histories are forgotten. Ramón described Mona as a beautiful ruin, and I couldn’t disagree. The island dramatized every rupture, deepened every longing. But don’t we always make our lives among ruins, run to catch the bus over unmarked graves, cross paths with stateless people? I promised myself that when we landed, I would watch where I walked. I would keep trying to find out where I really stood.

Carina del Valle Schorske is a writer and translator living in Brooklyn. Her first book, “The Other Island,” is forthcoming from Riverhead. Her feature for the magazine about New York City’s Covid-era dance floors won a National Magazine Award. Christopher Gregory Rivera is a Puerto Rican photographer and director based in New York City and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Advertisement

COMMENTS

  1. Tourism Isla Iguana (Panama): Organized Trip All Inclusive

    Itinerary. From Pedasi, you will be transported to El Arenal beach, then you will take a boat to Isla Iguana. The tour includes snorkeling activities to appreciate the reefs. You can enjoy the beach by relaxing or hiring other complementary activities, such as paddle surfing, kayaking or horse riding. Book tour.

  2. Tours Isla Iguana

    Historical Tours. from. $96.00. per adult (price varies by group size) From Riu Playa Blanca - Private City & Panama Canal Boat Eco Tour. 3. Transportation Services. from. $89.00.

  3. Isla Iguana

    Isla Iguana is a beautiful island with beautiful beaches. There are two beaches on the island, one is bigger and is where you will probably arrive. You arrive by a 15-20 mins boat from Punta Arenal, Pedasj. It's usually around $80 per boat (roundtrip), and it fits up to 6 people (sometimes 10). You can go directly to Punta Arenal in Pedasi and ...

  4. Pedasí Tour: Panama without limits, adventure, paradise, culture

    Isla Iguana / Pedasí-Venao Beach Tour (according to the season) Whale Watching Tour (sighting is not guaranteed, most likely time between June and September) Mangrove Tour; ... PEDASI PARADISE, INC RUC:15632199-2-2016 DV 68 Avenida Central, Pedasí, Provincia de Los Santos, Panamá +507 923 6100 ...

  5. Pedasí Activities: Guided tours with a complete experience

    Isla Iguana Tour. An ideal destination for the whole family where you can observe many species that live here, such as iguanas, frigates, pelicans and countless birds. ... PEDASI PARADISE, INC RUC:15632199-2-2016 DV 68 Avenida Central, Pedasí, Provincia de Los Santos, Panamá +507 923 6100 ...

  6. Full Day Iguana Island Tour, Pedasi, Panama

    Detailed Description. Departing from the Albrook Mall, in the parking lots in front of the dinosaur hall at 11:45 PM, you will take a trip along the Pan-American Highway until arriving at Pedasí at 5:30 AM the following day. Then, you will depart by boat at 7:30 AM from Playa Arenal to Isla Iguana. Once we arrive, our guide will give us a tour ...

  7. Isla Iguana Tour

    Pedasi. Things to do. 1-888-456-3212. Isla Iguana Tour. Featured in: Boat Tours, Snorkeling. Duration: 4 hrs ... Hotel Transport Included Mobile Ticket Included Offered in English, Spanish. Isla Iguana Tour. Transportation. Many of our tours and activities offer transportation pick up & drop off options from several locations and destinations ...

  8. Isla Iguana Day Tour

    Discover a secluded paradise and wildlife refugee. Prices based upon a minimum of 2 participants. At your hotel in Pedasi. Light leisure clothing, a bathing suit, hat and sunscreen. EcoCircuitos Panama specialize in custom made adventure tours for families, couples, individuals seeking for an authentic travel experience in Central America.

  9. Iguana Island, the Pedasi Wildlife Refuge

    You can also see bottlenose dolphins and Pacific spotted dolphins on the tour. We organize tours to Isla Iguana and whale watching tours in Pedasi, you just have to contact us at ur****@pa*****.com or +507 6633-0166. Booking.com Wildlife Refuge. Iguana Island was declared a wildlife refuge in 1981.

  10. Tours Isla Iguana: All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

    Self-guided Tours. from. AU$93.40. per group (up to 7) 5 Lessons Course of Surf Class. Surfing Lessons. from. AU$420.28. per adult.

  11. Pedasi Tours

    Isla Iguana tour can be booked independently by just going to the marina and splitting the cost of a $70 panga boat with 6 other people + $10 park admission. Horse back riding can be booked for $15 with the stable owner, etc. Zip line tour I booked by contacting the outfit on facebook.

  12. Tour Isla Iguana

    Tour Isla Iguana, Pedasí. Incluye: Visita a Isla Iguana, Playa El Cirial y Playita El Faro Traslado en lancha desde Playa El Arenal a Isla Iguana ida y vuelta Capitanes con experiencia Chalecos salvavidas. Información a tomar en cuenta: Punto de encuentro: Playa El Arenal, Pedasí Hora: desde las 8:00 a.m. Duración del tour: 5- 7 horas máximo

  13. Isla Iguana VIP

    Visit Isla Iguana in style with all the comfort you need. This VIP tour includes transfer from Playa Arenal to Isla Iguana in a boat with life jackets and certified captain. ... Whale Watching Tour (Pedasi) $ 15.00 - $ 150.00 Select options; ABOUT US. We are a small farm hostel located in Los Higos, Pedasi, Panama. 2 rooms are available for ...

  14. Iguana Island Tour, Pedasi, Panama

    Explore all tours in Pedasi. Explore all tours in Los Santos. Sightseeing Tours Panama. ... It should be noted that Isla Iguana is surrounded by more than 40 hectares of coral reef, which makes it the island of the Gulf of Panama with more coral reef in the area. Iguana Island is a key point to visit by nationals and foreigners who daily travel ...

  15. Isla Iguana Panama

    Massive bleaching at Isla Iguana because El Niño 2023. The El Niño event that is still forming in the tropical Pacific could wipe out the coral reefs of the Gulf of Panama. On July 21, 2023, sea surface temperature on Iguana Island was 32.4 °C; 4 °C above normal conditions. We observed massive coral bleaching. White corals are still alive.

  16. Tour Isla Iguana

    Meet the pearl of the Panama pacific, Isla Iguana, National ParkIsla Iguana is an island wildlife refuge five kilometers, or a 20-minute boat ride, from Play...

  17. Isla Iguana

    Isla Iguana Playa Venao Beach Pedasi Tours Pempos 4Wheels Artemania Negro Pedasí Pesca Pedasi Sports Club Myshape Varpanets O Mandaditok Discovery Extreme Panama Tours Pedasi Trips. ... Isla Iguana, Pedasi 0754 Panama. Reach out directly. Visit website Email. Full view. Best nearby.

  18. Isla Iguana in Panama

    Isla Iguana is a secluded paradise, considered a wildlife refugee, inhabited only by rare birds, giant lizards and purple and red crabs. It is located only 8km off the shore of Pedasi, Los Santos and it is accessed only by boat. Isla Iguana is a snorkeling and diving paradise as it has the biggest area of well-preserved coral reefs in the Gulf ...

  19. Iguana Island Snorkeling, Pedasi, Panama

    Isla Iguana is a secluded paradise, considered a wildlife refugee, inhabited only by rare birds, giant lizards and purple and red crabs. It is located 8km off the shore of the village of Pedasi and it is accessed only by boat. The wildlife refuge of Isla Iguana was founded in 1981 and includes over 50 hectare of land and water.

  20. Isla Iguana Wildlife Refuge

    The Isla Iguana Wildlife Refuge is a 53-hectare wildlife reserve located 5 kilometers off the Los Santos Province on the Azuero Peninsula in Panama. ... Tours to Isla Iguana depart from Arenal Beach in Pedasi or from Mariabe, the town before Pedasi, which offers a shorter crossing time. History ...

  21. took the boat to Isla Iguanas- A+ snorkeling worth it

    Pedasi Tours: took the boat to Isla Iguanas- A+ snorkeling worth it - See 24 traveler reviews, 74 candid photos, and great deals for Pedasi, Panama, at Tripadvisor. ... Isla Iguana tour can be booked independently by just going to the marina and splitting the cost of a $70 panga boat with 6 other people + $10 park admission. Horse back riding ...

  22. Pedasí

    Domingo 19 de septiembre de 1999. Ingemar Panamá, Iguana Tours y Grupo Conservacionista de Pedasí. Díaz V., Marco L. 1994. Análisis Ambiental de la Contaminación por Basura Doméstica en el Ecosistema Costero-Marino y en las Pesquerías de la Región de Pedasí (Provincia de Los Santos). Borrador del Informe Final.

  23. Isla Iguana Tours

    Isla Iguana Tours, Pedasí, Los Santos, Panama. 3,443 likes · 3 talking about this · 13 were here. Ofrecemos el servicio de viajes y hospedajes en Pedasí +Tour Isla Iguana +Tour de Pesca +Tour... Isla Iguana Tours | Pedasí

  24. The Terrifying Allure of Mona Island

    The two most popular tour companies never wrote me back, so I planned the trip with Jaime Zamora, a freelance guide who had been exploring the island for more than 40 years. But it was better this ...