About 64% of the population are mestizos, blacks and mulattos make up about 14%, Caucasians are about 10% and Asians are about 4%. The rest is spread across different nations.
Religious
affiliation Almost all of the country’s residents profess Christianity; around 80% are Catholic and around 15% Protestant. The remainder are distributed among other religions and a few are non-denominational.
National languages
The official language is Spanish. English and various Indian dialects are also spoken.
Capital and other cities
The capital of Panama is Panama City, with a population of 1.5 million. According to Abbreviation Finder, PAN stands for Panama in English. Click to see other meanings of this 3-letter acronym.
Other cities are:
San Miguelito with around 300,000 residents
Colón with around 80,000 residents
David with around 65,000 residents
La Palma with around 1,900 residents
Panama: geography
The country of Panama is located in Central America on the canal of the same name, the Panama Canal, between Costa Rica and Colombia. Check topmbadirectory for politics, flags, famous people, animals and plants of Panama.
Area of land
Panama covers a total area of 75,517 km², of which around 210 km² are inland waterways.
Thereof:
ForestAround 48% of the country is forest and mostly covered with dense rainforest.
Meadows and pasture landAround 15% of the land is used as meadows or pasture land.
Arable land and fieldsAround 7% of the land is used as arable land or fields.
National borders and coastlines
Panama – the bridge between two oceans. The country is in Central America and shares a border with two countries. These are the limits to:
Costa Rica with a length of around 330 km
Colombia with a length of around 225 km.
Panama has a coast to the Caribbean with a length of around 850 km and to the Pacific with a length of around 1,640 km.
Tidal range
In the vicinity of Panama City, in the “Gulf of Panama” on the Pacific Ocean, the tidal range can be up to 4.5 m. (For a detailed explanation of the ebb and flow, see Tides, Ebb and Flow.)
Compare
The world’s highest tidal range can be found in the Bay of Fundy in Canada, where it is up to 16 meters, and at spring tide even over 20 meters. The Bay of Fundy is located on the Atlantic between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which is called Nova Scotia in German and whose capital is Halifax. On the German North Sea coast it varies between one and three meters. In the western Baltic Sea, on the other hand, the tidal range is only 0.3 meters, while it is barely noticeable in the eastern Baltic Sea.
Longitude and latitude
Panama extends over the following geographical latitude (abbreviation Δφ) and geographical longitude (abbreviation Δλ):
Δφ = from 07 ° 12 ‘N to 09 ° 38’ N Δλ = from 077 ° 09 ‘W to 083 ° 03’ W.
You can find detailed information on this subject under: Geographical longitude and latitude.
Legal time
For Panama, the following value applies to Central European Time (CET), i.e. the time without summer time. A minus sign means that it is earlier there, a plus sign that it is later than CET:
Δt (CET) = – 6 h
More detailed explanations of the time can be found under: Time zones, time
The highest point of the sun in Panama City
Panama City is located at a northern latitude of around φ = 09 ° and thus in the middle of the tropics. Twice a year, the sun is therefore vertically above the city, roughly 35 days after March 21 and then again 35 days before September 21. If the declination of the sun is more than around 09 ° N, the sun is in the north at noon and not in the south, as is the case here.
Mountains, Volcán Barú
Volcán Barú
The highest mountain in the country is the Volcán Barú in the province of Chiriqui on the border with Costa Rica with an altitude of 3,475 m.
Other high mountains are:
Cerro Santiago with a height of 2,826 m
Cerro Chorcha with a height of 2,238 m
Rivers
Rio Chucunaque
The longest river in the country is the Rio Chucunaque with a length of around 230 km. The Río Chucunaque is a river in the Panamanian province of Darién and with a length of 231 km the longest river in Panama.
The Chucunaque flows in the village of Yaviza – the starting point for visitors to the Darién National Park – it unites with the Rio Yavi, which then flows into the approximately 170 km long Río Tuira, which then flows into the Gulf of San at La Palma Miguel – located in the east of the Gulf of Panama – flows into it.
Other rivers in the country are:
Rio Esperanza
Rio Piedras
Rio Chagres
Rio Bayano
Lakes
Gatun
The largest lake in the country is the Gatun with an area of about 430 km². The dammed lake is part of the Panama Canal. The channel of the canal runs through the lake over a length of 24.2 km. There are also around 2 km for the Gatun locks.
Islands, pearl islands
PearlIslands
The Pearl Islands (Archipiélago de los Perlos) are a group of islands in the Gulf of Panama about 80 km southeast of Panama City and cover an area of 1,165 km².
The two largest islands are Isla de Rey, Isla San José and Isla Contadora. Contadora came into the focus of world politics in 1977 when the then US President Jimmy Carter signed the Panama Canal Treatment here. In the treaty, the US ceded its sovereignty over the Panama Canal to Panama from December 31 at 12:00 noon in 2000. Isla de Coiba
Isla de Coiba is located in the Pacific Ocean (Gulf of Chiriqui). The shortest distance to the mainland is in a north-easterly direction and is around 20 km. With an area of around 495 km², it is the largest island of Panama and also the largest American island in the Pacific. The island has been under nature protection since 1991 and forms the center of the Isla Coiba National Park.
Azuero Peninsula
The Azuero Peninsula impresses with its empty white beaches, cozy little villages and larger cities, in which the colonial era has never ended architecturally.
Boca Brava
The “Wild Mouth” is a small island in the Parque Nacional Maritimo Golfo de Chiriqui, which is still an insider tip among tourists. The almost always sun-drenched jewel offers an immensely diverse flora and fauna as well as countless opportunities to pass the time with snorkeling, swimming, sunbathing and much more.
Bocas del Toro
The island kingdom in the province of the same name, whose name means something like “mouths of the bull”, consists of seven large and hundreds of smaller islands. The Laguna de Chiriqui, a piece of sea particularly adored by divers, and the island of Bastimentos, where there are no cars, but all the more colorful wooden huts and a lot of Caribbean flair, are outstanding.
San Blas Archipelago (Kuna Yala)
The 365 San Blas Islands in the Caribbean Sea are home to the Cuna Indians (or Tules) who live from agriculture, fishing and the manufacture of the famous Molas. The latter are artfully sewn and decorated motifs in the form of a rectangle. The islands are overgrown with palm trees and protected by coral reefs.
Isla Taboga
Near Panama City and off the Pacific coast is the island of Taboga, which has extremely beautiful beaches and is a popular weekend destination for the residents of the state capital. The island can only be reached by boat.
The Panama Canal
Without a doubt, the Panama Canal (Panama Canal) is the most outstanding technical structure in the country. After around 11 years of construction, the 81.6 km long canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific was completed in 1914. The first passage took place on August 15, 1914. It begins in the Caribbean near the city of Colon and ends in Panama City in the Gulf of Panama. It is used by around 10,000 ships every year. In a ballot in October 2006, around 78% of the population decided to expand the canal. From 2014, the locks and other facilities on the canal are to be expanded so that ships with a length of around 500 m and over 12,000 containers can also pass through the canal; which is currently not possible.
It should be noted that France tried to build a canal in the country as early as 1881. The attempt failed and cost the lives of around 20,000 people, among other things as a result of mosquito-borne diseases. In France this disaster led to considerable political upheaval, which at the time ended with the resignation of a number of top politicians. In 1977 the then US President Jimmy Carter signed the “Panama Canal Treatment”, in which the US ceded its sovereignty over the Panama Canal to Panama from December 31 at 12:00 noon in 2000.
Pacific, Gulf of Panama and the Caribbean
Gulf of Panama
The Gulf of Panama is a large bulge in the Pacific. The widest part of the bay is around 240 km – with a maximum depth of around 220 m. The Gulf is connected to the Caribbean and thus the Atlantic via the Panama Canal. The Pearl Islands are located in the Gulf of Panama. The gulf is located between the Azuero peninsula in the west and the province of Darién in the east. The southern boundary forms an imaginary line approx. 200 km long from the southern tip of the Azuero peninsula in an easterly direction. In the Gulf of Panama there is the Gulf of Parita in the western part and the Gulf of San Miguel in the eastern part of the city of La Palma (approx. 1,750 residents) – the provincial capital of Darién.
Pacific
Panama borders the Pacific Ocean in the west of the country with a length of 1,640 km.
The Pacific Ocean is also known as the Pacific, Pacific, or Great Ocean
Panama borders the Pacific Ocean, the largest and deepest ocean in the world, with a length of approximately 1,640 km. It stretches between the Arctic, North, Central and South America as well as the Antarctic, Australia, Oceania and Asia. It has a gigantic area of 166.24 million km² (not including secondary seas) and therefore covers around 35% of the entire surface of the earth. The ocean, which is larger than all the continents combined, goes at its deepest point in the Mariana Trench down to 11,034 meters below sea level. km to the Pacific Ocean, the largest and deepest ocean in the world. It stretches between the Arctic, North, Central and South America as well as the Antarctic, Australia, Oceania and Asia. It has a gigantic area of 166.24 million km² (not including secondary seas) and therefore covers around 35% of the entire surface of the earth. The ocean,
Caribbean
Panama also borders the Caribbean Sea – with a length of around 850 km.
The Caribbean is a marginal sea of the Atlantic and lies between the islands of the Caribbean and the American continent. In the west, Mexico and other Central American states border the Caribbean. In the south of Colombia and Venezuela. The border in the east and north form the following islands or archipelagos starting from Venezuela in a semi-circle to the “actual” Atlantic: Trinidad and Tabago, Grenada, St. Lucia, Dominica, British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Cuba. The shortest distance from Cuba to Key West/USA is around 165 km.
The deepest point in the Caribbean is the Cayman Rift between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands with a depth of 7,680 m. Together with the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean forms the “American Mediterranean”.
