For twenty years Pedasí was the kind of place you reached by driving five hours from Panama City, eating fried fish at a roadside stand halfway, and arriving in a town where the single guesthouse had seven rooms. In 2026 that drive is under four hours on the completed Interamerican spur, a small commercial airport just outside town handles eight flights a week, and four resort-grade projects are under simultaneous construction.
We spent four days in Pedasí in March, walking the coast, sitting with the three largest developers, eating at the new restaurants that have opened in the last eighteen months, and talking to foreign residents who bought in the first wave.
What changed
Pedasí real estate price per m² 2018-2026 (Time-series line of Pedasí median price per m² rising from $850 to $1,620, alongside flatter Coronado strip baseline.)
Three things converged. Copa Airlines formalized a year-round seasonal route to Pedasí's airstrip in 2024. A long-stalled fiber-optic backbone connecting the peninsula to Panama City's network was completed in 2025. And the municipal government, with coaching from Tourism Minister Iván Eskildsen, passed a coastal-residential zoning code that is permissive enough to attract developers but strict enough on height (four stories maximum) to preserve the town's character.
What it feels like
It feels, to our reporter's eye, like Costa Rica's Nosara did in 2004. A working town with a fishing fleet and a main square and a parish church, onto which a careful layer of resort-residential development is being grafted. It is a moment that will not last.