Columbus named it Puerto Bello, the beautiful harbour, in 1502, and for once a sailor's first impression was right. Portobelo sits on a deep, sheltered bay on Panama's Caribbean coast, backed by steep green hills, and for two centuries it was the point where the wealth of Peru left the New World. Gold and silver came by sea up the Pacific coast to Panama City, crossed the isthmus on mule trails like the Camino de Cruces, and were loaded here onto the Spanish treasure fleets. Every year, a great fair was held, with merchants and soldiers crowding the little port, and prices and diseases both soared.
The riches attracted pirates. Francis Drake died of dysentery on his ship off Portobelo in January 1596, and the town was attacked and sacked by Henry Morgan in 1668 and captured by the British admiral Edward Vernon in 1739. The Spanish responded by building heavy stone forts of coral limestone around the bay, and their gun batteries and thick walls still face the sea, overgrown with tropical plants and patrolled by iguanas. Together with the fortifications of San Lorenzo, at the mouth of the Chagres river, they are inscribed on the World Heritage list as the Fortifications on the Caribbean Side of Panama.
The road here is a pleasure. From the Panama Canal at Colon, the coastal highway winds along the shore through villages and jungle, with the sea appearing and disappearing between palms, and the surface is mostly good but potholed in places. Heavy tropical rain can cut visibility and cover the road with water, so ride carefully in the wet season, from May to December. The dry months, from January to April, are much more comfortable. Trucks and buses are the main hazard, and the last stretch to the town is narrow and curvy.
Portobelo is tiny, about fourteen hundred people, so bring cash and fill your tank in Colon or on the way before you arrive. Inside the church of San Felipe stands the Black Christ, a wooden statue said to have arrived mysteriously by sea, and every October, thousands of pilgrims in purple robes come for the festival of the Nazareno. Try fried fish with patacones, crisp slices of green plantain, at a stall by the water.