Chiriqui

Chiriquí occupies western Panama between Costa Rica and the Gulf of Chiriquí. Its environmental range includes hot, humid lowlands and cooler, wet highlands, with forests such as the Fortuna Forest Reserve within the province. Before Spanish conquest, several Indigenous groups inhabited this country and were known collectively as the Guaymí. Gaspar de Espinosa became the first European to visit and describe Chiriquí in 1519, opening a written colonial record of a land whose communities already possessed their own routes and relationships. Its Pacific frontage and position beside Costa Rica have made it a meeting ground for highland and coastal economies, as well as a corridor within Central America. The proximity of lowland heat, mountain forest and the gulf gives the province several distinct settlement zones, joined by paths, river valleys and roads rather than contained by a single landscape.

The later city of David lies here.