I didn’t fly to any of those places because we pretty regularly heard that planes had “run off the runway” which meant “ended up in water”. In those days I didn’t fly in anything that wasn’t flown and maintained by the US military. Which is too bad because I really did want to fish Tropic Star just once (and almost did with a couple friends who did go). But we did go just about every place one could drive to and visited about every island I could with my boat. Several times I would call the hotel on Contadora and book a room for the weekend and dump my wife and daughter on the beach with the suitcases while my son and I went fishing.
Soon after my cousin built his house down there, he met the owners of a hotel on Contadora who asked him and his wife to manage the place. I don't know how long they lasted but they were treated like crap so they quit........
The Panama experience for my cousin was somewhere between 2005 and 2010 I think.....