Panama - Rainforest & Takeaways

The guide from our Canal tour offered a very generous proposal – he’d take us out into the Gamboa rainforest around sundown to walk around and experience what it’s like at dusk. We gladly accepted!

On the way out to the rainforest, we drove over the Culebra Cut – a the artificial valley which joins the continental divide in Panama. The bridge that extends over the cut has to be one of the highest bridges in the world – guaranteed to allow any vessel in the world to travel under it.

After a short trip out, we made our way to the Gamboa rainforest – but not before spotting a tucan on the side of the road (across the street from a Domino’s Pizza actually).

The walk our guide had planned out had us parking inside the forest and walking a ways from there. We got in just before dusk, when the forest was just beginning to come alive. After only a few steps, we spotted a sloth high up in a tree – which would end up being one of the biggest animals we’d spot that night.

That’s not to say that others didn’t spot us. As the sun set, the volume was slowly turned up. It was an unexpected experience – losing control of our sight to the point where we could see next to nothing.

This was the first trip that we opted not to organize our travel ahead of time.

Our tour guide was amazing. It made us realize how much we love having local guides that moved to the city for some reason other than work. Mike? Was previously from the midwest and moved to Panama with his Panamanian wife. The same goes for our Japan trip where we met another midwestern guide who moved there for a woman. There’s something to locals who fall in love with the people and place and want to share it.

Make sure you know about them to plan accordingly.

Leading up to our trip, it looked like it was going to rain everyday. In the end it only ever rained once or twice, and never when it mattered.

Not all locations have a solid Yelp community. Although popular in the US, Canada and Europe, in Asian and Latin America you can’t rely on it.

Just about everywhere we went had wifi. I bought a minimal international data plan for the month, but ended up not using half of it. It did come in handy for using Uber though.

Every taxi we used was super-sleezy. Many don’t have the required paperwork to do their job and live in fear of being pulled over. Ubers felt safe and we enjoyed them the entire time. To our surprise, a high number of our Uber drivers were women.

The most memorial parts of our trip weren’t the old city, the views of the harbor or the amazing meals, but the look out over the canal, or the sound of the rainforest at night. If we had to do the trip again, I’d probably leave the city sooner and more often.

I did enjoy the slower pace of the country and it’s welcoming people. I would come back to Panama, but probably not to Panama City. We didn’t get a chance to see the mountains, which would be amazing to check out next time.