Travel
Panama with Kids Family-friendly Panama City and the Isla Palenque resort By Hester ABA
F
or our February break, we knew we wanted to head to the sun, and we also wanted to tick a new country off our list. We hit upon the idea of heading to Panama with our kids for a week, spending two nights in Panama City and then enjoying luxury ecoresort, Isla Palenque in the Gulf of Chiriqui, near the border with Costa Rica. Panama City with Kids The flight to Panama City from JFK takes five and a half hours on Copa Air. We stayed at the Hotel Bristol, a pleasant business hotel and twenty minute drive from the airport. The Hotel Bristol has a tiny pool, but our kids were more than content with it after a New York winter without swimming! We only had one full day in Panama City, so we checked out the Frank Gehry-designed Biomuseo first thing the next morning after breakfast. The Biomuseo is an amazing museum dedicated to the bio-diversity of Panama, with a strong eco message. The museum is very interactive, and we spent a happy couple of hours there. Later we headed to the Old Town or Casco Viejo where we had lunch at Tantalo Hotel which has a very cool restaurant with amazing murals and the coolest bathroom ever which kids will love! You can check out the harbor and do a bit of souvenir shopping
48
NewYorkFamily.com | April 2020
or admire the very instagrammable buildings before heading back to your hotel. Onwards to Eco Resort Isla Palenque The following morning we headed to the airport for the super-quick flight to David, Panama’s second largest city. Once we landed in David, we were met by Isla Palenque’s driver and drove for an hour and a half through beautiful countryside before taking a speedboat for ten minutes to Isla Palenque. Arriving at Isla Palenque is breath-taking; it’s a private, densely tropical island, surrounded by warm, calm water and gorgeous pristine beaches. Because most of Panama is volcanic, the beaches are black sand, but it’s a fine, powdery sand and still very pretty. The villas on Isla Palenque are a short drive across the island on a rough dirt track. Aside from one large private villa which can sleep up to 14 guests, everyone else is accommodated in eight beachfront “casitas” along the largest beach next to the pool and restaurant. The casitas are rustic in style, with outdoor showers and toilets, but they’re well-designed, and thankfully have air-conditioning! We managed to make our casita fit our family of four, by requesting single beds for the kids which they placed at the end of our bed. Isla Palenque puts on a daily schedule of
Scenes from Isla Palenque, including the beachfront “casitas” (top left), snorkeling (right) and howler monkeys (above). activities including hikes, kayaking, paddleboarding and kids’ entertainment, but the main event at Isla Palenque is definitely just chilling out and enjoying the beautiful natural
