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

surroundings. I did a couple of yoga classes (one of which ended up being a private class) and the kids did some pastry-making, a mocktails class, bracelet making and a “Secrets of the Island” hike. My husband and I headed out one day for some snorkelling off the coast of a nearby island. We didn’t spot much aside from some pretty reef fish, but the guide said you can sometimes see barracuda, shark and turtles. We loved spotting all the wildlife around the island, including howler monkeys who make the craziest noises in the trees in the early mornings.

Although the menu started to feel a little bit repetitive towards the end of our five day stay, we were impressed by the quality of the food, which was fresh, healthy and delicious. They do have a kids’ menu, but we just ordered fish, chicken or steak for our girls along with grilled veggies and yes, french fries rather than having them eat burgers or chicken nuggets at every meal. One lovely thing about Isla Palenque is that all the water comes from the island’s natural springs, so you can drink the tap water and don’t have to worry about your kids swallowing the water in the bath or shower!

The staff at Isla Palenque could not have been nicer and all spoke perfect English. The service is casual and un-stuffy. One of our kids started suffering from some bad allergies after our first day at Isla Palenque and I was kicking myself for not having thought to bring any Benedryl to such a remote place. After a quick chat with the staff, they arranged for their driver to pick some up in David and bring it to us the next day when he brought some new arrivals.

We loved our stay at Isla Palenque and would really recommend it to families who want to get away from it all and really immerse themselves in pristine natural surroundings. We came back to NYC wellrested and totally chilled out.

Isla Palenque’s Eco Credentials We were super-impressed by the effort Isla Palenque has made to banish single-use plastics, replacing straws with papaya leaf straws, using only refillable glass toiletries bottles and providing reusable water bottles to all their guests. Their hot water is heated using solar power, they only serve locally sourced, sustainable seafood, and all their buildings use renewable materials. Isla Palenque also grows as much of their own fruit, vegetables and herbs as possible in their organic garden.

The earth has music for those who listen - Wiiam Shakpe

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