As the site of the CITES CoP, the first stop on our trip was Panama City. Between the conference and the rest days afterwards, I ended up spending almost 2 and a half weeks here, so it was very much starting to feel like home. When I was planning the trip I’d written off our Panama City days as ‘urban’, and wasn’t expecting to see much in the way of nature. That was impression was quickly dispelled less than an hour after leaving the airport. Its a city has some seriously good wildlife spots – so without further ado, let me introduce you to the Panama City wildlife trifecta.
(1) PARQUE METROPOLITANO
When I first stepped foot in the Parque Metropolitano it was after almost 36 hours without sleep – our flight from London had arrived into Panama City at 6am, and, not wanting to give into jet lag, we decided the best thing to do was to go to try and find some sloths. In my head I was expecting something like a tropical version of Hyde Park- lovely, yes, but not particularly wild. So you can imagine the thrill when I stepped foot onto the trail and within 5 minutes the surroundings were pure rainforest- from the massive buttresses on the trees to the columns of leaf cutter ants crossing the paths to the saw-like trills of the cicadas. There was a pond filled with basking terapins and on-edge basilisk lizards that would scuttle across the surface of the water if you took a misstep. We saw toucans and kingfishers and woodpeckers and gorgeous crimson back tanagers, their burgundy, velvety heads offset by their silvery bills. But where the Metropolitano truly blew me away was its abundance of mammals- on a single visit we saw tamarins, coatis, white tailed deer, agoutis, and, mission accomplished, sloths. I’ve never seen so many different species in such quick succession, or so close, as they all seemed relatively unbothered by us being there. I loved it so much that I managed to get there twice more in the two weeks we were in the city, and each time there was something new- a peek of the city dramatically framed by rainclouds from the view point at the top of the hill, or spotting a new type of heliconia in flower. Without hesitation it was my top thing to do in the city.
(2) PUNTA CULEBRA
Punta Culebra is a spit of a thing. A tiny remnant of dry rainforest which would take you less than 5 minutes to traverse from end point to end point. So it seems impossible that we saw two-toed sloths, crab eating racoons, brown pelicans, magnificent frigate birds, and humongous iguanas during our visit, but that’s Panama for you. The latter were probably the highlight, as on our return trip we were treated to a territorial dispute between three 1.5m long chonkers; they’d wave their wattles at each other before deciding whether to enact a hasty retreat or keep advancing. The reserve keeps quite strange hours and we were caught out when we tried to go back a second time, so do check the website before setting off.
(3) PARQUE NACIONAL SOBERANIA
Technically this one’s cheating, as it isn’t really within the city. But Soberania National Park, one of the jewels in the crown of Panama’s many protected areas, lay only a 40 minute drive from our hotel, and anything that’s within day tripping distance counts in my book. We were lucky enough to go twice- once during the day time, where we arranged for a taxi to drop us off at the park’s rainforest discovery centre and pick us up 6 hours later, and once with a guide for a night walk.
For me, there were three undoubted highlights. The last bit of road that leads to the entrance of the discovery centre is the venerated pipeline road, which holds the world record for the highest number of bird species seen within a 24 hour period. It’s all very unassuming, but our early morning start there rewarded us with mot mots, tanagers, red capped manakins and ocellated antbirds, as well as c. 30 mosquito bites each (get your repellent on as fast as possible!). The second highlight was the discovery centre’s canopy tower, at a startling 32m high, which lets you wind your way through the various canopy layers before opening up to provide vistas over the forest. It makes you realise just how little of the habitat you’re seeing at ground level, and how it’s possible to things to live in the canopy and almost never have to come down. And the third was the hummingbirds- oh, the hummingbirds. There’s a special feeding area near the entrance to the discovery centre where you’ll get the opportunity to see them at very close quarters- close enough that you can feel the air currents from their wingbeats. I’ve spoken before on here about how I think hummingbirds are the most exquisite animals I’ve ever seen, and I still very much stand by that opinion. I love how pugnacious they are despite their tiny size and delicate appearance – while we were there one of the white necked jacobins absolutely would not tolerate anyone coming near ‘his’ feeder, and would chase them away with a trilling rackety admonishment. If there hadn’t been the promise of wattled jacanas at the marshy bit of the reserve I don’t think I could have been pulled away.
