Panama Lowlands Itinerary

Tour Cost: $3,850

Single Supplement: $600

Tour Capacity: 10 People

The “Classic” Tour! This is the tour that started it all. I began visiting Panama when I worked for the Semester at Sea, nearly 17-years ago. I fell in love with the country, its habitats, its people and its birds and it quickly became my “home away from home”. I have been fortunate enough to build a family in Panama that treats me and my groups very well and I always look forward to bringing tours to the country to share in its biological wealth and beauty. It is truly an amazing place. This tour will focus on the central lowlands, the most biodiverse region of Panama. During the tour, a single day trip to an extinct volcano will expose the group to the effect of elevation on avian communities and our trip list will be a combination of species of the lowlands and those that have evolved to take advantage of habitats found at slightly higher elevations.

If you have never been to Panama, you HAVE to go! For this tour, we will stay in Gamboa, a sleepy town that sits on the Panama Canal with ready access to some of the best birding locations in the country. We will stay at a resort overlooking the Chagres River where tour participants can cool off after a day of birding in the tr opical heat by swimming in a pool, booking a spa treatment, or simply sitting at an outdoor bar sipping a tropical drink.

From the town of Gamboa, we will explore the vast Soberania National Park. The focus of our first two days of the tour will be an exploration of the famed Pipeline Road and surrounds. Pipeline Road held the record for the highest number of birds species detected in a 24hr period on earth for many years and for good reason. This relatively easy road that cuts into the heart of a mature tropical rainforest and provides the opportunity to see amazing species that are otherwise difficult to observe due to their habitat associations as mature interior forest birds. To facilitate our birding even further, an observation tower erected in the forest itself will allow us to begin one of our mornings in the canopy, watching as the toucans, parrots, forest-falcons, tanagers and cotingas wake and greet the tropical morning. An adjacent privately-owned reserve offers a series of easy hiking trails and a hummingbird feeding station, which will offer opportunity to see even more rainforest species without extensive effort.

Pipeline Road is a famed birding location. The road itself stretches for 13km through primarily mature forest habitat and, due to the nature of movement dynamics in tropical birds, is consistently exciting from a birding perspective. Mixed species flocks, sit-and-wait species such as trogons and motmots are common and the chance to come across extremely rare species always exists. We could spend our entire tour walking the road (and indeed I have led multiple trips where we focused all of our time on Pipeline Road), but in an effort to expand our bird list to include species associated with other habitat types, we will embark on a number of day trips.

The first of these trips will be to the town of El Valle de Anton. El Valle is a town that sits on the continental divide and has a great diversity of birds from the West and East. At least 75 species can be found at El Valle that we simply won't see in the lowlands at Pipeline Road. We will start the day by walking slowly along gravel roads in the Northwest of the town. These roads serve as a border between the rainforest and agricultural zones. Birding here is excellent in the early morning and our chances of seeing El Valle specialties are very high. From here we will travel a short distance to Cerro Gaital, an amazing hiking trail that follows the rim of an extinct volcano and provides great looks at both oceans from the top. Although the hike is strenuous and rocky, it starts with a (relatively) gradual grassy incline for 500m before heading into the rainforest. Here you will find two benches, so those of you incapable or simply not interested in hiking the rest of the way can sit and relax while the birds come to you. The rest of us will spend the next few hours hiking the mountain cloud forest trail looking for more specialties...which we are bound to see. After Cerro Gaital, we will head to the famed El Valle market so you can do some quick shopping for Panamanian goods and then we will go to a restaurant for a traditional Panamanian lunch. After lunch we will head to the Cara Iguana trail, another gravel road cutting into the side of a mountain that is spectacular for birds. The road is fairly easy to walk and we will do so very slowly.

A second day trip will be focused on the birds of Old Gamboa Road and Plantation Trail. These two trails, although close to one another, have very different species as a result of their proximity to the canal, elevation and habitat. Old Gamboa Road is an easy, paved road in dry Caribbean scrub forest, which will expose us to species such as Jet Antbird and Lance-tailed Manakin…species not found elsewhere on the trip. At the end of the road, a large pond is a roosting site for Boat-billed and Capped Herons and multiple species of kingfisher are often found working the pond edges. From here we will head to Plantation trail. Although this trail is very similar to Pipeline road, it parallels a river that is always flowing. And, during the dry season, it will be a great spot to see species tied to wetter forest environments

All in all, a trip to Panama is an experience you won’t soon forget. There are few other places on earth where hospitality, natural beauty and overwhelming avian diversity intersect with one another. Panama is a global avian hotspot and many of my clients have returned time and again to experience more of this amazing country.