Jungles of the Darien

We will depart from Panama City after breakfast and travel along the Pan-American Highway toward the border of Colombia. After several police checkpoints, we travel through a Guna Indian reserve of Wargandi on Lake Bayano (second largest artificial lake in Panama) where you can take pictures and enjoy the scenery. We continue our journey through the Guna forest reserve  and different communities located on the banks of the Pan-American Highway. Once we enter Darien, personal documents will be reviewed in the Agua Fria police checkpoint, then we reach the community of Santa Fe where we will have lunch at a local farm. After lunch we will leave our luggage at the hostal and take a short break. We will visit the Embera community of Arimae where we will enjoy the beautiful dances and handicrafts produced and presented by the Women Artisans of Arimae. After our visit to the community of Arimae we will have dinner before returning to the hostal to rest. (L, D)

We continue our tour on the Pan-American Highway until we reach the community of Yaviza (last community of the Pan-American Highway) where we will do the check-in at the offices of The Ministry of Environment (ANAM). We will board a piragua (traditional native boat) to go across the river Chucunaque until the community of El Real de Santa Maria for lunch. After lunch we take a 4×4 vehicle to take us to the community of Pirre, where we will begin our trek ( 3 hours) to our destination Darien National Park. This park is located 325 kilometers (202 miles) from the city of Panama, this is the largest national park of the Republic of Panama with 5970 km ² (2305 square miles). The park is one of the most important UNESCO’s World Heritage Site in Central America, declared so in 1981 and also as a Biosphere Reserve in 1983, second most important natural lung in America after the Amazon jungle. Here we will start enjoying direct contact with nature. Finally, we will return to the station to have dinner and rest. Overnight in Rancho Frío station in tents.  (B, L, D)

After breakfast, we will go for a quest to find the Crested Eagle. During the hike, besides enjoying the beauty of the forest, we will do bird watching and will enjoy the beautiful songs of some of them such as some species of parrots, including the Great-green macaw (Ara ambiguous), Beautiful Treerunner (Margarornis bellulus) and Green-Naped tanager (Tangara fucosa), among many others with endemism in the Pirre area. We will arrive the Rancho Plastico viewpoint, to delight ourselves with the view of the canopy of the Darien jungle and the imposing Cerro Pirre with a height of 1,569 meters (5,148 ft) above sea level.  On day 3 we will camp in the jungle and on day 4 we will return to Rancho Frio station for the night.   Finally will return to the station to rest another night in the jungle. (B, L, D)

After breakfast we will drive back to Panama City and will visit a community in a tropical rainforest to stop for lunch on the way. (B, L)