A Sea Change in PANAMA

Theodore Roosevelt, soldier, author and proto-eco-tourist, saw numerous possibilities here. So when he inherited the presidency in 1901, he threw his weight behind plans for a canal.

Ninety-nine years later, Roosevelt’s strategic foresight looks pretty good. But I doubt he ever imagined a trip like the one I just took to the canal zone. Amid one of the planet’s most dramatically modified jungles, home to the project that author John Bryce called “the greatest liberty man has ever taken with nature,” eco-tourism has arrived.

That doesn’t mean legions of frugal young backpackers on hammocks in quaint mom-and-pop lodges at the canal’s edge, at least not so far. But for two nights last month, I slept amid the jungle treetops of Soberania National Park in the 50-foot-tall Canopy Tower--a former U.S. Air Force communications tower less than an hour from Panama City, reborn in January 1999 as an upscale bed-and-breakfast for birders.

Where American soldiers once kept watch for planes bearing Colombian cocaine (or so the tower’s management says), I sipped pear juice and squinted through the mist at red-capped manakins and yellow Panama flycatchers. One dawn I woke to the roar of howler monkeys--something like the bellow of an elephant stuck in a bear trap.

Another night I stayed at the Gamboa Rainforest Resort, a $30-million luxury hotel in a jungle-adjacent neighborhood that was once reserved for the administrators who managed canal dredging operations. The resort, which looks down upon the Chagres River’s drainage into Gatun Lake, opened in June.

And closer to the Caribbean end of the big ditch (half of which is actually the artificial Gatun Lake), I walked through the old campus of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. From 1946 to 1983, this was the school where scores of other Latin American military officials, some forgotten, some notorious, studied, including Panamanian leader Gen.

Manuel A. Noriega, ousted from power more than a decade ago. Now? Since the completion of a $25-million transformation of classrooms to bedrooms in March, the old school has been doing business as a 287-room luxury hotel, the Melia Panama Canal. I didn’t stay there, but the sales director walked me through, from the marble floors of the lobby to the sprawling swimming pool out back. It seemed luxurious, although poorly placed for tourists.

For me, the canal zone landscape really began to open up about an hour’s drive outside Panama City, at the Gamboa dock. That’s where Richard Cahill of Ancon Expeditions packed a small group into a skiff and shoved us off into the shallows of Gatun Lake.

Before long, Cahill was pointing out caimans; crocodiles; and turtles; howler, spider, night and capuchin monkeys. When a rufous-naped tamarin (another monkey) burst into view, bounding from tree to tree, Cahill exulted.

“Five species of monkey!” he said. “And it’s only 11:20!”

As we drifted, I realized just how misleading the phrase “big ditch” is. The canal is really a 50-mile succession of mechanized concrete locks, artificial lake and natural river waters. During a transit, ships are lifted 85 feet above sea level in three stages, then dropped back down again--but for half of the transit or more, there’s no machinery or concrete in sight.

With North American tourists still a rarity, I was surprised to find I was sharing the boat with two other U.S. travelers, John Papa and Matt Daversa of Virginia. They were here on a whim, after their first and second choices (Belize and Egypt) fell through and a discounted Panama air fare turned up. Now, amid the monkeys and crocs and iguanas, they were feeling pretty good about blowing off Belize and Egypt.

We stopped at the Tiger Islands, a collection of 12 islets where Dennis Rasmussen, a Florida State University professor, has run a primate sanctuary and research project for more than a decade. It’s a setting straight out of Gilligan’s Island, with two dormitories and a galley lashed together from bamboo poles.

“There is a potential here to ‘go Kenya’ with rampant exploitation. . . . They need a John Muir,” Rasmussen said.

The jungle does, however, have many friends in the highest places for the most pragmatic reasons. The canal depends on an influx of about 52 million gallons of water every day. And it’s the humid tropical forest climate just north of the canal that generates the rainfall that fills the Chagres River, which feeds the canal. In other words, to keep their commerce afloat, Panama and the world need a chunk of healthy rain forest just upstream.

Ever since 1977, when President Jimmy Carter agreed to hand over the canal to the Panamanians as of Dec. 31, 1999, leaders in Panama City and Washington have been wringing hands over the transition. In Panama, the question is how the country will rehab its inheritance of U.S. military buildings and how it will replace the estimated $350 million in annual revenue it drew from U.S. military personnel, contractors, retirees and families in or near the 10-mile-wide canal zone.

Now that management of the canal has been passed along without major incident and deadlines are arriving in privatization plans for canal zone real estate, projects from one end of the canal to the other make clear how much the country’s leaders are wagering on tourism and the appeal of Panama’s natural landscape.

There’s plenty of room for tourism growth. In 1998, the most recent year for which the World Tourism Organization has figures, Panama’s total overnight visitor count was 431,000, just 100,000 of whom hailed from the U.S. In other words, Panama gets about as many American visitors in a year as Disneyland gets in three days.

Enter the Gamboa Rainforest Resort.

The resort lies about 30 miles from the Panama City airport, midway between the canal’s Pacific and Caribbean ends. The main building’s major attraction is its sweeping view of the Chagres River as it empties into Gatun Lake--a panorama of jungle and water seen through windows three stories high. Most guest rooms in the main building offer slices of the lobby’s river view.

I had an excellent seafood lunch at the hotel’s riverside restaurant, Lagartos, and my room was well outfitted with hammock on the balcony and telephone by the toilet.

But in its fifth month of operation, the place still suffered from just-opened-hotel syndrome: The library’s shelves were nearly bare, the gift shop had no maps of the canal zone and it was impossible to make a direct Sprint call to the U.S. (The hotel operator had to secure a connection, then call me back.)

Still, plenty of spending has gone into the hotel grounds. An aerial gondola takes you through trees to a hilltop observation tower, and between the hotel and the gondola station, guests can stroll through half a dozen exhibits of living things, from snakes to butterflies to orchids to freshwater fish. To sample these attractions, hotel guests must pay $35 (with an increase to $50 planned). Too much for too little.

That said, I did enjoy the exhibits, especially the butterfly house, where a Costa Rican keeper presides over a screened kingdom of fluttering, many-hued creatures--25 kinds in all, including Caligo eurilochus sulanus, the one whose wings look like an owl’s face. (Because the typical butterfly’s life span is just 22 days, a butterfly wrangler’s work is never done.)

Despite all the money spent at Gamboa--or perhaps because of it--I felt more naturally rooted at the former Air Force communications facility down the road. That’s the tower where I woke to the roar of howler monkeys. Its owner, a former banker named Raul Arias de Para, dubbed it the Canopy Tower and opened the lodging for business in 1999. Since then he has nudged prices up to $95 to $185 per person per day, which includes all meals and walking tours.

It is a singular place. Topped by a yellow dome, the blue tower peeks from the forest ceiling like a stray golf ball perched on a blue tee in an epic rough. The tower’s observation deck rises about 50 feet, and the tower sits on Semaphore Hill, about 850 feet above the canal waters. This results in remarkable views, especially at sunrise, dusk and after dark, of the surrounding Soberania National Park. By night, the stars shine brightly, and below you can pick out the slowly but steadily advancing lights of ships as they transit the canal. Meanwhile, to the west, the skyscrapers of Panama City twinkle.

The place is usually heavily booked during the dry season, from January to May, but on these nights in October, I was the only guest. By day, visitors typically laze in hammocks, thumbing through Audubon or Smithsonian magazines, or stroll with guide and binoculars on Pipeline and Plantation roads. Among birders, these are paths of glory; about 380 bird species have been sighted in Soberania National Park.

By the time I finished my guided hike on Plantation Road, I was treating blue morpho butterflies and leaf frogs like ants and bees on a summer day in my backyard.

The canal zone may dominate most discussions of Panama, but it’s a small part of the country. Panama’s population of 2.8 million is spread over a tropical territory not quite the size of South Carolina. (Panama was a part of Colombia until 1903, when the canal-seeking U.S. threw its weight behind an independence movement. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the canal in 1914.)

If you go looking along the canal for once-proud buildings fallen to ruins since the end of U.S. upkeep, you can find them. In fact, you can find several decaying old barracks within a mile or two of the immaculately tended Melia Panama Canal in Colon. By contrast, Colon, the biggest city on the country’s Caribbean side, is a menacing, grimy port city with chronically high unemployment.

Elsewhere, deforestation and silt buildup in waterways are lingering worries. At least 35% of the canal’s watershed has been lost to deforestation in the last 25 years.

Then there’s the simple issue of public relations: Panama has far to go before it can rival its northern neighbor, Costa Rica, in the seduction of eco-travelers.

But the new projects keep coming. In June, Panama-based Copa Airlines (a marketing partner of Continental) became the only carrier offering nonstop service between Los Angeles and Panama City. On Nov. 6, the Crown Princess became the first passenger ship to call at the new Colon 2000 port facility, at the canal’s Caribbean end.

Princess Cruises reports that 250 passengers debarked to browse displays of Kuna Indian handicrafts, then headed off on tours of Gatun Locks, the 16th century remains of Ft. San Lorenzo and an Embera Indian village. (Nobody, the cruise line reports, chose to explore Colon unescorted.)

For leaders in Panama’s tourism trade, those day-trippers mark the beginning of a unique opportunity. Until now, more than 250 cruise ships have been transiting the canal yearly, routinely paying fees of $100,000 each, without pausing to call at a Panamanian port. Panama is still charging canal transit fees, but now it is sending part of that money back to Princess in exchange for the cruise line sending passengers ashore.

Colon is the first new passenger port to open. The country’s Interoceanic Regional Authority (which oversees canal zone real estate) also hopes to develop a passenger facility at Ft. Amador, on the Pacific side near Panama City, along with a marina, resort hotel, golf course and time-share units, among other projects. In fact, Ft. Amador has been targeted as the future “main tourism center” for Panama, with 3,000 new hotel rooms and $500 million in development planned in the next five years. Other ambitions include an eco-center or cultural center, location uncertain, with Frank O. Gehry, of Bilbao, Spain, Guggenheim fame, as possible architect. (Gehry, whose wife is Panamanian, has been active and encouraging in public discussions about the canal zone’s possibilities, but a spokesman for his office said he has not committed to any specific building project.)

It’s impossible to predict how well these plans will fare, even in the short term. The brochure prices of the Gamboa Resort and Melia Panama Canal ($300 and $205 per night, respectively) are beyond the reach of many eco-travelers, but both resorts are pitching big discounts that cut those numbers by about half.

In any event, once you start looking at Panama in this new light, even the canal waters themselves can seem different.

I made the eight-hour canal transit in the mid-1990s on a 600-foot-long cruise ship, and I remember somebody pointing through the haze of humidity to a distant jumble of green and saying that all sorts of animals lived out there. This time, looking out from hiking paths or a 20-foot-long launch, I saw the place anew: The trees towered, the birds swooped, the monkeys swung, the sloths slept and luminous green iguanas lay on low branches over calm water. Maybe it’s an abridged jungle, but it is the jungle.

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GUIDEBOOK

Getting Back to Nature in Panama

Getting there: Copa Airlines, a partner of Continental on this route, offers the only nonstop service between LAX and Panama City. Restricted round-trip coach fares begin at $624. Connecting service is available through Delta, American, Continental, Mexicana and LACSA.

Where to stay: Gamboa Rainforest Resort, P.O. Box 7338, Zone 5, Panama; telephone (877) 800-1690 in the U.S. or 011-507-314-9000 in Panama, fax 011-507-214-1694, Internet https://www.gamboaresort.com. A new $30-million luxury hotel with 107 rooms and 48 villas (without kitchens) dating to the 1930s. Brochure rates start at $300 per room nightly and apply during holiday season, but from Jan. 6 through the summer, deluxe rooms are offered at $165 per day, breakfast included. Villa rates: $150 nightly for one-bedroom units, $200 nightly for two-bedroom units.

Canopy Tower, Apartado 6-4506, El Dorado, Panama; tel. (800) 722-2460 for U.S. sales representative Allen Hale in Shipman, Va., or 011-507-264-5720 in Panama, fax 011-507-263-2784, https://www.canopytower.com. Nine rooms in a 50-foot-high observation tower in the canal zone. Rates: $95-$185 per person for rooms with private bath, all meals and two daily birding walks included. The tower also includes two guest rooms with shared bath, at $65-$95 per person, meals and walks included. Rates vary by season, peaking during drier months, mid-December to mid-May. Rates are lowest during the May-September rainy season.

Melia Panama Canal, Lago Gatun, Colon, Panama; tel. 011-507-470-1100, fax 011-507-470-1200, https://www.solmelia.es (under “Hotel,” type Melia Panama Canal). It has 287 rooms; brochure rates begin at $205 nightly, but promotional rates start at $99.

Tours: Panama City-based Ancon Expeditions, tel. 011-507-269-9414, fax 011-507-264-3713, https://www.anconexpeditions.com, the company I used, is the for-profit affiliate of Panama’s largest private conservation organization. It offers nine different day tours and can arrange longer itineraries.

Tours also are available through the Gamboa Rainforest Resort.

For more information: Consulate General of Panama, 3137 W. Ball Road, Suite 104, Anaheim, CA 92804; tel./fax (714) 816-1809. For canal history, the essential text is “The Path Between the Seas,” by David McCullough. For tourist logistics, try Lonely Planet’s “Panama” guide.