Will you take the canal or the zip wire? Panama’s lesser-known sight
Think Panama think canal, but should we be thinking flying fox? True, National Geographic listed the Panama Canal in its Top 100 Journeys of a Lifetime, but Panama is home to another, lesser known, engineering feat: zip wires.
Back in 2014, Panama City hosted the world’s largest urban zip wire. It spanned 2,000 feet from a start point of the city’s 800-foot White Tower skyscraper, and finished with a parachute jump.
Admittedly this gnarly zip wire doesn’t fall under your classic travel excursions (unless perhaps watching from the safety of the pavement below), but travel north to the province of Chiriqui on Panama’s Western Coast and you can soar through three-and-a-half kilometers of primary cloud forest.
Chiriqui is known as the Panama’s “breadbasket” due to its production of premium-grade coffee. Plantations are aplenty and there’s even a tasting room at the end of the zip wire – so when the going gets tough (or the vertigo hits in) on those 12 zips, just focus on the coffee tasting waiting for you below.
Called the Boquete Tree Trek, the zip wire experience is based around a total of 14 platforms perched in trees high up in the jungle canopy. Once strapped into your harness, you will fly along cables passing waterfalls and catching glimpses of the Barú Volcano (also known as the Chiriqui Volcano), Panama’s tallest mountain at 11,398 feet high.
As bird-watchers well know, Panama is filled with exotic birds – said to be over 960 species, 12 of which are found only here. Being up in the canopy means being at bird-level so watch out for some of the following: Buffy Tuftedcheek, Ruddy Treerunner, Spotted Barbtail, Spectacled Foliage-Gleaner and Black-and-yellow Silky-flycatchers. These are just a few of the birds found in the Chiriqui Highlands.
Another creature that you may be lucky enough to lay eyes on is the sloth. These tree-dwelling creatures have ancient abodes with some of the trees around the canopy having been around for 400-years-old. Slow-moving and well-camouflaged (they are the colour of a tree trunk!) you have to keep your eyes peeled, especially when zipping past.