Canopy Family (Tower, Camp, Lodge) – Panama

About

The Canopy Family encompasses three diverse locations throughout Panama. The Canopy Family is part of the Kiwano group, an initiative to promote eco-friendly tourism. All three locations are created with innovative ideas and offer exceptional birding and natural historical experiences.

The Canopy Tower and the Canopy Family Lodges offer different experiences for birders and tourists. The Canopy Tower is dedicated to birding and wildlife watching. The Tower is surrounded by the lowland rainforest of Soberania National Park. The tower offers breathtaking views from its observation canopy deck. The tower also has twelve rooms below, also offering stunning views of the rainforest. Originally constructed in 1965 by the US Military as a radar station. White-necked Jacobin, Shining Honeycreeper, Rufous-crested Coquette, Cinnamon Woodpecker, Black-throated Trogon, and a dozen more species can be spotted from the Canopy Tower Observation deck.
The Canopy Lodge is nestled in the caldera of an ancient volcano, El Valle, in the Anton Valley. The Canopy Lodge offers spacious rooms with large balconies that allow you to enjoy over 40 species of tropical birds, including the Collared Aracari, Crested Bobwhite, and the Crimson-backed Tanager, at your steps.
The Canopy Camp is the only tented lodge in eastern Panama. It has 8 full-size African Safari-style tents on raised platforms. They sit in rural Darien Province. The Darien National Park is the largest national park in Central America, a total of 572,000 hectares of protected rainforests, rivers, and mountains. You can spot the endangered and national bird of Panama, the Harpy Eagle, from the Canopy Camp.

The Canopy Family was founded in 1999 by Raul Aria de Para by his desire to conserve a waterfall in 1994, that sat on family-owned land of over 80 years, in the Anton Valley. His start with an ecotourism site that restored the waterfall was just the beginning.

Owen has visited Panama several times. He traveled to the Canopy Lodge in October 2011, and the Lodge, Tower, and Camp in April 2015 with his friend and guide Carlos Bethancourt.