Panama Master Thread

[cgr]

Was The Residence by Marriot Shabbos friendly?
What floors? Electronic keys? electric doors into the hotel?

Rooms start on floor 5 or 6.

[ckmk47]

Thank you all for the information.


But I think we'll be going in a different direction.

[moishes]

This is what we ended up doing:

Monday Night:
Dinner: Blame Kiki (Service/Drinks/Dessert = excellent)
Night = W Panama in Marvelous Suite

Tuesday:
Late start
Lunch = Kava (ceviche, nagiri, and pistachio calzone dessert = 10)
Walk around Old City (skippable)
Massages at W
Rented Polaris ATV and drove Amador Causeway and Panama Sign (must do for pic)
Dinner = Aria (rissotto/drinks/churros/crispy sushi, aria ribeye = 10)
Night = Waldorf in CONDO STE OCEAN VIEW - 1BEDROOM -1KING BED

Wednesday:
Shachris at Beth El (need to pass security check days in advance, cannot just show up)
Pickup brekkie at Coffee Bean
Tour: Monkey Island, Gamboa, Miraflores Locks (there's Coffee Bean there). We very much enjoyed Monkey Island and Miraflores. Found the IMAX with Morgan Freeman to be excellnet.
Dinner: Yoss Burger (excellent; best chicken sammie ever)

Thursday:
Shachris at Beth El
Hike up Ancon Hill, can bring stroller as it's paved (we did), but it's very steep
Massages at Waldorf
Order in from Kava
Fly Home in Copa lie flat J



Which tour guide for monkey island/Gamboa?

[moishes]

(Un)popular opinion: Skip the Miraflores Locks. Do Monkey Island or the rainforest instead.

Did u do rain forest with tour guide?

[efflpetzel]

Did u do rain forest with tour guide?

yes

[JudahMcB]

Had a really bad experience with Panama Wild Adventures this week. I spoke to 3 other families who were also very dissatisfied with them this week. Maybe it's because they were overloaded with Yeshiva Week and things are much smoother when it's not busy? Based on my experience and similar ones that I heard from other people I would not recommend them at all.

In my case they ended up outsourcing our tour to another tour operator who hired independent guides. All Gamboa Rainforest tours were closed the day we went (how could they not know it will be closed that day? Why didn't they buy advanced tickets??? If they did they would have known it would be closed. I had prepaid in advance and it was not cancelable 7 days before the trip so they had no excuse for not buying tickets in advance...). The tour operator eventually found a replacement activity, but not before driving us back to our hotel (1hr), waiting 2 hours for them to find another guide, and then driving us back to the rainforest (another 1hr). Our second tour guide didn't speak a word of English but the tour operator assured us that he is taking us to another rainforest tour. But he ended up driving us to the same Gamboa Rainforest that we found out was closed earlier in the day! After a very angry phone call he eventually drove us to Soberanía National Park for a tour which we made with less than 5 minutes to spare.

I booked with Panama Wild Adventures in July for a tour in January so this shouldn't have been a case of overbooking, unless they accepted multiple tours for the same day and intentionally outsourced them. Either way, it's very unprofessional.

[moishes]

yes

Which guide do u recommend for rain forest?

[JudahMcB]

Which guide do u recommend for rain forest?

I didn't use them but I heard from multiple families last week that they had very good experiences with Monkey Adventure Tours and New Leaf Tours. We did use The Real Panama Tours (Sorhay) for Embera Village and our guide Alex was A+++.

A lot of the "rainforest tours" are just private transportation to the Gamboa Rainforest Reserve hotel or Summit Rainforest Resort in Sobrenia and then they hand you off to the resort's tour guide to conduct the actual tour. If I were to do it again I would rent a car for the day and drive myself and save a boatload of money booking direct with either of the two aforementioned resorts. Same with Monkey Island. You can easily do both Monkey Island and the rainforest tour on the same day since they are next to each other.

Of course, if you have a good driver they may give you some commentary and history of Panama during the drive which might be worthwhile. But that was not our experience.

[Ekay]

How is the Hilton Panama?

[Ekay]

This is what we ended up doing:

Monday Night:
Dinner: Blame Kiki (Service/Drinks/Dessert = excellent)
Night = W Panama in Marvelous Suite

Tuesday:
Late start
Lunch = Kava (ceviche, nagiri, and pistachio calzone dessert = 10)
Walk around Old City (skippable)
Massages at W
Rented Polaris ATV and drove Amador Causeway and Panama Sign (must do for pic)
Dinner = Aria (rissotto/drinks/churros/crispy sushi, aria ribeye = 10)
Night = Waldorf in CONDO STE OCEAN VIEW - 1BEDROOM -1KING BED

Wednesday:
Shachris at Beth El (need to pass security check days in advance, cannot just show up)
Pickup brekkie at Coffee Bean
Tour: Monkey Island, Gamboa, Miraflores Locks (there's Coffee Bean there). We very much enjoyed Monkey Island and Miraflores. Found the IMAX with Morgan Freeman to be excellnet.
Dinner: Yoss Burger (excellent; best chicken sammie ever)

Thursday:
Shachris at Beth El
Hike up Ancon Hill, can bring stroller as it's paved (we did), but it's very steep
Massages at Waldorf
Order in from Kava
Fly Home in Copa lie flat J

Atv contact? Guide for your day on Wednesday?

[Ekay]

I'm not sure why you think the Residence Inn doesn't look nice but we stayed there and liked it. It's around the corner from Chabad, there is a kosher supermarket downstairs, and a few kosher places within a block away.  It's also nice that it has a full kitchen and full sized refrigerator.  It's in my TR if you are interested.

Do the rooms have a porch? Ocean front?

[moishes]

Do the rooms have a porch? Ocean front?

they have ocean front but not all rooms are ocean front. Tell them its your anniversary or give the front desk $20 when checking in and he will probably upgrade you to ocean front.

[sam28]

Is Panama considered a Beach vacation or rather a Citi?

[ShtarkButRelatable]

City

[moishes]

this is city but beach is an hour away

[Gvann]

How is the Hilton Panama?

Its great but service not anything special. A lot of the rooms overlook the bay and the lobby is nice. Has a fancier vibe but not a waldorf

[Ekay]

Its great but service not anything special. A lot of the rooms overlook the bay and the lobby is nice. Has a fancier vibe but not a waldorf

Hilton vs. Jw marriot?

[Ploni3]

Hilton you will probably get larger room for the money or points but arguably the Marriot rooms are fancier.  Marriot is more central to shuls and kosher food but Hilton is walking distance and users are cheap. We chose Hilton.

[moishes]

Hilton vs. Jw marriot?

If you going for shabbos then definitely jw marriott or even better residence inn by Marriott, as its only 4 min walk to chabad and its very nice too

[Ploni3]

Yeah, when we chose Hilton we were nor there over Shabbat.