The 573-acre Metropolitan Natural Park is a wildlife reserve and tropical forest located in the heart of Panama City. Here, travelers can take guided tours or choose from five hiking trails to observe some of the park's most iconic residents, such as the three-toed sloth. Dense tracts of lush rainforest consume the Panama Canal basin and drain the enormous amounts of water needed for the daily operation of the canal. The Soberanía National Park is one of several national parks that are within reach of the capital.
Sovereignty, in particular, is 27 km (17 miles) from Panama City. Take a kayak tour along the Chagres River or the Panama Canal to enjoy the closest possible contact with nature. Don't miss Pipeline Road, where you can see the largest number of feathered friends, or the 32-meter-high vault of the Panama Rainforest Discovery Center. Sun lovers should choose The Buenaventura Golf & Beach Resort Panama because of its proximity to first-rate beaches, such as Playa Blanca and El Faro Beach, or the W Panama to make use of its humid terrace, which has a shipping container reminiscent of the Panama Canal, reinvented as a bar to toast their adventure on the isthmus. The laboratory tour is ideal if you are a biology enthusiast and want to learn about the life cycle of some of the most interesting species of flora and fauna in Panama.
Located eight kilometers from Tocumen International Airport (PTY), the Santa María, a Luxury Collection Hotel & Golf Resort offers an urban oasis close to local attractions such as historic Old Panama, the Panama Canal and Casco Viejo. The Metropolitan Natural Park, a rainforest within the city limits, is one of the most exciting experiences that Panama City has to offer. Natural beauty, sugar-white beaches, rainforest roads: explore the best of Panama by car with these six spectacular road trips Highway. About 1.6 km (1 mile) from the start of the pipeline trail is the Panama Rainforest Discovery Center, an ecological education center with feeders for buzzing hummingbirds and a 32 m high (172 steps) observation tower with magnificent views over the jungle canopy.
After the legendary privateer Henry Morgan set fire to the original city of Panama in 1671 (the ruins are preserved as Old Panama, a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the community restarted here. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute designated Barro Colorado Island as the most researched tropical rainforest in the world, which was formed when the Chagres River dammed during the construction of the Canal from Panama to create Lake Gatún.
