The Resort at Isla Palenque

Imagine waking up every morning to this beach just outside your room. That's what you get at the  Resort at Isla Palenque in Panama. Don't be worried about the crowds either. At this point there are only 6 rooms on the island and about as many beaches, meaning you can always have an entire beach to yourself. And if you don't want to leave you don't have to, Amble will be happy to build you a house.

Three or four years ago i traveled to Panama to take pictures for a friend on an island in the Gulf of Chiriqui. The island was pretty much uninhabited and he had plans to build a resort on the it. Every day we traveled out to the island by boat, explored the beaches, jungles and neighboring national park. That friend is the President of Amble Resorts, and although he had a gargantuan task ahead of him, he has succeeded in building a new kind of resort where both luxury and natural wildness manage to coexist.

As i mentioned, i had been to the Panama Island Isla Palenque four years ago, when there was nothing on it but an old man in a shack who had lived on one side of the island for most of his life. To go there now was an  amazing experience played against those former memories. For starters there is a nice dock on the east side of the island where guests arrive. Before we had to jump into the ocean on the opposite side of the island and carry all our stuff overhead, so we were always wet when when we arrived or departed. There is now a road that goes halfway around the island, a large work camp on top, and of course a beautiful luxury resort waiting by the sea.

Enjoy fine food and drinks from a master chef who creates a new menu every day.

The Resort at Isla Palenque was envisioned as a luxury adventure resort. President Ben Loomis wanted to offer people the experience of traveling into a wild jungle while having accommodations that are far above average. Unlike many resorts where the landscape is destroyed and cleared out for a sprawling facility that requires guests to leave the property and travel long distances to the wildlife and deserted beaches that they seek on Palenque they have taken great care not to disturb the landscape and the wildlife on the island. The results are an open air great room surrounded by jungle and comfortable rooms with "floating" ceilings that allow you to literally watch Howler Monkeys from your bed.

One of the rules set down early on was that during site layout and construction no trees greater than a certain diameter are allowed to be cut down. This adds greatly to the feeling of being embedded in the jungle not only by adding the aesthetic appeal of old growth trees right outside your room but also by attracting all the wildlife that lives in those trees.

The rooms, as you can see here, are very comfortable and air conditioned yet separated from the jungle by the bare minimum of obstructing walls.

The headboards are made from cross sections of some of the large trees that they did have to cut down. An example of trying not to let anything go to waste.

At this point in time the resort has only been open a few months but has already received a number of rewards and accolades. The Master Plan was awarded an ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) award for their design and planning of sustainable Panama real estate. Isla Palenque was recognized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as one of a very small group of sustainable hotels worldwide that appropriately implements biodiversity principles for the siting and design of resorts and hotels. Also in 2012, Amble Resorts had the distinction of receiving the Positive Luxury Blue Butterfly seal of approval for environmentally-sensitive luxury products recommended for today’s conscious consumers

 Howler Monkeys are all over the place and they sound incredibly cool.

The great room is a "great" place to surf the web, read a book, or look for exotic parrots in the trees.

According to the website the mission at Amble Resorts "is to develop Isla Palenque in a manner that respects and cherishes the island and its natural inhabitants. Our Master Plan calls for 220 homes on the island, and up to 80 hotel rooms -- but we develop with a very light touch: when complete, our building footprint will take up only 5% of the island, with over half of the island set aside as a nature preserve. We have painstakingly designed our buildings and roads to conform to the land, working around old-growth trees and boulders, minimizing disturbance of terrain and waterways, and ensuring that the resort and homes feel like a genuine extension of the island’s astounding natural amenities." 

They have a great bar featuring rums from all over Central America.

 A lot of people like the infinity pool, but i prefer the ocean which is a two minute walk.

One morning eating breakfast it was raining and one of the guests spotted an anteater in a nearby tree. I went to go get my camera after i was done eating but by then the anteater had moved into some thick foliage. However, at about the same time this a rare Mangrove Black Hawk showed up and perched itself right across from the restaurant. Jungle hawks are cool because they do their hunting and flying underneath the jungle canopy. The Mangrove Black Hawk feeds mainly on crabs and builds it's nests in mangrove trees.

Part II: Adventure

I didn't spend the whole time taking pictures of the resort. My friend Brett from all the way back in high school happened by sheer coincidence to be working on a boat off Panama City at the same time i arrived. He managed to get a few days off and meet Ben and I before we left for Palenque. In our free time we explored the jungle, visited a neighboring isle and spent a lot of time... well... relaxing and swimming. I was tired of messing with my camera but even so i kept finding reasons to pull out my phone.

On an uninhabited island Rudolfo hears something in the jungle, something..... non-human.

Top: We took a break from kayaking to explore a bat cave. If only Huell Howser had been there... On another uninhabited beach we found what we guessed were raccoon tracks.

There are thousands of crabs on some of the beaches, of various sizes. I really liked these guys because of their superb camouflage. After sunset you absolutely could not see them unless they moved.

 Brett relaxes after a hard day of doing nothing.

 A huge moth that would not move off of my chair.

Although the resort is very quiet and secluded, there is a work camp on another part of the island where everything that can be made on the island is manufactured. The resort has just opened and there is a lot to be done yet. While i was visiting construction had started on a bar and grill at another beach down the road.

This jungle camp reminded me of Vietnam or Predator or something.

 A couple of dogs living in the camp, Vera and Oso. I'm pretty sure that bottom one (Vera) is some kind of animatronic robot.

 These are two pictures crazy stuff growing from a tree outside my room.

The island was experiencing some unusually high tides while i was there. One day i walked across the island to the big beach on the far side and was shocked to find no beach at all. The tide was so high that waves were coming into the jungle! So i tried another beach, and that tide was high too but by the time i got there it was going out. The trail to that beach runs along the side of what looks like a Mangrove swamp. I don't have any experience with mangroves. They seem to be interesting plants.

There's supposed to be a beach here. For that matter, there's supposed to be some jungle here too!

On one side of the beach the tide had made a kind of reverse-creek. A wave would come in, wrap around this rock outcrop and flow sideways across an inner beach before turning and travelling inland towards the mangroves. It was really neat. I've never seen wave action move so far from the shore before.

A neat piece of ocean carved wood echoing the same contours as the sand it sits on.

Some Mangroves in the reverse stream channel. The extra high tide had floated a stick bridge out of place that can normally be used to get over a tiny bit of water.

Here's a video of what i'm talking about:

                  

My last day on Palenque i took one last swim on the beach, and i realized at one point as the tide was coming in that i was swimming in the ocean but i was still under the jungle canopy that was stretching out over the beach. I don't think i've ever done that anywhere else.