Canopy Tower
Semaphore Hill Road Soberania National Park, Panama City 0832 Panama
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#2 of 166 Specialty lodging in Panama City
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Quirky Hotels
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Free parking
Free High Speed Internet (WiFi)
Wifi
Free breakfast
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Semaphore Hill Road Soberania National Park, Panama City 0832 Panama
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Amazing place to see birds, monkeys etc from above the trees. Great food and guides excellent at finding birds, etc. Manager arranged for late departure transfer so I could spend more time there. Bird lovers paradise.
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Date of stay: March 2023Trip type: Traveled solo
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Room Tip: Be aware there are many stairs. Single rooms adequate. If you are bothered by noise at night do...
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This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Helpful
It is hard to beat Canopy Tower when it comes to birding. No luxury retreat, but clean rooms with a good bed and the most amazing birdwatching. All the personnel is passionate about the birds and wildlife. Food is very tasty and healthy (for healthy soup the gorgeous desserts). We only had two nights and spotted over 100 species thanks to the guides and other guests. Also when you are not on the hunt to complete your list, but just enjoy birdwatching, this is a must go place.
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Date of stay: February 2023Trip type: Traveled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Helpful
Response from Rosannette Maria Quesada Hidalgo, Other at Canopy Tower
Responded 14 Mar 2023
Thank you very much for these amazing words. We are very happy to hear you enjoyed your visit to the Canopy Tower and had a great birding time. We hope to see you in Panama again!
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
This is a very simple place, and I rated it 4/5 for this class, accordingly. It is all about birding, for birders. PROS: It is less than an hour from the City, and near the Canal. The upper observation tower offers a unique perspective. However, this does not really add much advantage for birding. The birding in the area is very good, but not really better than other locations in Panama. The rooms are clean. The staff is very nice and helpful. Our guide was remarkably good, helpful, patient, and friendly. CONS: This is a basic experience with few luxuries. The rooms are small and simple/minimal, as are the bathrooms. It is noisy, even in the rooms. All sounds are heard by all, everywhere. One needs ear plugs at night! There are not curtains or blinds on the windows. OK: The meals are fixed, with one choice, and self-serve (family style), at fixed times of the day. There are ceiling fans in each room, but no air conditioning. The common area is small. Internet works ok. The bed was comfortable/firm. OVERALL: Since the region is close to the city for birding, there is little need to stay at the Tower, unless one wishes to experience the unique nature of the Tower, and upper observation deck. Staying at the Tower would be convenient, with birding right outside the door. - The costs speak for themselves. In comparison to Canopy Camp, the Camp is much more special and, in my mind, worth the drive to it (4-5 hours from the City). NOTES: I visited in February. It was dry, without rain. The ground was dry and no boots were necessary. I saw two mosquitoes in 3 days. It was always warm and humid, but with a nice breeze (which is normal I understand). The birding was good for sure. …
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Date of stay: February 2023Trip type: Traveled solo
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Room Tip: They have smaller rooms for singles.
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This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
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Stayed for 4 nights in November, everything was kindly carried over from 2020 due to Covid. Great guides, warm welcome, sufficient room, great food, and company. Trips out for birding were extremely rewarding, the guides are on another level for finding and identifying. As primarily a photographer first, I was accommodated equally, and the guides were more than happy to help me find my target species. Rooms were clean and Wi-Fi good. Great feeders for hummingbirds at the base of the tower. Thank you for such an enjoyable stay.
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Date of stay: November 2022
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Room Tip: Get a room (if possible) with its own bathroom.
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This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Helpful
Response from Rosannette Maria Quesada Hidalgo, Other at Canopy Tower
Responded 25 Dec 2022
Dear Matt, we are so happy to hear you had a good time. We truly appreciate your kind review and hope to see you again soon in Panama! Thank you so much!
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
We booked to stay at the Canopy Tower as we wanted to do a specialised birding trip in Panama and see Mot Mots but we had no idea we would enter the incredible world of visionary and founder of the Canopy family- Raul Arias de Para. On the outskirts of Panama City in the Sobarania national park, Raul has turned a disused US tower into a spectacular place to see hundreds of species of birds while staying at an International level (quirky as well) eco-lodge. The humming birds around the garden, parrots on the tree tops, tamarin monkeys swinging around, howlers...... well, howling!! All of these wonderful creatures take you into a natural paradise to experience nirvana. Read up on the design and colour scheme of the tower on their website and you get a glimpse of the creative genius of Raul. The guides are extremely good at their jobs and clearly love it as most of them have grown up from their teens to young men with Raul, working in the Canopy family. They call birds out of a hat!! Okay not quite but nearly....... it is just mesmerising watching them call birds and know where to find each different species and identify all the 100's of birds you see. They are also friendly with a great manner and ability to keep you enthralled. The kitchen staff are superb at the produce they create out of a small and basic kitchen and are very friendly. Tatiana who manages the tower for Canopy family is great at her job, a friendly and welcoming face to meet when you get there and runs a highly organised and functional ship. As a quirky and unique place to visit, stay in and enjoy nature at, it is a place we highly recommend.…
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Date of stay: September 2022
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Room Tip: All the rooms are great
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This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
1 Helpful vote
Helpful
Response from Rosannette Maria Quesada Hidalgo, Other at Canopy Tower
Responded 27 Dec 2022
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this amazing review. We really appreciate it. We are happy to know you had a wonderful experience at the Tower, which is for sure a magical place. We will make sure to pass this message on to Raúl, Tatiana, and all the staff at the Canopy Tower. We hope to see you in Panama again soon!
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
Set in the middle of the rainforest - you don't need an alarm clock as you are awakened by howler monkeys. Each day the guides will take you out to explore the local wildlife sites and the kitchen staff perform miracles from their galley type kitchen.
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Date of stay: January 2022
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This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Helpful
Response from Jonathan Slifkin, Marketing at Canopy Tower
Responded 22 Feb 2022
Hi Rick, thanks for your review! We hope to see you again in Panama sometime.
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
This is such a unique place. An old tower station from the US when building the Panama canal. The rooms are in the towering in a circle as you climb the stairs. We had the blue contingua room with a balcony. Every morning you can go on top and view 360. You are above everything. You can see the ships in the canal. The big city of Panama from a distance. The guides come up with you and show you the birds deep in the trees and all the different monkeys and sloths. Just a paradise above the jungle. The meals are amazingly delicious and different each day. The bird guides are so knowledgeable and know the calls and can spot them from afar. So many birds so little time. Perfect place to visit and see amazing colorful birds with enjoyable guides, a must do. 5 star all the way.
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Date of stay: January 2022Trip type: Traveled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Helpful
Response from Jonathan Slifkin, Marketing at Canopy Tower
Responded 20 Feb 2022
Thanks so much for your reviews! We hope to see you again in Panama soon.
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
Raúl Arias de Para, founder of the Canopy family of eco-tourism, is a visionary. He saw a decrepit, rusty radar tower which had been abandoned by the US military and he imagined transforming it into a world class eco-lodge. Recently my husband and I spent 5 days at Canopy Tower on a December birding trip to Panama. The experience was magical. I know that’s an overused cliché, but in this case it absolutely fits. Every morning we woke at dawn and climbed to the observation deck to watch the sun rise over the rainforest. On any given day you are guaranteed to see something special from this perch – dozen of tropical birds, a mother sloth and babe, a troop of Tamarin monkeys, and in the far distance a glimpse of large freighters and container ships going through the Panama canal. Needless to say, their nature guides are consummate professionals and you can opt to join any of the twice daily group tours or ask the staff to organize something more tailored to your desires. Speaking of staff, well, they treat you like a family member and they are all involved in making this the best possible experience. Even the kitchen staff was excited to point out a special siting so that you would not overlook it. My only caveat about the tower is that if you have problems climbing steep stairs I would recommend you go to the Canopy Lodge instead.…
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Date of stay: December 2021
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This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Helpful
Response from Jonathan Slifkin, Marketing at Canopy Tower
Responded 15 Jan 2022
Hi Bridget, thank you so much for your review of the Canopy Tower! We really appreciate your kind words and hope to have you back soon!
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
I just returned from a seven night stay at Canopy Tower, with two nights spent also at Canopy Lodge, all as part of their Tamarin Tour (focus on mammals, as well as birds ... and a bit of Spanish colonial history and canal looks). This is a first class operation. Excellent communication, start to finish ... not fancy, but delicious food, three meals a day ... rooms that are certainly not fancy, but adequate (you're staying in an old US military radar station, so there were limitations on setting up the rooms) ... and superb guides. The best of all is that you can observe a wide variety of mammals and birds from the tower yourself, sunrise to sunset, so that if you decide to stay back for one of the walks with a guide - or it's raining too hard to comfortably go out - you can keep walking around nearly 360 degrees on the same floor as the dining area and look out the large windows, scanning for wildlife. Even better is the early morning time up on the observation deck, binoculars in hand, with a guide (and his spotting scope), looking for colorful birds, a nearby sleeping sloth, tamarins, howlers and western night monkeys in the evenings. Even when you have to look carefully for birds and don't see any immediately, being up on the observation deck is magical, just watching the clouds roll in and out over the nearby mountains as you listen to howlers call to each other, seeing a bit of the Panama (City) skyline - and watching container ships navigate part of the canal. ... I was there as a solo traveler. I am not a serious birder myself (as a former high school biology teacher, I am interested in all wildlife more or less equally), but found the many birders who flock to Canopy Tower to be a very intriguing mix of people to get to know: uniformly intelligent, well-traveled, passionate nature-lovers. I think that was the most surprisingly delightful aspect of being at CT for me. It is not the cheapest place to stay, but it attracts people on longer birding tours of 1-3 weeks and from my experience, these people make for some very memorable, wonderful conversations! ... Only a few cautionary words of advice: lots of stairs to climb to get to the several levels of the tower with no elevator (might be a problem for some people) ... and some of the rooms can be a bit noisy if you are underneath the kitchen/dining area (I wasn't/I was on two levels below the dining area where the single rooms are, where it's quieter). By the way, if you are a solo traveler, because CT has single rooms (yes, pretty small, but adequate), you don't have to pay one of those dreaded single supplement charges so many places charge for solo travelers. ... Canopy Tower is a magical place. Every single person I talked to while there loved it and many were making plans to return some day, if they weren't already on a second or third visit. I am already dreaming some day of returning and staying longer at Canopy Lodge and perhaps also spending time at Canopy Camp in the more remote Darien region of Panama.…
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Date of stay: December 2021
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This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Helpful
Response from Jonathan Slifkin, Marketing at Canopy Tower
Responded 15 Dec 2021
Hi Mike, on behalf of everyone at the Canopy Family, thank you so much for your generous and thorough review! We look forward to having you back.
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
Two friends and I spent 5 days at the Canopy Tower just before Easter. We had the place to ourselves and the experience could not have been better. Arrangements were made easily by email a couple weeks in advance. Like other facilities, the Canopy Tower has been close to empty during the pandemic. My friends and I decided to take the plunge because we had been vaccinated and the Canopy staff made things so easy. They upgraded our rooms, which were immaculately clean and comfortable, and each of us had a private bath. Lorenzo picked us up and delivered us back to the airport with no hassles. Igua was a fabulous guide and person and somehow tailored our trips and his commentary to our abilities: one great birder, one middling birder and one beginner.. The food was great. The price was right (about $1700 each plus airfare). The birds and wildlife were great. They also arranged for an onsite covid test the day before our return. An excellent trip. Hats off to the Canopy Family.…
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Date of stay: March 2021
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This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
1 Helpful vote
Helpful
Response from Jonathan Slifkin, Marketing at Canopy Tower
Responded 12 Apr 2021
Thank you so much for your kind review! We hope to see you again.
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
ALSO KNOWN AS
canopy tower hotel panama city
LOCATION
PanamaPanama ProvincePanama City
NUMBER OF ROOMS
12
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Frequently Asked Questions about Canopy Tower
Which popular attractions are close to Canopy Tower?
Nearby attractions include Soberania National Park (1.2 km), Centennial Bridge (5.3 km), and Asociación Panamericana para la Conservación (7.2 km).
What are some of the property amenities at Canopy Tower?
Some of the more popular amenities offered include free wifi, free breakfast, and an on-site restaurant.
What food & drink options are available at Canopy Tower?
Guests can enjoy free breakfast, an on-site restaurant, and a lounge during their stay.
What are some restaurants close to Canopy Tower?
Conveniently located restaurants include Restaurante Los Lagartos, El Corotu, and Monkey Lobby Bar.
Does Canopy Tower have airport transportation?
Yes, Canopy Tower offers airport transportation for guests. We recommend calling ahead to confirm details.
Are there any historical sites close to Canopy Tower?
Many travellers enjoy visiting Capilla San Jose (15.6 km).