Our big overseas birding trip in 2023 was to Panama in Central American , which we visited in February, staying at two sites operated by The Canopy Family. Canopy Lodge and Canopy Tower provided two contrasting bases for our two week trip, which we’d booked directly via the Canopy Family web site.
We flew to Panama City on 11 February with KLM, leaving from London Heathrow airport and flying to Panama via Amsterdam. The flights all went well and when we arrived in Panama City in the late afternoon we transferred to the Crowne Plaza hotel near the airport where we were staying the night. The following morning the driver from the lodge collected us from our hotel at 10 AM and took us to the Canopy Lodge, where we arrived just before lunch after a 2 hour drive.
Our time in Panama was split between the two centres, with the first week in Canopy Lodge, followed by a week at Canopy Tower. We’ve therefore divided this trip report into two, with the following links pointing to pages describing our time at each of these centres.
This was an excellent birding trip to a new country for us that we really enjoyed. Both centres provided good accommodation with great food and very helpful and knowledgeable bird guides. It was very much dawn till dusk birding, but that meant we saw lots of good birds and over the two weeks photographed 274 species of which 83 were lifers for us.