seniortraveler

Has anyone traveled with Caravan Tours to Panama? We are looking at a nine-day trip in March with this company. What kind of ships or boats are used for the excurisons? (One of us walks with a cane so climbing into canoe-like boats would be a problem. )

Questions about Panama:
What is the weather like in Panama in March? Will the heat be too tough on seniors?
How safe are Panama City and Colon?
How safe is the Panama City airport?

Any help you can give us will be appreciated. We have always wanted to see the Panama Canal.

Thanks!

bellaboo

It will be hot in March for certain...hard to say whether a senior could handle it, it depends on the person..?

Not familiar with Caravan Tours, sorry.

We found Panama City safe but there def ARE sketchy areas.

Colon is NOT safe.....

Tocumen Airport is a safe secure airport.

LarryRGV

Since your walking is going to be limited, I can't imagine you would ever be walking around an area that is not safe. Airport in Panama City was very easy to get around in. The excursion boats that you can arrange for in Panama City to take what is called a "partial transit" is very much worth the money. The boats hold maybe 125 to 150 people so they are not small, but definitely not a cruise ship. Easy on and off, but the best seats are on top floor of the boat and steps to go up. But if that is a problem seeing the canal from the first level is ok. Also taking a tour to the visitor center is good and should be done even if you take a boat tour of the canal. And there they do have elevators to go up to top floor to overlook the canal.

Our trip there was just a couple of weeks ago and it was hot then, but not unbearably. In the shade was ok. I guess March will be even hotter. Look on the weather channel for guidance about temps.

Are you staying in Panama for the entire 9 days? Seems like a long time there. Panama City can be seen in 2 to 3 days even with tours of the canal.

panamabird

Hello
I live in Panama where I am in the b&b business
I looked at the Caravn tour offer and I must say
that it looks ok for what they propose. All is
included and the hotels are good ones. Also the
price looks ok. I'd say do it.
Weather is ok at the moment.

Amara

March is still high season (Panamanian Summer), which is sunny and windy. It is hot year round in Panama. Less in the Summer because of the wind factor, especially in the interior. What parts of Panama are you going to visit, only Panama City and Colon?

seniortraveler

Thanks! If we decide to just fly to Panama City on our own--no tour company. Can anyone recommend a local tour of the canal and city?

nonstop

You might check out:

Panoramic Panama or

Ancon Expeditions

We used Panoramic to go to Gamboa and were very pleased. They both offer all kinds of tours and will pick you up at your hotel

raulpanama

I also recomend you might check out:

http//www.senderopanama.com

http//www.ecocircuitos.com

I have used the first one, have good references of the second one.

jamamac

Am also a senior and just got back from Panama City. It was hot and humid (mid 90's). Agree with LarryGRV that you can see the city in 2-3 days. The partial transit is a good idea and the visitor center is worthwhile and should be no problem. We booked our tours through Panoramic Panama (La Estancia) and I would highly recommend them. We did the train excursion to Colon where our guide (Austin) picked us up and took us for a tour (car) of the duty free zone, Ft Lorenzo and Portobelo. He was informative and interesting. Don't think you would have a problem with this tour either. Colon is definitely not safe.

pae714

We just returned from this tour 2/18 and it was absolutely AWFUL! We have traveled with Caravan before to Costa Rica and I cannot say enough wonderful things about THAT trip. However, just about everyone on this trip was VERY disappointed. Our guide was silent most of the trip (since she was not a native of Panama and freely admitted that she "knew little"). We left Panama knowing not much more then when we came. While the hotels were nice and food decent, most days were spent on a short activity after about a one hour bus ride, leaving you with absolutely NOTHING to do! In Colon, (where you are for 2 days) it is so dangerous that this meant that you were stuck in your hotel and could not venture out. We really were not taken on any nature sightseeing. The pipeline birdwatching "hike" listening to the sounds of the rainforest really consisted of pulling the bus over to the side of the road, getting out ON THE ROAD, while someone was weed wacking at their nearby house, in sight of an industrial barbed wire fence and "look for birds" in view of the bus....we hiked no where! The "cruise" of the canal was on a packed, hot, "ferry" boat that was absolutely disgusting. We all couldn't wait to get off. It was 3 hours of hell during which you could not here the guide and the commentary was given in about 6 languages (all of which were garbled). It's a poorly planned tour that does not give you a good view of Panama. Perhaps a better guide would have helped, but it needed more activities, less down time and more of the natural areas explored. I would recommend seeing Panama another way! The majority of people on our tour (and there were about 40 of us) had traveled with Caravan before and we were all quite shocked with how terrible it was. It was not as billed or as we expected!
Perhaps, a good guide would have made up for the generally poorly planned activities. Our tour in Panama was poorly planned, poorly executed, tiresome, uninformative and something we would never recommend to anyone. Multiple attempts were made by many individuals to speak to the guide about how unhappy we were. I know that phone calls were also made in the middle of the tour to the Caravan office but nothing was done to help “jump start” our tour while it was happening in spite of informing Caravan of the problem. It continued as it was until the bitter end. It is unfortunate that this tour was SO BAD because I would say that at least three quarters of the people on this tour were previously loyal Caravan customers. I would like to think that our tour was the exception rather then the rule. If you are already booked with Caravan for this tour, I would carefully rethink it. It is a new tour for them and the people going now are obviously being "experimented" on....and the experiment is not going that well. I know that there are some other guides that perhaps were "better" then ours but I still think there are MUCH better ways to see Panama. I would take advantage of their cancellation policy if I bought insurance and redo the tour myself with my own guides. We used Kevin O'Brien at www.barefootpanama.com one day and he was excellent. I hear Rudy's Tours of Panama and My Friend Mario tours are both quite good. I would stay in my own hotels and book day tours with the above private guides. We were so sad that this tour didn't work out, Once again, I have to say that we had previously traveled with Caravan to Costa Rica and they were absolutely wonderful. Trips others had taken with Caravan to other locations were also reviewed as exception. However, this trip to Panama did not in any way measure up to their usual standards. Good luck.

jamamac

Please do not confuse this tour with Panoramic Panama which was a one day tour and was excellent. Ask for Austin.

YetAnotherSenior

My wife and I just returned from a Caravan Panama trip (March 24-April 1) and I would like to share our experience as an update to the mainly negative comments above by pae714. I’m sure anyone still reading this thread would be alarmed by those comments; in fact, two people on our trip almost canceled after they read that account. Fortunately they did not and they, as well as everyone else, had a wonderful experience. I think the key here is that pae714’s experience with Caravan was an anomaly. We, too, had a Mexican tour guide, Gerardo, who was very experienced with Caravan's Copper Canyon and Ancient Civilization tours in Mexico. He was an excellent guide. He spoke English well, had a fine sense of humor and was entirely in charge of the tour. Right from the start he told us Caravan was trying to recruit Paamanian guides but because of quality issues this was a work in progress and for that reason the company was relying on some of its Mexican guides to start this expansion. At first I was a bit skeptical of a Mexican tour guide in Panama, but he had done his homework and demonstrated considerable knowledge of Panama. Also, he bridged the issue by comparing and contrasting these two latin-American cultures with personal anecdotes which I think most of us found quite charming. He noted that tourism in Panama is relatively new, compared to Mexico and Costa Rica, for example-- something we already knew from our earlier inquiries into Panama tour resources--and that this has given rise to some unusual obstacles for Caravan. For one thing, since most touring is based on cruise ship itineraries which tend to span hours or short-days at the most, tour buses don't have onboard toilets, unlike those in Mexico, Costa Rica and Guatemala. (Not a problem, though, because pit stops were numerous.)

Regarding pae714's criticism of Colon, this is a rough seaport town; always has been, probably always will be. Cruise ships offer short tours that always end up back on the ship. It was probably a mistake initially for Caravan to put up its people for two nights in a very nice Radisson hotel on the city's waterfront where, for security reasons, outside activities were strongly discouraged. Caravan has since rectified that. We spent two nights at the elegant Radisson Summit resort hotel and golf course on the edge of the rain forest in Paraiso. I can't imagine anyone complaining about this hotel. Caravan has also made other changes, including abandoning a walking tour of Casco Viejo (Old Panama) because of the broken cement sidewalks and traffic danger, and the use of dugout canoes to take tourists to the Embera village on the Chagres River (replaced with more conventional outboards). This, I presume, is in deference to older travelers who have physical difficulty in such environments (although personally I would have preferred the original itinerary). I think one has to realize that touring countries like Panama and Guatemala is not like touring the U.S. and Canada. Customs and living conditions are different and you must sometimes deal with what we consider primitive and in some cases marginally acceptable sanitary and safety conditions.

As for the rest of the trip, it was varied and well-planned. To a large extent, Panama IS the Canal and we saw a lot of it. Early on, my wife thought a little bit of canal would go a long way, but it turned out she couldn't get enough of what some call the eighth wonder of the world. (For anyone visiting Panama I heartily recommend reading one of the Canal histories, especially David McCullough’s Pulitzer prize-winning The Path Between the Seas. It’s an eye-opener.) Caravan arranged for an exclusive viewing deck at the Miraflores Locks that provided an outstanding and sun-protected close-up view of the transiting ships, and the next day we traversed two of the locks ourselves on an excursion boat about the size of a small ferry. This was a Caravan exclusive, as well (there were only a dozen non-Caravan tourists aboard) which gave us plenty of room and free access. The boat guide, Jimmy, was excellent. Half-Panamanian and half-American, he spoke perfect idiomatic English and gave a continuous and informative narration on the canal and on Panama in general. The onboard buffet was delicious. Later, we spent two days of "down time" at Playa Blanca beach resort where we watched the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean from our room balcony. This was an all-inclusive stay (i.e., alcoholic drinks included), which was unusual for Caravan but most welcome. The second day a short bus ride took us into the highlands to El Valle, a small town noted as a getaway for Panamanians looking to cool off and the site of a rather interesting private zoo we toured. Later, the optional, bird-watching tour on Pipeline Road drew about half of our group. We saw about a dozen tropical birds, but our knowledgeable birding guide said we would have seen many more during the rainy season. Additionally, on three nights our tour guide arranged for dance troups to perform for us--the first time we had evening entertainment on a Caravan trip.

It's unfortunate that Caravan's early Panama trips encountered the glitches they did, but the company seems to have worked quickly to correct these problems and by the time we went, there were none. I realize that's no consolation to those who preceded us, but it is a testament to a tour company that wants to provide the best experience it can at an exceptionally reasonable price. Caravan may not be for everyone but my wife and I feel it is the best value of any Panama tour we have run across; we talked with others who preceded us and followed us (neighbors who started the tour seven days after we did) who said the same thing. We recommend Caravan without reservation.

YAS

Dayenu

YAS, thank you for posting! I did a search not really hoping to find anything about this newer tour, and it was shocking to read pae's first and only post here on Fodor's and recommending some competitor.

I was on the "old" Copper canyon tour w/Caravan from El Paso, how's this tour compare, I wonder. Is the Panama tour physically demanding? I may be taking it next year. Still thinking