By Kevin Sindt
The cabin lights came on in perfect unison with the announcement that we would be landing in Panama City’s Tocumen International Airport in 15 minutes. Our “all night” Copa Airlines flight from Denver to Panama City was a mere 5 hours, not quite my idea of a full night’s sleep but the anticipation of our next 9 days in Cambutal Panama energized me. One small hurdle, we still had a mere 387 kilometers ahead of us to get to Cambutal. Myself, my wife, and our youngest son along with his best friend were all visiting Panama for the first time. So exciting!
As it wasn’t quite 5:00 A.M. when we deplaned, our first stop was to find the nearest open shop to get the largest cup of coffee available. Mission accomplished and with coffee in hand, we began our trip’s first adventure as the only travelers that walked into a large room with several immigration desks manned by not-yet-awake officials all staring at our group of four. Through some trial and error with the friendly officials we got our entrance stamps in our passports and on to our customs clearance. I had filled out the customs document for my wife and I through the Copa Airlines site prior to departure so the official scanned the QR code I had saved as a screen shot in my phone, picked up our bags on the other side of the scanner and we were on our way. My son and his friend were over age 18 so they each had to fill out their own customs form.
When I was looking at car rental prices in Panama, I was amazed at how cheap the daily quoted rental prices were. I chose a mid-sized SUV for $7 a day! Wow, is this too good to be true or what? Yes, it is – the car rental sites don’t go out of their way to tell you that Panama requires mandatory liability insurance issued by a Panamanian company. Not the coverage often provided by credit card companies – so be prepared for your $7 car to be more like $40 a day.
Now getting to Cambutal by rental car is not a difficult journey but as we found out it is a solid 7 to 8 hour drive with a few short stops along the way for fuel, bathroom breaks and snacks. Here are a few “ah ha” moments I had while sleepily counting down the kilometers to Cambutal as my three copilots were snoozing the kilometers away to Cambutal.
On our next visit we will spend our first day in Panama City and start our journey to Cambutal the next day after a good night’s sleep. Not only for the benefit of being fully rested but the last 2 hours of the drive are in very rural country and navigating in the dark for the first time visitor could be daunting as the roads have zero lighting.
Having international cell use on your phone will make navigating your journey to Cambutal quite straightforward. We used the international cell access on our son’s phone to follow Google Maps navigation from Tocumen Airport to our hotel in Cambutal. The cell coverage was excellent and Google Maps actually worked wonderfully and even showed us speed traps along the way. We took the road through the mountains out of Las Tablas (versus following the route out of Las Tablas that goes nearer to the ocean) which was stunningly beautiful countryside and friends in Cambutal told us it shaves at least an hour off the journey.
Police speed traps in Panama are real, we learned that if an oncoming driver flashes their lights at you, it is a warning that a police speed trap is up ahead. And trust me, you will encounter many speed traps along your journey so do not exceed the posted speed limit. I found in towns the speed limit is at most 40 km/h, outside of towns 60 km/h and on some parts of the Pan American Highway up to 80 km/h. Quite a bit slower than what I am used to driving at back in Colorado.
The Pan American Highway passes through many towns and has an amazingly large number of gas stations along the way. Our favorite along the Pan American highway was Va & Ven, all the ones we stopped at had friendly staff at the fuel pumps, seemed newer, had very clean restrooms and varying levels of snack items to buy. There is a new, large gas station in Cambutal so you can fuel up in Cambutal too.
There are two grocery shopping options in Cambutal, a “local” mercado which has an amazingly large array of basic food options and household stuff for sale. The second is The Local near the beach area and is a small but very well stocked option. The Local even has an in-house bakery that makes fresh bread daily. Yum!
We stayed at the wonderful little hotel La Finca which has a communal kitchen casa so we knew we would be making many of our meals. What we learned from traveling with two young men who seemed to be bottomless pits for food is that we should have stopped at one of the many large US style supermarkets we passed along the way and stocked up on large quantities of basic food items. Then we could have bought odds and ends, fresh food and yummy fresh bread at The Local.
The day did eventually come when we had to drive back down to Panama City for our departure. We decided to take the route that took us through Panama City which made me a tad nervous as I had read driving in the city can be a hectic experience. I found it quite the opposite and the road system was very straightforward to navigate. We did have to go through a few automated toll booth areas but our rental car included a toll pass, so we just zipped right on through and before we knew it we were back at the airport.
My wife and I found the people of Panama and specifically Cambutal to be warm, welcoming, friendly, helpful and more than willing to work with us when we deployed our mish mash of Spanish language ability. Cambutal is a special little community surrounded by beautifully lush forest framed in by stunning beaches and coastline. If you are looking for a relaxing and serene vacation spot not chock full of vacationers my recommendation is to move Cambutal to the top of your list and you will not be disappointed. The reward of Cambutal is most certainly worth the journey!