The Resort at Isla Palenque

On the privately held Isla Palenque in the Gulf of Chiriquí, Panama’s Pacific coast, The Resort at Isla Palenque occupies a 400-acre island of primary dry forest and mangrove that has been managed as a private conservation reserve for over thirty years before the resort’s development, giving the landscape its most distinctive quality: the sense that the island’s ecological recovery was already well underway before any guest arrived. The 14 bungalows are built in the dry forest at sufficient distance from each other to feel individually private, with outdoor showers, screened sleeping platforms, and a design that keeps the forest’s sensory landscape — the bird calls, the land crab movements, the humidity and fragrance of the dry forest floor — as present as possible within the accommodation’s minimal structures. The Gulf of Chiriquí’s waters surrounding the island are within the same voluntary marine protected zone as Islas Secas.

The wildlife of the island — howler monkeys in the morning canopy, scarlet macaws in the fruiting trees, marine iguanas on the beach rocks, and the nesting seabirds on the offshore rocks — provides an ecological immediacy that is difficult to find on islands that have been more heavily developed. Kayaking and snorkelling in the Gulf’s reefs, guided walking through the island’s forest trails with the naturalist ranger, and fishing with local Ngäbe-Buglé fishing guides in the traditional manner are the primary activities. Dining draws on the Gulf’s Pacific seafood and the organic produce of the nearby Chiriquí highlands, with meals served on the terrace above the shore at the most dramatic hours of light.

Isla Palenque’s operating philosophy — minimal infrastructure, maximum conservation, wildlife as the primary subject of the guest experience — represents a considered rejection of the high-amenity resort model in favour of an approach that treats ecological integrity as both the most important and the most commercially distinctive asset the island possesses.