As many of you know, the week of June 3rd, we will be hosting our first official Site Expedition to Isla Palenque, and we’ll be having regular trips from then on. We hope those of you who are thinking of buying a home there someday will get aboard and come see for yourself what a spectacular location it is! I’ll be writing more about the details of our June trip in a future post. But for an inside look, read on!
A few weeks ago, we took our first prospective home buyers to Isla Palenque for a very unofficial Site Expedition. Our intrepid explorers were Gale Carlson, his wife Sandy and her sister Carol. Gale was nice enough to agree to write a guest blog post about it. Enjoy!
I don’t remember exactly how I ran across the Isla Palenque website — maybe it was during surfing for info about Panama after my wife and I had a great first trip there in the spring of 2009 — but it hooked me. I knew we would be returning to western Panama again, and would be bringing some family and friends along to see if we could generate interest in buying someplace to stay warm during future winters. So, I began corresponding with the Panama City office about the project. They suggested we consider actually taking a trip to the island to see it firsthand. That’s how we became the first prospective property owners to actually visit the island and experience it live and in person.
We started our trip when Michelle and Jerrod met us at our hotel and drove us down to the Pedregal Marina a few miles south of the city of David. We were met there by staff from a local resort with a high speed launch boat to take us to the island. We also met a great guy named Aris Almengor who is working as Isla Palenque’s Project Coordinator. He’s from David originally, and knows the area really well. From the Marina it took about 40 minutes to get to the island where Michelle, Jerrod and I hopped off the boat into knee-deep water and began walking the island. My wife and sister-in-law choose to stay on board and view the island and its beaches from the boat with Aris as their guide. I don’t know what he did, but they are both still talking about him so he must have been a good tour guide. As we walked along the welcoming beach, actually, it is the beach where the “welcoming dock” to the hotel will be located, Jerrod began explaining the proposed layout of the dock and walkways up to the hotel and Michelle got her camera out and began documenting our adventure. As we left the beach and began climbing up to the hotel location, the sunlight that had been strong on the beach became diffuse and very mild because we had entered a beautiful jungle forest. The smell of the sea changed into the smell of flowers and lush jungle greenery. The trees became taller as we climbed to where the walkway from the dock will bring people up to the hotel entry pathway. Here Jerrod began to explain how the plans for development of the island will require all trees over six inches in diameter to be protected, and how all the roads (actually not much more than narrow lanes) and paths will be sited to protect the environment. Topographic changes will be kept to a minimum, allowing access to all the properties without infringing on them. He explained that small electric vehicles (not golf carts) will be used to transport people and materials from place to place on the island.
Because we were the first visitors to the island, we got to see it with only a small amount of the development work done. Survey work for the roads and the Model Villa site had begun. General locations for the hotel, casitas, canopy homes and villas had been chosen, but in order to preserve as much of the natural beauty of the environment and to maximize views and breezes, each of these parts of the development will be laid out individually as development progresses. This will be a carefully planned community that won’t look carefully planned. We had to negotiate rough ground with small shrub and tree stubs sticking up from when the local workers had cleared some undergrowth with their ever-present and trusty machetes. During our trek we came across some fascinating trees with ferocious looking thorns on the lower trunks. Michelle captured some great pictures of them.
Probably the most impressive structural element that had been developed when we were there was the layout of the model villa site. I can’t call this a house on a site, as it is a house and a site combined. Some rooms will be separated from others by open walkways; trees will be left to grow through decks; private and shared spaces will be on different levels of a gently sloping landscaped hillside; and all of it will face out to a beautiful private beach. Although this site may well become the most expensive property on the whole island, I know viewing/experiencing this site is what made me sign up for an opportunity to buy one of the first twelve residences built on the island.
From the villa area we backtracked to a path with jungle overhead and a marsh to one side. It looked wild. I can easily imagine eyes shining back at me from a flashlight’s beam at night on this path. That path led us to the BIG beach, about three quarters of a mile long with a perfect spot for a little beach bar set back among some coconut palms. In fact, a beach bar is planned right at that spot. Nice planning.
We didn’t see any monkeys on this trip, but the habitat looked like monkey heaven. There are wild fruit trees to keep them happy, the trees are very large and the canopy is very thick. I’ve seen howler monkeys in Guatemala and Belize and Isla Palenque looks every bit as good as those places for monkey shines.
The launch picked us up at the BIG beach and brought us to a small eco-resort where we had a great lunch and Jerrod, Michelle and Aris kept answering my incessant questions. They were great hosts as they were extremely knowledgeable and seriously committed to the success of Isla Palenque as way more than the typical tropical resort. I will end this blog post with a story, a true one. Returning from Panama in 2009 we met a woman in the airport who had (with her husband) just spent their first year in Panama in a home in one of the beach communities about one hour west of Panama City. She went on about how their home had only been actually broken into and robbed once, although things kept disappearing from around the outside, and how much fun she has playing Mahjong every day with her neighbors. I can’t imagine any of that happening on Isla Palenque.
Sincerely,
Gale Carlson
P.S. As we got back to the dock in Pedregal, it poured. Hey, it’s the tropics. If you’re afraid of water, move to Arizona and play Mahjong.
Jerrod and Gale on the East Cove beach
Cool "fruit" hanging from tree
Gale and the spiky tree
Originally published April 22, 2010.
TAGS: Boating Isla Palenque
