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PANAMá | Panamá City, Panamá Travel Guide
Monday, December 30, 2024
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Summit Botanical Gardens & Zoo and the French Cemetery
Summit Botanical Gardens & Zoo
Established by the Panama Canal Company for the study of tropical plants, this 300-acre/120-hectare botanical garden was transferred to Panamá in 1985. Shady picnic areas, a playground, cafeteria and a small zoo are set in the midst of its lush greenery and flowering tropical and subtropical plantings. Follow the long pathway bordered by thick stands of tall bamboo to the harpy eagle preservation display – it may be your only chance of ever seeing a pair of these powerful raptors with talons as big as grizzly bear claws. It’s estimated that only 20 pairs of the extremely endangered harpys still survive in Panamá’s wildest and most remote regions. You’ll learn all about their habits, habitats and preservation during a guided tour through the adjacent Harpy Eagle Rotunda, where films, lectures and displays are featured. Although the eagles are kept in an expansive enclosure, many of the zoo’s less fortunate animals are incarcerated in distressingly small cages. This may bother you. It did me. Summit is 20 minutes from the city, off the Gaillard Highway on the way to Gamboa.
The French Cemetery
When headed west on the Gaillard Highway, you can’t miss the hundreds of white crosses staggered down a grassy slope just past the little village of Paraiso. This is the final resting place of the French engineers and administrators who succumbed to malaria and yellow fever during de Lesseps’ failed attempt to build a canal. There’s no reason to stop unless you want to pay your respects.
Last updated November 26, 2007
Posted in Panamá | Panamá City
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