El Camino Real, Panama

The jungle is calling

Ancient Ruins

Amazing Wildlife

Friendly Villagers

Colours treasured

If the mossy river rocks, the gurgling translucent waters and the majestic, ancient trees could talk, they would tell epic stories of long mule trains hauling the King’s gold, of dashing incursions by pirates against Castilla de Oro’s New World fortifications and many untold story tales.

Long before human ingenuity and determination envisioned the Panama Canal as it is today … long before steam engines pulled the first trans-continental railroad across Panama … a vital and mysterious road laid of stone traversed this domain of defiance … a throughway that was the scenario of astounding human drama; where courage, greed and cruelty shaped the early history of the world’s crossroads … el Camino Real.

“Centuries before construction began on the Panama Railroad and Canal, the ‘path between the seas’ was just that: a Spanish-built cobblestone thoroughfare winding 50 miles across the Central American isthmus. Beginning in the 1500s, mule trains laden with Inca gold followed the Camino Real (King’s Road) from the Pacific to the Caribbean to meet galleons bound for Spain; buccaneers –Francis Drake and Henry Morgan among them– conspired to relieve them of their cargo. Once wide enough to fit two passing horse carts, the Camino Real is now hidden, along with jaguars and three-toed sloths, in the dense jungles of the 300,000-acre Chagres National Park”

– McKenzie Funk, National Geographic Adventure

A treasure trove path that leads through the jungles of Panama from one coast line to the other. This adventure is a mixture of dugout canoe rides, tropical jungles, local Indian tribes and villages and those spectacular vistas and challenges that make the amazon jungles so famous. This little gem of a walk is one of life’s true adventures.

Adventure Facts