An idea that became a real challenge!
Before opening the Canopy Tower, on January 1st, 1999, our president and founder Raúl Arias de Para did many things. He was a banker for 10 years, worked for the government, had other businesses of his own, and worked in real estate; nothing related to birds or hospitality. However, the idea of creating an Eco Lodge, somehow, was always in the back of his head. One day while traveling for work, he saw a book in an airport explaining the origin of tropical fruits like mango, and he remembers thinking: that Eco Lodge of mine will be in the tropics and would have this book in the library. “It’s amazing how these ideas are in the back of your head and, you do other things until that moment comes, but everything has its moment”, Raúl says.
On our July Newsletter, you read the story of how Raúl got into birding. Together with his wife Denise, he took a birding course offered by the Audubon Society in Panama, and another course where they learned how to build an Eco Lodge. After this, Raúl finally felt the moment he had been waiting for to finally open his own ecotourism business had arrived. For years, he had been captivated by the rainforests around the Canal and knew the Canal Zone had a special potential for bird & nature watching. Consequently, the journey to find the perfect place around the Panama Canal basin started. Little did he know, that this was going to be one the biggest challenges for his dream lodge opening.
After several weeks of exploring, he finally found the perfect place nearby Gamboa, the nearest town to where the Canopy Tower is located nowadays. At the time, those lands were administrated by the Autoridad de la Region Interoceanica (ARI), which was in charge of administrating the areas transferred to the government of Panama by the United States. However, after several meetings, conversations, applications, and efforts the ARI said a resounding no to the request of using the place. It was time to look for a second place, but the same thing happened. However, at the end of this second meeting, a key person to this story, Tom Duty, suggested the infrastructure of the Canopy Tower, which was an old radar station built for the vigilance of the Panama Canal that already had a paved road. But there was one last step Raúl was not expecting: the old radar tower was within Soberanía National Park and the law at the time did not permit private business within a protected area. However, as the infrastructure was already there and modifying it for an Eco Lodge did not imply building new infrastructure, and would promote protecting the natural resources around, finally, after two long years, Raúl got the concession to use the tower as a place where nature lovers could stay at the height of the trees! “Getting the concession was hard”, Raúl says, “but then came the reconstruction of the tower, which was also hard, but it was fun!” Stay tuned to our next Newsletter to read more anecdotes about how the tower became the amazing place it is today!