Panama City boasts an abundance of rooftops, reflections, angles and curves. The sheer scale of the buildings in the “Dubai of the Americas”, many over 60 stories high, make for dazzling, if dizzying, panoramic views. The skyscrapers of downtown confuse the mind with their deep plunging verticals and mirrored windows, revealing 360 degrees of vertiginous skyline, sprawling city grid and the undulating Gulf of Panama coastline. The more human-scaled buildings in the old town, Casco Viejo, provide equally compelling views over the Spanish colonial-era network of red tile roofs, melding together the old with the new.

Where better to find a great rooftop bar?

Panama City emerged as an international centre for business and trade after the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914. Today it’s the wealthiest city in Latin America. With continued foreign investment and the recent canal expansion, the city is poised to continue its transformation. For us, this means sizzling nightlife and great bars and restaurants. Panama has 14 of the 25 tallest buildings in Latin America and The Marriott (originally the Trump Ocean Club), has the highest floor count, at 70. Many of the hotels offer exceptional rooftop bars and pools for guests.

In spite of the financial boom, the city is still grounded by its cultural influences and history. Casco Viejo, where Panama City was founded, is a UNESCO-designated historic district. Following the destruction of the first settlement by Captain Henry Morgan in 1671, the Spanish moved the city to the rocky peninsula where Casco Viejo still stands. Surrounded by the imposing rock wall originally built to defend the city from invaders, Casco is a step back in time. As urban expansion pushed the boundaries of Panama City further out around the turn of the century, the city’s elite left Casco Viejo and the neighbourhood rapidly deteriorated into a slum, with crumbling architecture. Fortunately, most of the buildings have now been lovingly restored and the neighbourhood revitalized, home to many restaurants, cafes, shops, hotels and renovated historic buildings.

From any elevated vantage point in Casco Viejo, the town stretches out before you in a labyrinth of churches, plazas and palaces while the modern towers of downtown rise up like sharp-edged glaciers across the bay. Continuously changing cloud formations add drama to every view.

With a delicious cocktail in hand made from fresh local ingredients, it’s easy to fall in love with Panama City.

The top ten:

Downtown and Area:

1. The JW Marriott Panama (originally the Trump Ocean Club)
Punta Pacifica District

To get a seat on the patio of the spectacular rooftop bar on the 66th floor of this 70-storey, sail-shaped building, get here early. The incredible infinity pool looks like it slides off the side of the tower, so it’s just as well we can’t swim in it. It’s just for show but it adds an element of glamour and sophistication.

The building was taken over in 2018 by JW Marriott following a dispute, where the Property Management company reportedly had to use a crowbar to strip the Trump name off the building. The JW Marriott is the tallest building in Panama and in Central America. The tower apparently resembles the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai, which is the tallest in the world at 163 floors.

www.marriott.com/hotels

2.BITS (Bar in the Sky) Rooftop Lounge, Hard Rock Hotel (also known as the Megapolis Tower 1)
Marbella District

A glitzy, glamorous venue, the rooftop bar of the Hard Rock Cafe, “BITS,” is on the 62nd floor of the 63-storey Hard Rock Hotel Panama Megapolis. This indoor and outdoor lounge is stylish and upscale, with sprawling red & pink satin lounge chairs and comfy couches. It has wonderful views of La Cinta Costera (the coastal beltway which has a 2.5 km pedestrian walkway running along the waterfront to Casco Viejo) and exquisite cocktails.

https://es.hrhpanamamegapolis.com

3.W Panama
Campo Alegre District (Business District)

The W Hotel in Panama City is the Marriot W Brand’s first Central American property. The W Hotel’s WET Deck is a pool bar on the 15th floor of the 50-storey W Panama Hotel. It’s a fairly recent, sleek, modern addition to the Panama City rooftop bar scene. Centrally located, it has the sought-after W vibe, views over the Cinta Costera and the downtown skyline, as well as a pool you can swim in.

https://www.marriott.com/

Casco Viejo (Old Town):

4.Tantalo Hotel Rooftop Bar

Tantalizing food and wonderful views are yours on the rooftop of the industrial-chic Tantalo Hotel at Happy Hour. As the sun sets over the red tile roofs of the white colonial buildings of Casco, we wash down delicious fusion-style tapas (think quinoa and chickpea salad, sautéed octopus with coconut milk) with a Michelada, a Mexican cocktail made with beer, tomato juice, lime and hot sauce. The glowing dome of the Iglesia Merced is so close I feel like I can reach out and touch it. Tantalo is a ten-room boutique hotel with a bar and restaurant on the ground floor, but the rooftop terrace is the main attraction.

www.tantalohotel.com

5.Gatto Blanco, Hotel Casa Nuratti

Next door to Tantalo is another fantastic rooftop bar, Gatto Blanco, which is on the top of the Hotel Casa Nuratti. It has an intimate atmosphere with live music Tuesday nights. Wednesdays are ladies nights, with $1 glasses of sangria. Walk through the stylish lobby to get the elevator to the rooftop.

http://hotelgattoblanco.com

6.Casa Casco Restaurant & Rooftop Bar

The five-storey Casa Casco building has three floors of restaurants; the independently-run Marula, Naciyn Sushi and Mano de Tigre. On the fourth floor is the nightclub, Casco Club and at the top, the decadent terrace bar. The cuisine ranges from Japanese to Central American fusion. From the roof, watch the locals gather in the charming Plaza Herrara below, an historic hub of the neighbourhood or peer into the large rooms of the stylish American Hotel on Avenida Central. Then watch the sun set over the old town, coming to rest on the beautifully restored Hotel Central on the Plaza Independencia.

http://casacasco.com

7.Salvaje

One of the coolest bars in Casco – Salvaje (which translates as Wild) is a local favourite not on the tourist map. It is located near the walled entrance to the old town. If you decide to walk to the roof of the lively bar five stories up, you can meander through the crumbling, historic building with its wide, plant-filled balconies, reminiscent of Havana, Cuba. It’s noisy, so try not to get a table next to a loudspeaker pumping out local and international music. The cuisine is Japanese fusion which combines local Panamanian with Japanese ingredients. Watch the Panama City skyline disappear as the sun sets across the bay.

https://salvajepty.com

8.Las Clementinas Hotel & Rooftop Bar

The hotel was named after Clementina Herrerra, an eccentric and successful female Panamanian entrepreneur in the 1950’s. Ask for a refreshing Panamanian Mojito made with clementine juice, clementine segments and Seco, an alcohol distilled from sugar cane, lime juice and basil leaves. There’s also a popular Sunday brunch at Mahalo Restaurant next door, run by two Canadian sisters.

www.lasclementinas.com

9.Lazotea, Hotel Casa Panama

A small bar, with big views. Lazotea was apparently the first rooftop bar in Panama City to have a swimming pool you can actually swim in. It has one of the best rooftops in Casco, with views across the bay. Located near the entrance to Casco, it is at the top of the Hotel Casa Panama, which also houses Restaurante Santa Rita. The cuisine ranges from Central American to French, with a range of European dishes.

Avenida Eloy Alfaro Corner with Calle 11, Old Town, Panama City 0801 Panama

10.Capital Bistro

This unassuming, yet elegant and often overlooked little restaurant/bar is near the entrance to Casco and so close to the water, you can see the fishing boats of the Mercado de Marisco (fish market) coming in to shore for the night and watch the sun set over the bay. The sparkling little lights on the patio make the evening magical and the signature cocktail list and menu from the Capital Bistro Restaurant below ensure an unforgettable experience.

http://capbistropanama.com

See article in magazine:

https://tasteandtravelmagazine.com/2020/12/top-ten-rooftop-bars-in-panama-city/

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It’s the cusp of rainy season, in Belize’s rainiest and remotest southern region, Toledo. The keel-billed toucan sits on his painted perch high up in the rainforest canopy of the town’s clock tower mural. The national bird of Belize knows the tropics will soon be at their most tropical. Punta Gorda, Fat Point in Spanish, is a border town, known to backpackers as a port where they can catch the ferry to Guatemala. The last place we are expecting chocolate, candlelight, food and wine. The mix of Creole, Maya and Garifuna cultures, with influences from the Caribbean, Mexico, Africa, Guatemala, China and East India, make it the perfect place for a festival.

The stars in the clear skies blink in sync with the tiny lights that trace the inner walls of the rooftop terrace of the University of Belize as the Wine & Chocolate evening, which kicks off the 4th Annual Cacaofest, begins. The Cacaofest, a celebration of chocolate-making and all things Belizean, is officially underway. A flutist plays traditional music. Tourists, ex-pats and Belizeans from all over the country are streaming up the stairs to the sold-out event. Chocolate tasting tables arranged by Belize’s artisanal chocolate-makers (Cotton Tree, Goss, Cyrila’s and Kakaw), a selection of Belizean wines and a fragrant, culturally-inspired buffet, based on a sampling of Creole, Maya and Garifuna dishes, await the crowd.

“This chocolate is made with allspice and wild vanilla,” encourages the woman at Cyrila’s, from the Mayan village of San Felipe. I almost inhale my truffle, which is dripping with rich Belizean cream. The smooth, organic chocolate tastes intense and ethereal. Chocolate cashew cups from Goss in Seine Bight must be tried with the cashew wine. The wine is produced not from the nut, but from the fermented juice of its fruit, called a cashew apple. It is musky, nutty, sweet, mild and low in alcohol.

Blackberry wine is made from very ripe fruit and can vary in sweetness. Cyrila’s makes a cacao wine which tastes like sherry, with honey and chocolate notes. Belizeans can turn just about anything into wine (and also fruit brandy or rum) – from local fruits, which include cocoa, blackberry, mango, pineapple, apple, grapefruit, starfruit, sea grapes, cashew, guava, craboo and also from pumpkin, rice, ginger & cassava and even from herbs, flowers and cider bark.

“We love the smell. We love the taste. We love the glorious chemical, whole-body, euphoric reaction,” Jo and Chris Beaumont, from Kakaw Chocolate on Ambergris Caye, enthuse on Kakaw’s site. Kakaw is serving liquid chocolate into which we dip wedges of mango, nutty pineapple and buttery papaya–a velvety organic fruit and chocolate fondue. We talk about tasting notes in chocolate, such as citrus, blackberries, caramel and cashew nuts. In Belizean chocolate these aren’t added ingredients, but flavors brought out during cacao’s long transformation from bean to bar. Apparently, there can be over 600 natural flavors hidden in a single piece of chocolate.

“We always know which farm our beans are from,” says Juli Puryear, who runs Cotton Tree Chocolate. Cacao beans only grow in the south, which gets the most rainfall and Cotton Tree sources all its beans from the farms and Mayan villages which surround Punta Gorda. Cotton Tree makes not just single-origin chocolate, from the beans of one region, but each batch starts with the organically-grown beans from a single day’s harvest and a single farmer. Chocolate made in Belize comes with a best-before date, a batch and bar number and each bar tastes slightly different.

The chefs of the region incorporate chocolate into traditional savoury dishes and we sample a few. I dip fresh shrimp into a Belizean mole, a traditionally Mexican sauce made with chocolate, chili peppers, onion, garlic, tomato, and cilantro and served with Creole rice and beans, made from red pinto beans and mixed with rice and coconut milk (“rice & beans” cooked together is a different dish to “beans & rice” which are served separately). I try the cracker-like cassava bread, a Garifuna tradition, which comes with hummus. Mayan corn tamales, with meat and cheese fillings, are served steamed and wrapped with a plantain leaf.

Juli, who runs Wilma Wonka’s Espresso Café & Cotton Tree Chocolate from a single-room building, with three employees, produces about 20,000 chocolate bars a year. Wilma Wonka’s self-titled “Chocolate Center of the Universe” produces “bean to bar” chocolate, with 100% Belizean ingredients. The sign for Wilma Wonka’s is in line with the tradition of funky, hand-painted signs all over Belize, which give the towns the sleepy look of another era.

“Our methods are a little unconventional,” Juli says, “but they work.” I watch her assistant use a battery-operated power drill to grind the beans into nibs. A hand-held blow dryer is used to remove the shells from the roasted beans. “The conch is the heart of the operation,” says Juli. She originally fashioned a make-shift conch, which refines the chocolate and cuts the sharp taste of cacao, out of a big green bowl used for making Indian dahl. “The first time we tried it, the top came off and the walls were covered in chocolate.” They now have a new conch, imported from the U.S. The end result of this mostly manual process is a thriving business which provides jobs to local workers, sustains cacao farmers and pays them fairly for their beans.

Of course, the process begins with the Mayan farmer who produces the large, pinkish-red cacao pod. On Cacaofest weekend, buses head to the organic cacao orchards at Cyrila Cho’s farm. The tour includes a Mayan lunch, a spicy caldo (chicken soup) served with hand-made corn tortillas cooked over an open fire and kaku, a chocolate drink made from beans grown on the Cho farm. Cacaofest weekend finishes on a musical note, with a concert at Lubaantun (“Place of the Fallen Stones,”) in the foothills of the Maya mountains. The ancient stones, eroded by foot traffic of the centuries, provide an exotic, if uneven dance floor. Only the setting sun brings the festival to a close.

On the one-hour flight from Punta Gorda to Belize City en route home, we fly over lush, broccoli rainforest, the soft mounds of the Mayan mountains rising and falling. I hope to catch a final glimpse of a hidden temple, but all I see is a muddy snake of a river and the sun-drenched thread of the Southern Highway tracing the shoreline and veering inland. On the coast, white waves crash over briny mangrove. A distant cruise ship looks like an iceberg. Bright green islands pop up out of the marsh, foam cut-outs from a school project. I strain to get a view of the wispy threads of distant cayes. The setting sun hits the swampland and the plane is reflected in a dozen orange mirrors. I think how, with every visit, I learn a bit more about this tiny but diverse country. Like the tasting notes in its smooth, organic chocolate, Belize is a complex, harmonious blend of culture, food and language that always makes it worth one more visit.