Hotel Panamonte

A 1914 Guesthouse That Never Left the Family

Boquete grew up around this house. Joseph Wright opened it in 1914 with five rooms, and for three decades the Wright Hotel was where the outside world stayed when it came to the Chiriquí highlands: Admiral Richard Byrd, Charles Lindbergh, the Rockefeller brothers. In 1946 a Swedish journalist, Vera Elliot, bought the place with her husband Hans, enlarged it and gave it the name it still carries. Richard Nixon slept here in 1957, Ingrid Bergman twice. Vera’s daughter Inga Collins inherited the hotel in 1979 and turned it toward the cloud forest, hosting birdwatching groups year after year. Her son Charlie has it now.

Why It Works

Three things decided it for us. The first is continuity: one family has run this hotel since 1946, and that shows in the way the place is kept rather than styled. The second is the kitchen. Charlie Collins is a cook with three books behind him, one of them a Gourmand World Cookbook Awards winner in the culinary heritage category, and he is not an absentee name on a menu. The third is scale. This is a small hotel in a town that has grown up around it, and it has stayed that size. You get Boquete, not a version of Boquete assembled for visitors.

Why This Location

The hotel stands on Avenida 11 de Abril, on the northern side of Bajo Boquete, within walking distance of the plaza and the town’s restaurants and coffee shops. The Caldera river runs through the valley, and the whole town sits in the lap of Volcán Barú, the highest point in Panama. That is the practical argument for staying here: the trailheads are minutes away, the Sendero Los Quetzales among them, and so are the coffee farms on the slopes above town where Panama grows its Geisha crop. Mornings are cool and often misty, afternoons usually clear.

Fast Facts

• Price: Upscale

• Vibe: Historic, wooded, quietly formal

• Rooms: Five categories, from the original 1914 Historic Rooms to the Garden Terrace rooms, three Junior Suites and a Master Suite

• Best For: Birdwatchers, couples, travellers who care where they eat

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The bonfire lit at the El Salto cocktail lounge after dinner

• Dining: T’ACH Restaurant and T’ACH Café, both run by chef-owner Charlie Collins, with a wine cellar at the entrance to the dining room

• Amenities: Gardens, free private parking on site, golf course within three kilometres

• Attractions: Boquete town centre on foot, Volcán Barú National Park, the Sendero Los Quetzales, the coffee farms above town, the Caldera river

The Kitchen of Charlie Collins

T’ACH takes its name from an Emberá Wounaan word for plantain, and for food. It opened in 2020, and the cooking is Panamanian by ingredient and contemporary by technique: pork belly chicharrón glazed with guava barbecue, Angus fillet from Chiriquí, pumpkin ravioli. A wine cellar stands at the entrance to the dining room. Service runs from midday to half past ten, lunch straight through into dinner. Collins has written three cookbooks on the country’s native cuisine, and the room reads as an extension of that work rather than a hotel restaurant that happens to be there.

Coffee, Filtered at Your Table

The café opens at seven and closes at six, and it is where the hotel makes its case for the highlands. High-altitude beans are brewed to order by V60, Chemex, French press or espresso, and the barista filters at the table and explains what is happening while the water goes through. Breakfast is served here, along with the afternoon things worth knowing about: chocolate with churros, pavlova with strawberries, lemon pie. If you came to Boquete to understand what the region does with coffee, you can begin at the table where you had breakfast.

Rooms, and Which One to Ask For

The house has been added to in layers, and the room categories follow them. The Historic Rooms are the original 1914 ones, remodelled in 2013. The Superior Rooms and the three Junior Suites look onto the garden and the mountains. Eight Garden Terrace rooms are the most recent addition, and the Master Suite is the one couples ask for. Ask for a garden side if you want the quiet, because the front of the house sits on the avenue. El Salto, the cocktail lounge, lights its bonfire in the evening and stays the centre of gravity once dinner is over.