First off if you really enjoy holidays that are exclusively cruise ships, all inclusives, or fully catered boutique hotels, stay away. If you like a bit of something different, then come on out for an excellent place to stay and enjoy the beach and jungle scenes at Palmar Tent Lodge. Your starting off point is at Casa Verde in Bocas town on Isla Colon, Panama. The staff there are friendly and helpful. You take a short boat ride over to Isla Bastiementos where you are met for a short walk through the jungle across the island. All your baggage is taken care of for you. The staff at the tent lodge are friendly and helpful, the tents are spacious, clean and comfortable with a solar powered fan and light for night time comfort. You have a choice of bringing your own food, signing up for the "family dinner" or you can walk along the beach where there is a bar, or 10-15 minutes up the road further into the island to the Bocas Bound hostal where good food is available. Red Frog beach is directly in front of the tent lodge and Turtle beach is about a 15 minute walk away which is essentially the same but with very few people around. These beaches are a couple of the best you will find in this area of Panama. When it rains there it does so with drama. The tents are all covered with a tarp hung high up and you will be 100% comfortable while you listen to the rain fall. The bar at the lodge has cocktails and beer, juices and some food items with freshly made goods of all types of different varieties depending on who contributed at the time, coffee in the morning, and some basic breakfast supplies. If you decide to go please take a minute and look at the website and look up the "pack with a purpose" link. Throw some school supplies or something similar in your bag to contribute to their worthy efforts.Overall it's unique, with friendly people and a well run adventure.

Palmar tent lodge was an amazing place to stay! Chris and Kristen run the place and are wonderful people and very helpful!! The tents are lovely and cozy, the bar is fun, the place is right on the beach, the "family dinners" are tasty and relaxed. Palmar Tent lodge is also very aware of the locals and has a good relationship with the community unlike some of the other places that are in Bocas.

Chris recommended that we do the cave tour/bat cave and it was a great adventure. We also stayed at Bocas Bound which is the hostel on the island and I enjoyed Palmar Tent lodge a great deal more!

One of my favorite places. We stayed in one of the new tents. Tents are awesome: large, clean and comfortable even when it rains the whole time... (which probably is the case most of the time).
The whole complex is right at the beach but also in the middle of the jungle which is awesome. We took the boat they recommended, but the guy tried to charge us more than he should, and on the way back we waited for half an hour until the boat arrived.
When we arrived at Isla Bastimientos there was an employee waiting for us to greet, show the way to the complex and help with luggage. The beach is very beautiful, although the red frogs a little disappointing - we just found one frog and it turns out they are very little (about 1 inch long). But the parrot made up for this minor disappointment :)
The staff is friendly and helpful and for about $7 per person they make dinner. The whole idea of nice tents in the jungle just next to the beach is just amazing and it really lives up to the expectations, even though I have stayed in quite a few similar places in the past. It was also one of the most affordable options on Isla Bastimientos. The bar offers good drinks, great company and a lot of board games - a lot of fun.

I would give 5 stars but I want to motivate you to keep up the good work and improve your offer even more. It would be nice if you would offer more local attractions, for example: happy hour for local drinks at the bar, fishing trips and cooking of caught fish, dinners could also be more local cuisine.

To sum up - great experience, it really lives up to the expectations of staying in a tent in the jungle!

We stayed here for a couple nights in December. From the dock we had all of our food and luggage brought to the lodge via a wheel borrow which was nice since it was a 10min walk. The tent itself was nice, with bug nets and a place to lock up your valuables. The beach in front of the lodge was awesome and we spent a lot of time in the water using the boogie boards. The kitchen was small and crowded every time we wanted to make food. There were running out of propane so it made it a lot harder. All of the sinks and showers were food pump operated which was pretty neat. The bar was awesome and the staff made some awesome drinks. They had a taco dinner one night which we participated in and it was awesome. Lots of food for cheap. We had a very good experience.