Trip Review: Embera Village Panama

  1. Anonymous says:

    “Joined a local tour and paid to enter a National Park to get ourselves robbed by bandits.”
    This is not a bad review to the Embera Indian Village, but to a part of the Embera Indian Village local day tour. My boyfriend and I joined a day tour with http://gopanamaonline.com on Jul 2. We hiked into the natural pool with waterfall with a villager and a tour guide (same as the waterfall where photos were taken and posted online by other happy tourists). However, it became a disaster on ours. We placed our bags and dry clothes on the rocks near the pool and we entered the pool with our swim suits. After 30sec going into the pool, 2 bandits fully covered with black coloured clothing, black masks, and a machete on each of them, appeared in front of us. Unarmed villager and the tour guide quickly tried to move away from the bandits as they were on the ground. The bandits then picked up our belongings, that we left on the bank before we entered the water, and escaped into the jungle. Some of my clothings were gone too. We were terrified and none of us could do anything about it. Basically…speechless. Our Hassels then began….visiting Police Station @ Casco Viejo….DIJ in Ancon….Embassy… delayed our Bocas flight for 4 days…cancelled our Contadora flight..and still hope that we could get a refund on that flight.. etc.. The tour company, “gopanamaonline.com” did not take care of us except helping me to translate my English incident report into Spanish through email. Tour manager who booked my tour, Natassha, said she had to go on a business trip and nobody else could help…so we ended up going to DIJ (Police main office) OURSELVES while we barely spoke any Spanish. We were grateful that we were not injured….but however we lost our passports, phone, and camera with photos taken in Panama City…and $500cash that we needed to pay up front to get our passports replacements. We were left with frustration and disappointment with this tour company and part of our trip. This was the only day we joined a local tour in Panama and it turned out to be the worst day. Probably we were the first unlucky one (according to the locals)….but who knows would there be 10-20 bandits showing up in front of other tourists in the future. Safety is really an issue. I do not know how other local tour companies would react with these incidents, but definitely don’t go with “gopanamaonline.com”. They do not show any responsibilities to their customers.

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