Buenaventura Golf & Beach Resort

Buenaventura is an Autograph Collection and Leading Hotels resort on the Riviera Pacífica, about eighty to ninety minutes west of Panama City inside a gated Pacific-coast community at Río Hato, Coclé — sister to the Bristol in the city. An eighteen-hole, par-seventy-two Jack Nicklaus course threads the grounds, several pools and swim-up bars step down to a private Pacific beach, and seven restaurants and bars run from Panamanian cooking to teppanyaki — Tamarindo for locally sourced plates, Criollo for Panamanian dishes, Tai Kai for Asian and teppanyaki with cooking classes, El Faro for American and Mediterranean, and Prime 19 at the golf clubhouse, with a Martini Bar and swim-up bars alongside. The Coroú Spa takes its name from the resort's old-growth coroú tree, and around a hundred and fourteen rooms in modern Panamanian design — private balconies, marble and hardwood floors, half-canopy beds — rise to four villas with private pools and kitchens. Beyond golf there is tennis, ziplining and high ropes, horseback riding, a kids' club and the volcanic crater town of El Valle de Antón with its La India Dormida waterfall. It is a family, golf and couples resort on the coast, the beach-and-golf counterpart to its art-led city sister.