Panama Part 3:Sendero Los Quetzales

After returning to Panama City on Tuesday morning and spending the day with Kristin's family at Rio Mar Beach about an hour and a half west of Panama City, I flew back to the western portion of Panama to hike the Los Queztales trail.

On the map from the previous entry, you'll see just south of Bocas is the town of Boquete. As the crow flies, these are less than 20 miles apart, but between them is a set of extinct volcanos which serve as the Continental Divide and are the spine of the country of Panama. I flew in to the town of David (third largest in Panama) and took a cab up to a little town called Bambito. Picture a road coming from the bottom of the map above directly into Boquete. Picture a parallel road to the west of it and that is where Bambito lies. I stayed at this beautiful resort (the most I paid for a hotel the entire time) and the weather was perfect. Temperature in the 60's in this high altitude (about 6,000 feet above sea level) little town.

On a whim, I followed a dirt road that extended from the back of the resort up a hill and two miles or so later I was rewarded with finding this most amazing high mountain meadow with grazing cows and sheep. Occasionally a man and horse would ride by. I climbed a bit further and was further rewarded with this amazing view of Volcan Baru, which I would visit the next day. I don't feel regret about losing my camera in this situation because I didn't bring it with me. The image is my own for me to have for myself. It was such a special moment, perhaps the true highlight of my trip.

The next day, after being served breakfast by Latin America's Vince Vaughn look-a-like (HOT). I caught the local bus which runs up and down the road from David up to the town of Cerra Punta. Shhhhh, this town is totally undiscovered by developers. I didn't see any American tourists and there aren't any big houses with security gates around them. This town, at 6,500 is just a hop, skip and jump from the border with Costa Rica. Actually, I rode the bus a couple miles further up the hill to the little town of Guadalupe.

From here, I set out to climb up to the trailhead of the Quetzales Trail. What was so cool is the the Quetzales Trail links the town of Cerra Punta to Boquete. I had my backpack and was hiking from one place to the next. It reminded me of hikes that one can make in the Alps of Switzerland.


This photo take from a Google image search, but I stood right at this location and took a photo of this sign.


A picture of the Quetzales Trail taken from Wikipedia

I strategically chose to hike the trail from Cerra Punta (6,500 feet) to Boquete (3,500 feet). This was not your well worn, well maintained European hiking trail. This was a slip and slide on one's rear end in places kind of hike. The hike itself was spectacular as there were vista points but most of it was under the canopy of a cloud/tropical forest. The hike took me 6 hours and my quads were killing me for the next few days. All I can say is Dr. B, he did a freaking amazing job for my feet to have held up to this pounding.

Near the end of the hike, I ran into a couple of fellow American hikers who turns out sat next to me on the flight from Houston to Panama City. We started talking and it turns out they are from a little town outside of Olympia, WA. We bonded and it was nice to end the hike with nice people who weren't all about bragging about what they had done and saw. They were there for the enjoyment of the moment.

We arrived at the trailhead and the ranger station was still a 3km trek downhill. My quads were dying so they were nice enough to give me a ride. It is their rental car that I left my camera. There is a miniscule possibility that I might get it back. The couple had yet to visit Bocas and were planning on it later in their trip. I told them about Ozzie's restaurant and if they go there and mention me, I left Ozzie my email address. It's a lot of things to have to go right for it to happen, but stranger things have happened!

That evening I treated myself to a wonderful dinner at a highly touted restaurant in Boquete. After hobbling a half mile to the restaurant, I was floored that the interior was straight out of New England B&B. White linen table cloths, flowers in the center of the table, polished silverware, you get the picture. I had an amazing ceviche followed by a huge piece of fresh grilled trout. It turns out the chef at the Hotel Penomene is a Swedish transplant and has brought his flair to Panama and now brings it to the local seafood to make amazing meals.

I have to admit that my hotel in Boquete had DirecTV and I watched American Television well into the night. I got caught on my episodes of the OC and Gilmore Girls. Ahh, now I know why Christopher went AWOL on Lorelai.

Friday morning was spent wandering around Boquete and then hopping on the bus back down to David and a flight back to Panama City. This portion of the trip was one of the highlights of my week!

Panama Part 2:Bocas Del Toro

As you can see from the map above, there is an group of islands in the northwestern corner of Panama of which the main town is called Bocas. I flew from Panama City to Bocas on Air Panama a 50-seat Fokker. The total flight time was about an hour. I landed in Bocas 8AM knowing little about the place other than it was highly touted by Kristin's husband Jeff who had recently returned from the area. Going solely on his word, there I was at the Bocas airport wondering what next? I walked out of the one-room airport onto a dirt road and there I was. I was not expecting to see houses that appeared to be ready to be blown to shreds with the next big windstorm. I surprised myself at being taken aback at the lack of touristy amenities, such as quaint shops and a tidy looking main strip. Everything looked rickety and unkempt and I never really got used to it.

I guess part of my lack of enthusiasm for the place stemmed from the overcast and drizzly weather the I flew into. I whipped out my handy-dandy guide book and had breakfast to plan my day. My first stop was to sign up with an outfit that ran an all day trip up the coast to see manatees. The guy at the shop stated that he needed people to fun the trip and had three signed up for Wednesday (this being Monday) and so it looked like it was more than likely to run. He pointed me down the street to a guide service that took people out on day long trips.

The trip had so much potential, but ultimately had few truly memorable moments. It was a group of 14 people in a boat of which there was another truly awful American couple from California. They were recent transplants from LA to Northern California and all the stereotypes of braggadocio American's was true for them. Did I really need to know how quickly they had sailed from the South Pacific to the Galapagos a couple years ago? Umm, no.

The first stop of our trip was to go see dolphins. I was a bit skeptical that we would see them, but ultimately we did. I wish there had been more of them and that they were jumping out of the water like Flipper, but I was excited to see a couple dolphins up close nonetheless.

Picture of a couple thatched roof huts built on stilts over the water

Next stop was some snorkeling followed by lunch at the restaurant one would have seen above. The snorkeling paled in comparison to the snorkeling I got to do last summer in Puerto Rico but I attribute that partially to the fact that we weren't taken to a really great spot but also that it was overcast and the light was poor.

After lunch, the skies opened up and poured. We were taken to the famous Red Frog Beach. There were other tour groups there and everyone was huddled underneath a big hut. It looked straight out of Survivor and I was ready for Jeff Probst to come out and give us some immunity challenge. It's a sad thing to know that Red Frog Beach is being encroached on by developers and the open access and lack of buildings will soon be a thing of the past.

The rain continued to come down (and it's no Seattle drizzle my friends, we're talking Central American downpout) and the other members of the boat opted to skip our last stop and go directly back to Bocas.

Upon arriving in Bocas, I went to check to see if the manatee trip was going to run and saw that the group of three had rescheduled for the following week. Ugh. I then set out on trying to find a place to stay. And the intrepid traveler story begins.

I came to Bocas during the middle of Carnival. There was NO rentable place to sleep anywhere in town or on the neighboring islands. NOTHING. So I came up with my next best plan. I rented a bike and planned on riding out to a beach and sleeping there on the sand. I literally had come to Bocas with a towel, swimsuit, basic toiletries and a change of shorts. It was going to be a long night.

I located a beach about two miles out of town. It looked like I could nestle down and get some cover from the trees, but I was screwed if another Central American downpour occurred during the night. So to treat myself before the long night, I biked to a cute looking restaurant that I had passed coming out of town which was advertising a six course meal for $14. Yeah, prices in Panama are still kind of reasonable. This wasn't some lame six course meal either. I had a salad, some fish, fried egg with bechemel sauce, bread with goat cheese and spinich, pork cutlet with a nice sauce and chocolate ice cream with orange sauce for dessert.

Over the course of dinner, I found out from the waiter that he (a German) and his wife (a Spainard) had moved to Bocas a couple years back and bought their building, renovated it so the front had a beautiful covered open air dining area and then turned the back of the building into their living quarters. The name of the place is Guari Guari.

Being the ballsy and desparate guy that I was, I asked Ozzie (the owner/waiter) my story of how I didn't have a place to stay that night and whether I could sleep in the hammock they had. He said yes and I solved my lack of lodging for the night. Minutes later, downpour. And we're talking buckets.

Picture of the hammock I stayed in.
Picture of the rain coming off the roof in sheets.

The next morning I woke up and it was still overcast and raining. Realizing that my trip to see the manatee was probably off, I cut my jaunt to Bocas by two days and flew back to Panama City. There were other adventures to be had in Panama!!!!

Panama Part 1:The Canal

Picture of Ernie, Kristin and her kids Nikolas & Peter with a Panamax ship in the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal

The postings from Panama will all have the captions of the photos that I would have posted had I not left my camera in the car of a very nice couple who gave me a ride down from the Boquete Ranger Station into town on the third to last day of my trip to Panama. So the question in many of your minds may be, why Panama? My friend from high school, Kristin S., moved down to the country with the Canal last year as her husband took a job coordinating native tree reforestation. So, why not go visit?

I really can't do the Canal justice except to say that I could sit there all day and watch the ships go into and out of the locks. The Canal is actually oriented North-South with the Pacific Ocean on the southern end and the Caribbean/Atlantic at the northern terminus. Transiting from the Pacific to Atlantic one enters the canal and reaches the Miraflores Locks. Here's a link to see a two Panamax ships in the Miraflores Locks. In two separate steps, a ship is raised about 50 feet where it exits into Miraflores Lake and a couple miles later is raised up another 30 feet at the Pedro Miquel Lock.

Picture of a Panamax before being raised.

Picture of a Panamax after being raised.

At this point a ship enters the 8 mile long Gaillard Cut. It is the Gaillard Cut which was where the majority of the digging was done in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Because two ships cannot fit side-by-side in the Cut at one time, groups of ships traverse the Cut in one direction. When they clear, then another set can traverse the Cut in the opposite direction. This bottleneck limits the number of ships that can be in the Canal system at one time.

Proceeding out of the Cut, a ship enters Gatun Lake, formed by the damming of the Chagres River. Gatun Lake is 85 feet above Sea Level. Ships continue North until they enter the three step Gatun Locks which bring them back down to sea level. Ships then exit into the Atlantic Ocean ready to sail off to their final destination.

The Panama Canal is an amazing feat of engineering. I can't put into words the excitement I felt everytime I saw a huge ship being raised or lowered. The large ships have this regal look about them as they slowly glide into place in one of the locks and then in one continuous motion are lowered.