Trip to Panama

The first day we arrived and planned to take a taxi to the bus station, and then a bus to El Valle-- a village in the crater of an extinct volcano.  But there were some problems with the taxi part of this plan, to the tune of $200.  Yes, that's right.  The taxi drivers wanted $200 to drive us across the street to the bus station.  (We would have walked but we didn't know the way.) Mike made a wise choice and found us a rental car- for not too much more than the taxis!  And so we missed the Panamanian bus experience, but gained the ability to stop wherever, whenever we wanted.  It was a really great thing!  =)

We stopped for lunch on the way to El Valle at a little Columbian restaurant and enjoyed grilled chicken and pork and cold drinks.  Peter chased their chickens and we found a cashew tree and sampled the fruit.  (the juice made our mouths very dry)

In El Valle we checked out a couple of hotels and decided on a cute little place.  The woman looked pleased that we would stay there and said she would make up the beds while we saw the petroglyphs and found a place to eat supper.  It was 6 pm and we told her when we'd be back--but when we returned, the hotel was closed, locked and completely dark.  We were baffled.  After calling, "Hello!"  and walking all around, beeping the horn, and deciding there was really no one there, we drove back to the restaurant to borrow their phone.  Mike called (our only Spanish speaker) and the woman from the hotel said she goes home at 6 pm every night.   

What?

We drove around town looking at one dark hotel after another.  Apparently the whole town-- other than restaurant owners-- goes home and to bed at 6 pm.  Naomi was crying in the back seat, afraid we'd be spending the night in the mini-van.  (10 people+ luggage, 8 seats)  I was just glad we had a mini-van!  Finally Mike found a hotel with an actual living, breathing person in sight, and we stayed there.

When we woke up in the morning we were surprised to see that we were in paradise!  Misty hills, squawking parrots, bright flowers, mangos falling at our feet, hammocks to swing in, and a little stream running by.  

We drove to the zip line hut (wooden beams with palm fronds for a roof, with various plants growing in the fronds on the roof), strapped on harnesses and hiked (about 45 minutes, I think) through the rain forest to the first zip line.  The guide explained he would strap us onto the steel cables that were strung from one platform to another.  I felt sick.  The fall to the forest floor was hundreds of feet below us.  I get vertigo just looking down a couple of flights of stairs.  And my children!  What kinds of a mother would swing her children- Tarzan-like- out into the jungle?  I had to sit down.  The kids were ecstatic. 

I don't know who went first.  But I know when they said it was my turn I knew I would pass out.  Click.  My harness was attached to the cable.  Thick leather gloves were put on my hands, and I was told to "hold here" (behind the pulley system) "not here" (in front of the pulley system).  I sat in the harness seat, like I was told to do, and they shoved me off the platform into the mists of the jungle.  

Aauugghh!!!

The other platform loomed closer and closer and I gripped the steel cable to slow myself.  Thud.  I landed.  And...

gulp.  I was alive.  and...

Woo Hoo!  Was that ever fun!

I turned around to take pictures of my kids following me across the river below.

We went over several lines, including one that crossed the El Macho waterfalls, which were gorgeous from the platform after I landed, and which I photographed mid-air while I was on the zip line, but my memory is mostly of terror at being suspended above the ground and letting go of the cable to get out my camera.  My feet are sweating even as I think about it.

When we got back to the hut, we changed into swimming suits and went swimming in the Freezing pond below the falls.  It was gorgeous.  Some Panamanian teen-aged boys were there, clearly showing off for the girls.  We took photos with them, and talked for a while.  They were nice, and the flowers were amazing.  I had never considered that the Impatience flowers we plant in our yard must grow wild somewhere.  Well, that somewhere is Panama.

Later we went horseback riding around the streets of El Valle, and visited the little zoo there, where we saw caymen, ocelots, a puma, and the famed golden frogs of El Valle.  The frogs only live in El Valle, and they are seriously facing extinction because of a fungus that grows on their skin and suffocates them.  The zoo is trying to preserve some of them.  We were not allowed into the building where they were kept, but could see them through the windows.  They were bright yellow with black spots.  Very cute. Lots of other animals were there, too, including capybaras, and some enormous pig things that I did not photograph.   

The next day we drove to Portobello, on the northern (Atlantic/Caribbean) side of Panama.  We stopped at some 1600's Spanish fort ruins where the Spaniards tried to defend Panama from Pirates of the Caribbean.  It didn't go too well, from the looks of it.  The kids found a baby bird and secret passage ways, and we all enjoyed hiking around the ruins.

Our hotel was called Scuba Panama, and it was... umm.... scary.  Mike escorted a cockroach out of our bedroom, and most of us chose to shower outside, in the places designed to rinse off after swimming.  Not that the ocean water was inviting.  Naomi went in and came out with her feet stained black-- I think from an oil spill.  It was all quite disheartening.  But pretty-- as long as you didn't look at the water.  Flowers and coconuts and amazing birds.  

But we were there to snorkel.  We asked them to boat us to a distant island that was supposed to have clear water, but they refused.  So we settled for their recommendation of a closer beach.  Bad plan.  I swam around the cove and saw lots and lots of sand and dead leaves.  The kids, however, were pleased.  They found a few fish and some coral, while Mike, my mom and I walked along the tiny strip of beach.  Mike saw a toucan fly away, and we all saw hundreds of hermit crabs.  But the most amazing thing was the ant highway.  The ants had cleared a path about 5 inches wide and hundreds of feet long through the forest floor, and they were carrying pieces of leaves in one direction along the path, and returning empty-handed, so to speak, back the other way.  I wished I'd been an ant reporter and could have interviewed them to find out why they were doing this.  The path had forks in the road, and branched off in several directions.  It was amazing.

We did not stay there two nights, as planned, but returned to Panama City where we found a clean hotel with hot water (our first since we'd arrived- it was heaven!) and beds we felt safe in.  

Let me pause to say:

We are SO spoiled as Americans!

While in Portobello we were parked outside a cinderblock house.  A mother and several mostly-naked children were there and they had nothing.  The door stood open and I could see into their empty house.  A few clothes hung on a barbed wire.  Two thin cats prowled the yard keeping their eyes on a rooster, and coconuts littered the ground.  The ocean was across the street, and people were catching lobsters, so I knew they could get food, but I turned from looking at them to look at my children-- dressed, clean, in an air conditioned car, with multiple changes of clothes in their colorful, cute suitcases, reading books and listening to music on their cell phones.  I felt absurdly wealthy.  

But I digress, I was talking about our hotel with polished stone floors, white soft beds and fluffy clean towels in Panama City.  This is the life we are used to.  A pool downstairs, a concierge to hep us find dinner, and tiny bottles of sweetly scented shampoo.  It was so nice to have a hot shower that I shampooed my hair twice and shaved my legs, just so I could soak in the warm water.  

In Panama City we had the most wonderful fruit smoothies, visited Old Panama and saw the palace, went to the Smithsonian marine research center and saw cool animals, shopped at the handicrafts market, and drank more smoothies.  The kids stuck their hands in the Pacific the day we got there so they could be in the Atlantic and Pacific both on the same day.  

And then it was time to go home!  My mom almost was not allowed to get on the plane- but she made a fuss and they let her on.  The flight home was uneventful (thank heavens!) and we saw Inkheart on the plane.  It was pretty good.  We got home at 3 am.  

And went to bed.  =)