Would you rather look at this:
Or this?
Or perhaps this:
Or my personal favorite:
But to get on with the blogging -
El Valle is a very different beast than Panama City
In Panama (what the locals call their capital city), we didn't take any photographs outside of major tourist sites, mostly out of a desire not to attract any more attention to ourselves than two large, pale members of an alien race would inevitably attract.
It was only partly for the sake of not flashing our expensive electronics. The place is probably no more dangerous than, say, Philadelphia. You avoid certain areas, other areas you just keep your head up and eyes open. But really, we like to pretend we're not tourists and carrying a camera doesn't help the mental image we have of ourselves.
Frankly, though, I hated living in Philadelphia. Great place to visit; never want to live there again.
People in El Valle smile at us.
Of course, as we pass folks on the road they are careful not to make eye contact. But as soon as we say "buenas!" their faces warm right up and they smile and return the greeting.
I think this says more about how travelers tend to interact with the locals than anything about the locals themselves.
In a way, the best part about being in El Valle is the hospitality of the owner of our hostel, Esteban. It's like we had an instant amigo, someone to converse with us and tell us about the area. He laughs a lot, which is always nice, and his English is better than the majority of Panamanians.
Esteban is great, and it doesn't hurt that the public area of the hostel is exactly what we need it to be: shady with a great breeze, tropical landscaping, tables for me and hammocks for John.
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| And orchids! They grow wild here, though this is probably a cultivar (removing from the forest is actually a big problem). |
We spent two nights here last month, and we liked it so much that we're back for two weeks. If you find yourself in the area and looking for a decent price for decent, basic digs, I definitely recommend it: Hostal Cariguana, hostalcariguana.galeon.com. If you don't speak Spanish, call the third phone number listed on the Contact page.
Starting to sound like Esteban paid me to say this. Maybe I should ask for a discount.
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| Who doesn't love laughing parrots? |
The town
is tiny. Awesome change of pace after the city. Everything is within walking distance of everything else. Maybe three miles long by two miles wide. And the best part?
It's nestled within the ancient walls of an extinct volcano
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| Hopefully extinct. |
And so the other evening we accidentally hiked to the top of a mountain. We were aiming for a waterfall, but it's pretty hard to navigate when your map sucks.
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| That's the satellite view. (Thank you for not suing me over this screenshot, Google Maps. I promise I won't make any money from this blog post.) |
We started with walking up a crazy steep dirt road
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| Don't worry, this wasn't the steep part. |
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| A view. |
We managed to meet a couple of Michiganians (?) while trudging our way up, and one man of undisclosed origin who told us about the secret path to the top.
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| John is the star of my pictorial story; otherwise you'd be looking at a bunch of photos I took of myself hiking up a mountain. Ha, yeah right. |
The path was pretty treacherous, studded with volcanic rock.
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| The barnacles of the earth. Don't trip. |
The views were getting pretty good so we pressed on, keeping careful watch of the sun as it crept toward sunset.
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| Only the blowing of the wind and the crunch of grit under our feet. |
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| All this used to be tropical forest. |
We were rewarded for our efforts, though:
Alas, the light was leaving us and it was a long walk home, so we started back without traversing the ridge to the very end.
This adventure has no end date, though, so we felt good about our decision.
Plus we nearly killed ourselves anyway, stumbling and sliding down that dirt road.
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