We're Panamaniacs!

Today's post is all about Boquete, Panama. It is in an area known as the Valley of Eternal Spring. Sounds like a Danielle Steele novel. However, after spending a few days there, the name seems apt. Flowers and fungi abound, with most all of the flowers in bloom most all of the time. The downside is that, just as you would expect from eternal spring, it rains constantly. I asked our guide if they have a dry season like most rainforests and he said no. So, without further ado, here are a lot of floral pictures and the like. I will surely run out of flower jokes by the third picture, but I will give it my best for our readers.

What they have more of in Boquete than anywhere I have been on earth (or any other planet) is hibiscus flowers. They are everywhere. Additionally, they are bigger than anywhere else. And with more color. Namely, just better. Here was one that greeted us at our hotel. Well, it didn't actually speak or anything, but it was present when we got there.
Later on the day of our arrival (after a long nap), we made our way to some very large and very free public gardens. Apparently, they and the home in them are owned by some 100 year old architect from Miami who built them 40 years ago and has always kept them free. His lawn ornaments are possibly meant to advertise the fact that he is from Miami. Or at least an American who started building the gardens when lawn flamingos were all the rage.

This picture was meant to demonstrate that the flower is so big I could have fit my head behind it. Now that I see the picture, I can see that my head is way bigger than I previously thought. Still, I think I could have hid my nose behind it without difficulty.

We got a new camera to replace the one that was stolen last month, so we can once again take self-portraits that have more than just our big heads. This is from a three story lookout tower above the gardens.

Tara is in shock in this picture that my head was too big to fit behind one of the flowers. Her dainty little head looks like it has a better shot.

Not all the flowers are hibiscuses. They also had some orange flowers. Don't know what they are, but this tree had a lot of them. I'll call them sunshine bells unless someone on this blog comes up with a better name.

This garden even had its own bridges, built entirely for show, over coy ponds. You could just as easily walk around, but this old guy apparently thought, "Hey, we've got some water. Why don't we build a big suspension bridge over it?" I like his style. If I were old and rich, that's the kind of thing I would do.

With all the rain come rainbows. On average, it rains about every 7 minutes in Boquete with the sun appearing about every four cycles. So, about every 28 minutes, there is a rainbow. Or two. I think we captured nearly all of them from our visit on film, but I will only bore you with one.

On our way to hike in the cloud forest, we passed this castle. The owner died while it was being built a long time ago and it was never finished. Later, we saw some other castles. Again, I like it that eccentric people from the world over go to Panama and decide to build things like castles. A castle and a suspension bridge (possibly with a moat) for me when I'm old and rich.

I posted a picture of a white flower like this a few months ago from Peru. Turns out that Boquete thought the white ones were nice, but turned them pink for more impact. And made the shrub have about 10 times more flowers on it. Very nice.

Some amazing volcanic rock structures exist in the area. This one is apparently a popular place to train for expert rock climbers. I jumped out and scaled it with no ropes, but I wouldn't allow pictures of me victorious over the rock because I thought it might seem vain.

Tara is really proud of this picture of a flower that is locally called Cowboy's Spur. These occur a lot in the cloud forest and are about an inch tall. I think Tara took such a good picture here because she isn't much bigger than they are so she has a good perspective. Finally some fungus! This little guy is such a perfect mushroom, but red. It was one of about a half dozen. I could have stared at it for hours, but we had to go see more fungi.

The biggest and oldest trees in the area are ash trees. This one is about 500 years old. Our tour guide took this one, which is very nice, but covertly took a series of Tara trying to climb up to this point, which is much funnier. Unless you were there, in which case it wasn't so funny. But she made it!

Two fungi in one picture. Maybe not the most exciting of the kingdom, but not bad and a two-for-one special.

This is a nest of the quetzal, the most beautiful bird in the western hemisphere according to most people. We knocked, but the bird didn't seem to be home. Okay, so no knocking, but the guide tried to make bird sounds and nothing came out. And he wouldn't let us cut down the tree to look for it.

We hiked to a waterfall that was severly impacted by flooding last year. All the rocks at the bottom came over the falls, filling in a pool that had been there, and diverting about half the flow of the falls somewhere else. This was mostly interesting because all the tour companies were still showing people pictures of a huge pool where they could swim. Truth in advertising hasn't made it to Central America.

A forest of fungus. So small, yet so perfectly shaped. And they didn't try to run at all when I photographed them.

Tara thought that this fungus looked like potato chips. I thought it was fun that she and the guide had joined in my fungus fanaticism by this point in the trip. We didn't see any wildlife, so might as well see something fun.

What makes this mushroom especially fun is that it is surrounded by hordes of caterpillars. We videoed them to show them all moving in mass, but we still haven't gotten around to adding video. Take our word for it, they were cool.

Speaking of cool, look at this one that looks like a moose antler. Well, not nearly as big as a moose antler, but about the same shape.

I am a sucker for the colored fungi. And the more the merrier. Here is a nice orange one eating a tree.

Again, I try to compare my head size to the flower size. Again, I realize only now when looking at the picture that my head is gigantic. You will note my smile in these photos, though. Tara criticized me for not smiling enough the day before, so all my Boquete pictures have this smile.

This one takes me out of the equation and just shows the lovely white and pink hibiscus outside our hotel door.

And another. I know you are sick of them by now, but they were really great in person. If you are bored, just think about whatever your favorite thing is for all the rest of the flower pictures. Or just skip to the next post.

Only Tara's family will appreciate this one. Skip it if you aren't related.

My favorite fungus! Tiny, slimy, and colorful. It's the trifecta of the fungus world.

This is a view from the top of our hike in the cloud forest. This was the good visibility. About 30 seconds later, the fog rolled in and it got even worse. Tara was less than pleased that we hiked all that way to see some fog. I wasn't thrilled about the view, but I saw some great fungus, so it balanced out.

Back in town, we saw this sign. Tara is a huge Golden Girls fan, and Shady Pines is where Sofia Petrillo on that show lived until it burned down. (No, of course I didn't know the character's name. Tara just spelled it for me.)

They have nice, big beetles in Panama. This one was walking along, and I took the opportunity to grab it for a quick picture. It didn't seem to mind.

Last one is actually a moss or lichen of some kind, but it could almost pass for a fungus. Covering a huge rock. Very nice.

In conclusion, if you don't like flowers and/or fungi, you should probably avoid Boquete. If you like Spring, you should probably go. Also, tons of Americans and Germans retire there, so if you like retired Americans and Germans, it could be a good place for you. We really liked the city and surrounding area, though the rain would get on our nerves if we were there for more than a few days.

Take Me Down to the Panama City...

(where the jungle is green and the Canal is pretty...oh won't you please take me ho-ome...yeah, yeah!)

The home stretch of the first leg of our travels has begun--hard to believe it, but we fly back to the US less than one month from now. Meanwhile, we are on a new continent, technically, and in a new country, Panama! There was a lot to see and do here in our first few days, which were based in the capital, Panama City, and the nearby Canal Zone.

Our first impression of the city, seen from afar at night as we came in from the airport in our $28 taxi ($8 more, I would like to note, than we then spent on a hotel room!), was that it was super-glitzy. The skyline, which you see below, is thick with skyscrapers and was all lit up, as was the waterfront we drove along. We passed American chains like Bennigans and Hard Rock. I imagine that if you stayed in one of the "better" hotels in the business district, you might never have this impression of the city challenged.

Of course, we were not staying in one of the better hotels! Our $20 a night got us a room with low lighting, a rubber-encased mattress, and a couple of not-very-family-friendly TV channels.
(The establishment managed to be classy enough not to post by-the-hour rates in the lobby, however!)

What was nice about the low-rent hotel district is that it was much closer to Casco Viejo, the old section of Panama City, than the nicer hotels are. The old town is a mix of beautifully restored colonial buildings and crumbling ones. Here is a shot of the cathedral, on the main square in that area.For some reason, this huge toucan was being delivered to the cathedral.Las Bovedas were originally prison cells built right along the waterfront in the old town; at high tide, prisoners were submerged up to their necks. Now it has been converted to art galleries and a fancy restaurant.
The presidential palace in the old city, still decked out for Panamanian Independence Day, which was November 3. It was originally built in the 1670s and spruced up in the 1920s. The buildings immediately surrounding the palace are beautiful, but a couple of blocks away things start to get a bit dingy again.
Flags were still flying everywhere for Independence Day. This one had a giant moth on it.
Not far from the presidential palace is the fish market, which has lots of guys like this one hanging around.
Another nice church in Panana City, this one closer to the business district. See those clouds? It's still rainy season, as we learned very quickly.
Our greatest frustration with Panama City was finding places. There is no home mail delivery in Panama, so no buildings bother having numbered addresses. When you are getting directions somewhere, it's all by landmarks, so people tell you things like "it's right next to the El Rey supermarket," instead of giving you a number or even an intersection, since there are hardly any street signs, either. So if you don't know where the supermarket is, you're up a creek. Finding stuff in the city usually took us about twice as long as it might have elsewhere.

On our second day in Panama, we took the train across the isthmus to Colon, the port city on the Atlantic side. The whole trip, ocean to ocean, took only an hour. The train costs 10 times more than the bus between the two cities, but has the advantage of running right next to the canal, so we were able to see quite a lot of it (note the panoramic windows). We compromised by taking the bus back.
Look, it's the Panama Canal! (Cooler pictures later.)
Later in the journey, when there was water on both sides of the train. Lake Gatun, the huge artificial lake that was created in the construction of the canal, reached far on both sides of us.

10 kilometers from Colon are the Gatun Locks, which raise and lower ships three levels between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Gatun. (There are two sets of locks to do the same thing on the Pacific side, Miraflores and Pedro Miguel.) We took a taxi from Colon to visit these locks and watch ships pass through, which was really cool. As a bonus, our taxi driver worked for many years in different jobs at the canal, and knew everyone on duty at the locks and explained to us how all sorts of stuff worked!

Here you can see how the wheels work to open the massive gates of the locks.
A set of gates at Gatun locks, closed. Note how much higher the water is on the left side of the gate than the right.

Here you can see the water roiling as this compartment to the right of the gate is filled. In just about five minutes, the water on both sides of the gate was at the same level...

...and the gates began to open!

Check out the two huge ships that we watched pass through the locks. Both were definitely "Panamax" ships, which means they were built specifically to be the biggest possible ships that can fit through the Panama Canal. I really don't think they had more than about a foot of leeway on either side as they came through the locks! Note the barge in front of the ship on the left that helps guide it through, and the railroad cars on either side of both ships that do the same.

Squeeeeeeze! This ship was from Russia, the other one from Hong Kong. We learned that it costs your average cruise ship about $250,000 to pass through the canal (tolls are charged by weight). Our taxi driver took this photo of us outside of Gatun Locks, with the first American train to help push a boat through the canal. A terrific book to read all about the history of the canal (from the first, doomed French attempts to build one in the 1880s to the ultimate American project and all of its attendant political intrigues) is "Panama Fever" by Matthew Parker. We were lucky enough to swap our friend Maribel for this book in Chile and both really enjoyed it--we felt like canal experts by the time we got to Panama!
Back in Panama City, we came across some important signs. We think that this one translates to "Don't pee on grandma."
This one needs no translation. Kosher deli in Panama!?!? Sadly, I think it must be coming soon, because we couldn't actually find this place in the mall where we found the sign. Ah, thwarted in our attempts to Jew it up in Panama...

OK, so, the other cool thing we did in Colon (aside from visiting Gatun Locks) was visit the Zona Libre, which is the second-biggest tax-free shopping zone in the world. We are usually not big on shopping, but we made one very important purchase there...a new camera!! Yes, we finally replaced the one that was stolen in Bolivia. We got the same camera, but the newer model, which has some cool new features like face-recognition technology (so it now knows to tag me or Andy automatically whenever we show up in a picture).

We got the new camera just in time, too, because we really put the super-zoom to use the following day, when we went birding along Pipeline Road in Soberania National Park! The park is about halfway between Panama City and Colon and is supposed to be pretty much the best place in Central America to go birding, with over 400 species recorded there. It was a little hard to arrange a trip there, and not cheap, but we had wanted to go birding for a while and figured that this was the place to do it.

Our excellent guide was Jose from Birding Panama, who picked us up at 6 AM with his scope and superstrong binoculars in tow. He was so into the birds, it was really fun to be along with him. Definitely one of the best tour guides we've had in all our travels yet.

Here are just a few of the many beautiful birds and specimens of wildlife we saw. (And Sabrina, please forgive me if I butcher some of the names--Jose made a list for us, which I conveniently left at the hotel tonight!)

A mot mot, which is related to the quetzal. Both birds have wonderful colors and long tails.A giant dragonfly is perched on the leaf in the center of this picture.
A trogon, we think, with a lovely yellow belly. Crap, we don't remember what this bird is called, but he posed nicely for us on top of this wild ginger plant.
One of three or four types of woodpeckers we saw. Based on the color, I am guessing this one was the cinnamon woodpecker.
The social flycatcher.

Iguana! This agouti was such a cutie, nibbling on some fruit fallen from a bird feeder in a yard in Gamboa, near the park.
This parakeet had so many beautiful colors on it.
Rats, we can't remember what this one was called either. But look at that amazing patterned tail!
Some of my favorite birds that we didn't get a picture of were the red-capped manakin and the red-legged honeycreeper. Google-image those two if you'd like to see some more lovely birds.

A final shot with the new cam: sunset over Panama City.

Like many places we've been, Panama City was a real mix of rich and poor, glitzy and grimy. But we really enjoyed the old city, the cheap street eats (50-cent ice cream cones and 75-cent fruit smoothies, hurrah!) and Dairy Queens (8 branches in Panama City!), which we'll cover in a future food post, and the convenience for cool day trips, like visiting the Canal, shopping at Colon, and birdwatching.