Rainbow over Boquete
	Launching on the zip line
	Don on the zip line – Don's final zip
	Coffee Estate Inn dinner for two
	Indigenous home in Boquete
	Rainforest hike
	Cabanas at Tranquilo Bay
	Tranquilo Bay's tiny red frog
	Don – kayaking among the mangroves
	Tranquilo Bay sloth munching
	Sunrise over Tranquilo Bay
	Ship entering Miraflores Locks, Panama Canal
	Casco Viejo house
	Casco Viejo renovated house
	Gold altar in St. Joseph Church, Panama City
	Panama City skyline

Panama – January 2012 Travelogue

Shortly after we arrived in Panama on New Year's Day, 2012, the New York Times travel section proclaimed Panama to be the number one tourist destination for 2012. Now, that's good timing!

Flights to Panama City are easy and frequent from U.S. cities. We arrived on a balmy evening, surprised by the large array of skyscrapers that filled the sky as we flew into the international airport. First thing the next morning, we took off for the domestic airport for our short flight to the mountainous west of Panama and the city of David. Incidentally, Panama runs from east to west, so the Caribbean is north and the Pacific is south, which makes orienting yourself a little odd since the sun seems to come up over the wrong ocean.

We waited at the tiny domestic airport in Panama City for a couple of hours because our flight was late—not that the inbound plane was that late—just that nothing happened once it landed. There was lots of activity, but not for our waiting crowd of passengers. No one said anything and no one knew anything. "It will come" was all anyone knew. Finally, an hour and a half past our scheduled departure, someone came and herded us out to our plane. That made us very late for our first real activity, the Tree Trek zip line in Boquete, an hour's drive from David.

Finally, we got our rental car and drove behind maddeningly slow traffic up and up a windy road, through small villages and beautiful forests to Boquete, at 4,000 feet of elevation, a major coffee producing area. We found the Tree Trek office just as they were loading the truck to take our group to the beginning of the trek, the zip line excursion.

The trek starts at 6,000 feet above sea level, so a jacket is a must (which Don found out the hard way as he shivered his way down to the end at 4,000 feet). The zip line is a thrilling series of thick cables that cut back and forth across a deep river valley, from platform to platform, high up in the canopy of the rain forest. You get into a harness, hook onto the cable (with a lot of help from the excellent guides), zip (hence the name) down the cables at relatively high speeds from one platform to another, fourteen platforms in all. Beautiful, fast, and lots of fun.

We moved on to The Coffee Estate Inn, and one of the three charming bungalows nestled in the midst of coffee trees overlooking the valley. Across the valley is the highest mountain in Panama, a beautiful volcano covered with dark forest. Because of its elevation, Boquete is cool and breezy.

The owners, Canadians who've lived in Boquete for fifteen years, roast their own coffee every morning and leave the roasted beans, with a coffee grinder, in each bungalow so you can enjoy truly fresh-roasted coffee. It smells divine. Breakfast is in your bungalow with homemade breads and fresh fruit. The owners are also gourmet chefs, so one night we enjoyed a superb dinner served in our bungalow, complete with white linens and a garland of tropical flowers ringing the table. Dessert was lemon soufflé, freshly made, and so abundant that we finished it for breakfast.

Boquete is atwitter with birds, some native, many migratory. We left early for a morning birding tour with a Dutch woman who has lived in Boquete for fourteen years and become an expert on all the bird species there. Armed with our binoculars, we saw dozens of different species. Terry, our guide, told us that "messy" areas—those that have lots of underbrush and unkempt trees—are best for birding. She could recognize every bird that flitted quickly past us and tell us where it nested, how it migrated, what its breeding habits were, and what it ate.

The next morning, we woke up to a vajareque, "the mist that's not quite rain," with sun flooding the valley and clouds floating across the mountains across the valley. Over all this arched a spectacular rainbow, made so vivid by the mist filling the air.

We left the inn to drive across Panama through some of the most beautiful mountains and cloud forests I've ever seen. Because of the vajareque, the mountains are shrouded in clouds that let you peek at the peaks from time to time. The Highlands are an area of deep valleys, steep mountains and volcanoes, all covered with dense forest. This part of Panama is inhabited mostly by indigenous Panamanians, living in small, often very poor, villages and still maintaining at least some of their culture. Most of the Europeans we met have a low opinion of the native people. We found all the Panamanians we met, however, to be warm, welcoming and knowledgeable.

When we reached the Caribbean coast, we took a water taxi with very hard seats for about thirty minutes to Isla Colon, slapping the waves as we bounced along. We arrived at Bocas del Toro, a seedy beach town, finally got lunch at an equally seedy coffee shop, before our host from Tranquilo Bay Lodge picked us up for another, nicer boat ride to the resort, overlooking a bay on a small island, surrounded by mangrove swamps and low mangrove islands. The story of how they bought the land and built the resort is truly one of imagination, guts, perseverance and courage.

Two couples from Houston had a dream of owning a Caribbean resort. Land was so expensive on the heavily visited islands that they started looking for a lesser known and lower cost option, finally finding the archipelago off the Caribbean coast of Panama where Tranquilo Bay is currently located. It took five years for the two men to build the lodge, six cabins, outbuildings and boat docks, literally pouring every inch of cement and setting every board and screw themselves, with a little help from local laborers. They had to cross the mangrove swamp on foot carrying all their equipment and materials until they finished a dock with a long walkway through the mangroves leading up to their hilltop location in the midst of the rain forest.

Meanwhile, their wives stayed in Houston and worked in their executive jobs, sending them money and supporting the families until the lodge could open, seven years ago. Four children and years of hard labor later, they proudly own a hand-built oasis with hiking paths (muddy from lots of rain), fishing, boating, birding and kayaking choices for their guests. A beautiful retreat in the Caribbean, just as they'd dreamed.

When we arrived at Tranquilo Bay, we went for a jungle hike on very muddy trails, covered with a dripping canopy of many kinds of trees, most covered with bromeliads and some showing off lovely, blooming orchids. Vines, air roots, and low-growing ferns and palms fill all the remaining space, so it is very dense.

We went to a couple of pools formed by a dark stream that hummingbirds frequent for their baths. And this is not just a fluffle of feathers under a little water. You can hear the little creatures coming in as their wings beat the air. Then they plop themselves into the water, completely submerging their tiny bodies for just an instant before rocketing straight up and flying onto nearby vines and branches to clean their feathers. They do this over and over. Just amazing to see them disappear completely in the pool and shoot out again still flying. Three males engaged in constant airborne battles in between dips, hardly making time to dry off between dunking and fighting.

There is a teeny, bright red poisonous frog here, about an inch long and beautiful. It lays one egg at a time in a foamy ball of sperm popped out by the male. When the egg hatches, the female carries one tadpole at a time up into the canopy and deposits it into a flower full of water. When the tadpole becomes a frog, it creeps back down the tree and into the water below.

The spiders, which are never my favorite creatures, are very colorful and beautiful if you like eight-legged animals (I prefer four). The most common ones we saw produce elaborate yellow webs that reminded me of Charlotte's web.

The next morning, it dumped rain, so we lazed around until after lunch before going kayaking through the mangrove swamps and lagoons. These are Red Mangroves, which tolerate salt. They are deep green, but have also lots of yellow leaves that are the "sacrificial" leaves, the ones that absorb the salt and die so that the other leaves can stay healthy even though the roots are in salt water. The mangroves' roots are great tangles of curving wood that are covered with small snails, clams, and mussels. When these die, their shells eventually fall off and lodge among the roots. That, along with the sediment carried off by the intense rains and coral reefs that thrive in the shallow water, gradually form muck, then soil, then sand and, eventually, narrow beaches covered with grasses.

The mangrove forests create islands that are scattered all over this archipelago. We kayaked through the quiet lagoons, looking at coral, upside down jellyfish with their heads in the sand and their broad bodies pointing up, sea anemones, and lots of fish. The water is so clear. We saw big schools of minnows jumping out of the water to avoid being eaten by big fish. Peaceful (for us, not the minows) and pretty.

Another morning we took a speed boat and some kayaks to a small barrier island about five miles from Tranquilo Bay. It started to drizzle when we arrived and continued to rain all the time we were there, but we didn't care. Most of the island is a national park with a great trail through it, so we wandered across the island and along the beaches, enjoying the jungle, birds, flowers and huge variety of plant life. Several hours later, we were drenched, but still warm, and decided to postpone kayaking until later, but gave up as the rain persisted. I think we're wusses.

We left Tranquilo Bay early for a flight to Panama City from Bocas del Toro, arriving in Panama City in time to see many of the sights there. Most important, of course, is the Panama Canal. We visited the Miraflores Locks, along with hundreds of other admiring tourists (We'll visit a different set of locks if we take a group to Panama) and were fortunate enough to watch three large ships passing through the locks. Panama is building a new set of locks next to the current ones to accommodate the super-sized ships that now are too big to go through the Canal.

Panama City's skyline is a long line of office and residential skyscrapers, set around the bay from the oldest remaining part of the city, called Casco Viejo. We stayed at a small hotel in Casco Viejo, six suites in an old convent. This area is in the midst of a transformation from slum to chic, and still has a long way to go. General Noriega's palace and offices were here and, when President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama to depose Noriega, our Air Force bombed the government buildings and residences. These are still bombed out shells. Around them, however, small hotels, tourist shops, and good restaurants are filling in. Families still live in the hollow ruins of once-lovely buildings while next door another colonial-era building has been charmingly renovated.

The New York Times got it right. Panama is a wonderful country to visit. It is beautiful, colorful, interesting, with wonderful people.

We will be planning a 10-day trip to Panama for some time in 2013, depending on interest. Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy our notes of our journey and the photos of this stunning country.

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