Valle del Rio Inn Boquete

... the Panama side and when we crossed over it was called Canas Gordones. (there is supposed to be a squiggle over the n in Canas but we can't get one). The border was super fast the longest part was getting photo copies. It took us 40 minutes in total. That is a really fast crossing. Most times it takes an hour and 40 minutes. On the way back we stopped in San Vito an Italian town and had some awesome pizza. After that we ...

... to me because the
park ranger had told us specifically where the trouble spots would be
and then told us how and when to meet the bus on the other side. (Rob
and I were pretty sure that the guard sized them up as not being fit
enough to climb it. I took it as a compliment that he thought that we
could do it! Yea us!)



We hit the trail at 10am and finished at 3pm. I think we did about
8K...probably about 5 miles. Then we hiked another hour to ...

... 25 bucks!!!! We were STOKED! That's almost a weeks worth of groceries! And it was FUN! Apparently we did a good job because we've got the gig whenever we want it...rent's covered, now food?! Nice!

Saturday morning was a little rough to say the least. We were exhausted but had to be up and ready to go to David by 1030. Long story short, we were supposed to go with GHA to Santiago (half way between ...

... however Father David is trying to change this and has spoken to the Minister of Education about getting a teacher to come in the afternoons to teach and oversee the children who want to stay.

And the kids...oh the kids..they are so sweet,innocent and full of love. It's fulfilling to be able to make them smile but at the same time heartbreaking because you know that most likely they don't have anyone at home to show them that same attention. Leaving was bittersweet, but we ...

... headed to the canteen that Pancho had told us about, what a find! We were eating massive plates of food each with drinks and desert for under $6 in total. Bargain! We ate there four times and became huge fans of the glazed plantain and chicken in sauce, followed by some kind of cake for dessert. I always find you get so hungry when you travel.

Boquete is beautiful. Its set in a valley surrounded by mountains, lush coffee plantations, intermingled with palm ...

... or latin names of things. He may not even know what the plant or insect is generally called, but he will gladly put something in the ground to see if it grows, or see if the insect will feed next to the plant its feeding on to see if the plant acts as a deterrent for the pests. Its all a case of trial and error with him. I have to admit I got a bit of a shock when I was introduced to him, for Coenje looked almost identical to my late oupa Coenie (weird how they ...

... eat at Kanibal, the new great restaurant, but there were closed until 12:30, and our plane would be somewhere over Chiriqui at that point. So instead we ate the last of our decadent brownies that we purchased from Pure Tree, the all natural shop “up in the hill” in Old Bank. YUUUMMMM!

We arrived in David, and found ourselves the best car rental deal. This kind of reminded me of when I went to Aruba with Libs, Nance and Annie and ...

... charge you an entry fee if you are for the "wrong" country. Luckily we weren't! However you do need an onwards ticket out Panama, which we didn't have, but Maja smiled sweetly at the man and gave him an complex and confusing explanation, which just made him look even more tried, so in the end he let us go without the ticket, think he just wanted some peace and quite. We have been so surprised by Panama, we were going to travel straight through to get to Panama City and then out ...

... was pretty rough. We also visited a number of gardens which had very beautiful flowers. Yesterday we got 2 buses from Boquete, one down one side of the mountain and one up the other to Guadaloupe, a tiny village. This is the starting point for the quetzal trail- an elusive blue bird which inhabits this area- which were we planning on doing tomorrow, however weve just found out the trail is closed so were not doing it anymore, which is kind of good because its about 6hrs ...

... 20-something guy's house. We all decided it'd be best not to stay, since it was so far from town where we would pick up Cory, and asked the taxi driver to take us back. He was a nice guy and didn't charge us as much as he could have. As a last resort, we figured we'd ask at the nice hotel right next to the bus terminal. It would be $60 for a room for 5, which wasn't horrible ($12/each), but we didn't know how crammed in there we'd be. The receptionist swung the door open and ...