Boquete
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2007
1
28
33
Trip End
Ongoing
Boquete,
Panama
Thursday, November 22, 2007
From Bocas we traveled in a kind of spiral to end up not all that far from where we started, but after six hours on the road, in the little mountain town of Boquete. Boquete appears not to be famous for anything, but it is close to two of Panama's biggest national parks and has a reputation for being a good place to spot the elusive quetzal, a highly ornamental bird, once described as the most beautiful in the world. Their extraordinarily long green tail feathers were prized for use in Mayan head dresses, and I doubt that it is a coincidence that their favourite deity was quetzal-coatl. Curtails hang out in Costa Rica and Guatemala, but they are apparently easier to see in Panama. In Boquete they reckon you are pretty likely to see one if you are there between February and April. I can vouch that there are no guarantees in November.
A highlight that we skipped is a day trip up the highest point in Panama, volcano Baru, which clocks in at a little under 4000. You can climb at at night and watch dawn from the summit, but it requires a midnight start.
A waterfall
On day one most of us walked a shortish distance (having covered 10 km by taxi first) to a waterfall, where curtails are sometimes seen
A beetle
. It is a pretty hike with some fine Brummel-smothered trees and a pretty stream, but the unnamed (so far as I know) waterfall at the end is not that much to get excited about. I did get excited about the very painful stinging plant that I met as we milled around at a place where the path disappeared into the stream. It felt like a burn and quickly raised welts. We think that it was probably a kind of poison ivy.As we ineffectually nursed our wounds by splashing water on them, we found a couple of little brown frogs lurking on the edge of the stream.
We walked back into town along the very pretty river valley, past coffee bushes and bizarre rock formations that I am told are actually quite common and known as columnar basalt. The result is rock fractured into very regular pentagons, a quite unnatural looking structure.
The continental divide
The next day we went for a guided hike up the local mountains to the top of the continental divide, which affords a view of both oceans. This is an excellent hike for quetzals, but only between February and April. It is a pretty hike through protected rain forest where a range of interesting mammals still live. Unfortunately it was very quiet when we were there and by the time we got to the top, the view was reduced to looking at clouds. We did, however, find a number of puma prints on our path which must have been fairly recent, and some interesting bugs, including what we were told was the blue morpho caterpillar, and some frogs.
Take home message: nice place to visit. Very laid back. Lots of good hiking. Come in summer.
