Travel in the Time of COVID: Panama III

El Valle 

(A side note – We were in El Valle from Dec. 16-23. We returned home on Christmas Day, and it took a while to get sorted, Christmas stuff done, et.)

A $40 cab ride from Nueva Gorgona brought us into the mountain town of El Valle. 

If you enjoy hiking (and don’t mind intermittent showers), this is a great place to enjoy yourself and relax. It’s a few degrees cooler than the coast (especially at night), but the days are still humid, so hiking is best done in the morning. The daily weather pattern appeared to be light rain around dawn, clear up by 8AM, then start raining around 2-3 PM with evening thunderstorms. The Apple weather app is not very accurate more than 3 hours in advance.

I requested recommendations on local hikes from the Facebook Panama Expats group and several suggestions were quickly forthcoming. Armed with the town map obtained from the tourist information office/ library with hiking trailheads marked and the recommended hikes, we were ready to be off. 

On our way out of town we were greeted by a rainbow – and it felt you could reach out and touch it. 

We started with the Road to Cariguana, which took us from town down a street called “Millionaro” – for a very good reason. The Villas and their grounds were massive with well-manicured lawns and gardens, definitely a ‘Millionaires Row”. We continued past a stable and then up the hill, continuing onto a very steep gravel road, surrounded by jungle. Occasionally the trees would part, revealing beautiful views of the valley. 

The road/ path leads to some pricey homes. I did not take a photo of the expensive Mercedes bumping down through the gravel and mud. After our 6-mile hike we returned to town and enjoyed excellent pancakes at “Deditos Dorados” (The Golden Fingers).

On one of our completely rainy days, we stayed in town and visited “Mariposas” – butterflies. El Valle has a large butterfly preserve and hatchery in town, entrance fee for foreigners $7pp, with hundreds of Blue Morphos, Monarchs and numerous other species (and the requisite video of a caterpillar creating its cocoon). 

With better weather the next day, we grabbed the bus up to Las Mesas, exiting next to Chorro El Macho. This is an extremely heavily touristed (and heavily maintained) trail to the El Macho waterfall and swimming hole ($5pp for just the waterfall, $7.50pp for both). 

It was lovely, but was the most expensive entry fee for a much shorter hike than the others. You did get the fun of walking over some swinging bridges. 

Along the walk back down the road to El Valle from El Macho, some workers from a nearby eco resort pointed out a sloth in a tree, literally just hanging there and scratching itself. They helped me get a good photo through their binoculars. 

With town only a kilometer away, we found another hike on an adjoining road, with a turnoff before town, from the map it said something with petroglyphs, it turned out to be the “Sleeping Indian Woman” ($3pp)– one of the larger (again touristed) paths in three sections. The first is actually paved in concrete to get you up to the main petroglyphs. 

Then the trail gets steep, with large, often very smooth stones. I made it about twenty minutes past the petroglyphs, near the bottom of a waterfall, when looking at the trail and knowing my sense of balance, I knew I could get up, but the only safe way for me to get down would be sliding on my bottom. John got some photos of the waterfall and I waited below and continued back together. 

The next recommended hike was out to the “Square trees” – this is where our town map failed us. The map indicated that we should go straight past the horsebackriding, and continue past the Golden Frog. It turns out, we needed to curve left, and the Golden Frog had two entrances (so when we went by it on road #1, we thought we were on the correct route). We ended up getting in an extra three miles of walking, but through a beautiful area with lovely gardens. The Square Trees preserve is in the back of another resort, with a $4 “donation” to the museum and preserve per person. Not long into the walk a sloth was conveniently crossing over a stream toward us, munching on leaves along his way.

The square trees aren’t really square, but multi-lobed, and tend to be very tall. 

Our last hike for the week took us out to El Charro Las Mozas – the description was “very easy to the first falls, moderate to the second and very challenging to the third. We walked the 2 ½ miles from town out to the falls, and picked up a pack on the way…

(We have no idea why they decided to follow, I guess they just decided they wanted a walk). We arrived as the park opened at 10AM, and was only $2pp. We made it to the second falls, 

and decided not to continue on to the third, as getting to the second required some wet feet. 

On our last evening in town, we found the best restaurant in El Valle – La Divina Commeda – which was run by an Italian family and had excellent food. John’s eggplant parmesan was different – instead of eggplant “steaks”, the eggplant was sliced thin and prepared in a similar way to lasagna with eggplant instead of pasta. 

Taxis to Panama City were expensive ($130), and the little buses were crowded and an issue for our luggage. With John’s persistence, we found and paid a young man heading back to Panama City for a ride in a comfortable small SUV. 

Our final couple of days was focused on the requirements to get home. Luckily, a testing center, open on Christmas Eve, was only three blocks from our hotel (and they gave us a “professional courtesy discount” since I’m a doctor). 

We lucked out getting home – no cancellations, and everything went on time. 

I think I’ll do a “best of” post in a week or two.