Sunday, January 28, 2018
Boquete – Pipeline Trail and Scenic Drives
I awakened to church bells at 6:25, 6:40, and 6:55. Why such odd times? Slept great till then, though. No a/c here but very pleasant, and I understand the temperature doesn't change much throughout the year. No wonder all the expats!
Breakfast was fantastic - eggs, bacon, pancakes, and toast with four different kinds of jam and marmalade – grape, strawberry, raspberry, and orange. Also fresh orange juice and strong delicious coffee, I assume grown locally, as the mountainsides are covered in coffee plants.
This morning we drove the Alto Quiel-Bajo Mono Loop, an approximate 16 km drive beginning in Boquete and winding up into the mountains. The road is curvy but not extreme, through forests and jungle, past coffee plantations and rock formations and an occasional random waterfall. The weather was perfect, high 60s and sunny, with a nice breeze.
Los Ladrillos
Roadside waterfall
We stopped along the loop to hike the Pipeline Trail a/k/a the Waterfall Trail (not to be confused with the 3 Waterfalls Trail which starts nearby). Entrada is $3 each. An hour and a half of traipsing through luscious cloud forest along a flowing creek brought us to an area where the trail had been washed out by a landslide. You can scramble over boulders from here to continue on to the waterfall, but we headed back.
Pipeline Trail entrance
Tree-mendous
Along the trail
Panamanian yellow bird
Jungle stream
Don't be put off by the “Pipeline” name of the trail. There's 10-inch water pipes visible along part of the trail; otherwise, you're totally in nature. We were looking for sloths and resplendent quetzales as we hiked but found a troop of howler monkeys instead. Contrary to their name, they were very quiet and stealthy, and we were lucky to spot them.
Tom crossing the stream
No quetzales today
King of the howler monkeys!
Back in Boquete, we stopped at the Super Baru market to buy some sandwich fixins, then returned to the B&B. Hostess Carol told us about a cool-sounding animal sanctuary in Volcan that we can visit tomorrow, and then she offered to let us do a load of laundry in her washer, so we can avoid the town laundromat. Yay!
Around 4:00 we went driving again through the hills over Boquete. The views were stunning! There are several different indigenous groups in Panama. The ones in this area are the Ngabe. We saw the women along the road in their brightly colored dresses, often with a baby on their hip, and the men in their western-style clothing, usually carrying a machete.
Totem stump
One part of our drive included the expat enclave of Volcancito Village. The views in Chiriqui Province are spectacular, and the weather is even better, but what do the retirees do with themselves here day after day other than bird-watch and play canasta? Curious. Maybe that's enough.
Boquete from above
Scenic vista
And another
There are two seasons in Boquete, the wet season and the semi-dry season. In the semi-dry, when we visited, mists come down from the mountains on a daily basis, and rainbows can be seen in these mists several times a day. As we returned to Boquete, we saw the most perfect rainbow, set against a dark sky and framing the Caldera River.
Rainbow over the Caldera River
In the evening we returned to the Boquete Brewing Company. This time I tried the 50 Sobras de Rosa, a sweet raspberry hard cider that tasted like a pink SweeTart, and we drank the Wood Morning coffee amber again while we dined on chili from their food truck.
We closed down the brewpub on this Sunday at 10:00 p.m. and returned to our room for a nightcap. I can report that the Carta Vieja rum we had tonight is way better than the Don Anejo we tried previously.
Tom
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