El Valle

El Valle was a beautiful and peaceful town. It was so relaxing being in the mountains, nestled in a pocket on mountains. The first night we went for a great pizza dinner and survived a windstorm.

The next day, Wednesday, we slept in, then went for a long walk around town. We found the Orchid Garden and got a tour of some rare and beautiful orchids. Then, with some help, we found the Serpentarium, a little snake zoo that had some big boa constrictors, fer de lance and eyelash palm pitvipers, to name a few. All very gorgeous.

I got pretty sick off of something in El Valle, not sure what, Ian wasn't affected, but it kept me in bed all day Thursday, I think that was the 8th. I managed to get out and we went for a long walk on Friday to the petroglyphs and up one of the surrrounding mountains to see some waterfalls. Then back down again to see the big 60 meter waterfall then swim in a naturally fed river pool. It was so refreshing I could only stand it for a few minutes. Saturday I didn't make it out much again but the people who ran our hostel had a restaurant down below and fed me some soup and peppermint tea, which made me feel a little bit better. El Valle had such a relaxing vibe that we mostly just layed in bed reading. We were also pretty tired from travelling for the last 5 months that we slowed down quite a bit. Sunday was an awesome market, complete with traditional Panamanian dancing and singing. We took a bus around noon on Sunday to Panama City.

David, a Canadian we met at Santa Catalina, had set us up with a great apartment in Panama City. We had a tenth floor 2 bedroom apartment for the last few days of our trip. We made it there by mid afternoon and settled in the city for our last few days.