Two Little Yellow Ones

Start the day with the free ‘continental’ breakfast; the only thing we don’t really like about this hotel. Bit of exercise this morning, we walked to the top of the hill behind the hotel. It’s about 45 minutes walk but steeply up the hill all the way. We did it early so it wasn’t too hot.

The climb starts in the shade with tall trees and plants either side of the path. After about half way, it opens out more and we get a view down the valley. Most of the way up there’s a viewpoint above a coffee plantation. We can’t get right to the top of the hill but when the path runs out there’s a spectacular view down the valley and up to the highest montain in Panama, Volacan Baru (3475m), beyond. It’s easier going down but still a bit hard on the knees because of the gradient. We were kept company for part of the walk down by two little yellow birds. They fluttered around very quickly – apparently taking the least direct route between one branch and the next.

While we were out our rooms were tidied, the maid is very good at towel animals – today Florence had an elephant.

The hotel is 8km up hill from Boquete. We only saw the town briefly when we arrived so we took the hotel shuttle down for a few hours at lunchtime. There isn’t much to see. The railway station hasn’t seen a train in over 20 years. The fire station has a few old engines outside. We had lunch at Fish Tacos – tasty vegetable tacos. Not much else to do until the shuttle back at 3:00 so we tried the local craft beer – not bad, mine was a Hammock Time – it certainly had that effect on me. The local indigenous people are part of the Ngobe Bugle culture, the women still wear their brightly coloured traditional dresses.

Back in the hotel, the birds seem to know we’re leaving tomorrow and put on a good show while we’re writing diaries. The bright red and yellow ones from yesterday were next to each other right in front of us, our resident hummingbird was never far away either.

6pm was rum time on our patio – ’The Hummingbird Lounge’ – team get together to compare and contrast Panamanian dark and light rum and a Nicaraguan one too.