Notes From a Small Isthmus: Birthday Excursion

For Steve’s birthday we decided to hike up El Ñuco, the second highest mountain in our area. It gives great views – on a clear day you can see the Pacific ocean in two directions – east and west – all the way across the Azuero peninsula. On this occasion we were able to see west to the Pacific, but not east.

They farm the steepest slopes here

This photo below shows the location of our town, which follows the line just below the trees in the distance. The town stretches for a mile and a half. The reason our town is linear is that it follows the crest of a ridge, which you can't really see from this angle. Above the tree line is the forest preserve, below is farmland. The highest point in our province (3200 ft) is in the center of the picture. You can just see the Pacific in the haze at the right of the picture. We live just to the left of the center of the line which divides trees from farmland. You can see on the right that the farmland reaches up very high, almost to the mountaintops. The national environmental agency is trying to reforest that land, but it means moving the farmers off the land. Some of the remote villages there lack electricity or roads (travel is by foot or horse), and the population of those towns is shrinking, which makes the task a little easier. We have students in our school from several of those towns.

At the top of the mountain was a radio station with an antenna tower next to a small building which houses the transmitter. Climbing the tower gave a great view, and also let us get onto the roof of the building.

Ormelis climbing the antenna

Ormelis is the English teacher with whom Heather works in the secondary school. One of Ormelis' former students, Chichi, also went with us.

Heather, Chichi, Ormelis, Steve on the roof

The next day we hiked to the nearby town of El Toro. It was not a long hike, but also had nice views of the countryside. This photo shows our route for the day. Our hike follows the ridge and ends up just short of the last clump of pine trees on the left end of the ridge. These clumps of pines are the result of reforestation about 30 years ago. Pines grow very well in our red clay soil (other crops don't!). The land you see is all in the forest preserve, but was deforested by farmers years ago when the rules were not enforced.

Below you can see where they quarry the stones and gravel for the repaving of the road through our town. They started the repaving process in early May, and hope to finish in a month or so.

Here you get a better look of what used to be forest, but now is farmland. The light yellowish green is where rice is planted. This is all in the forest preserve. The high point of our province is at the top of the picture.