El Valle, Panama

We recently took a trip to the mountain resort of El Valle on our way to Panama City for our yearly medical checkups (we passed, by the way).  El Valle is actually a town located in the center of a volcanic crater.  Luckily the volcano has been inactive for a very long time. This area has a very mild climate and has lots of foreigners living there. We had a local guide (Mili) who showed us the way up one of the local attractions, the Sleeping Indian.

Our guide for the day

Here is the view of the ridge that looks like a sleeping Indian.  The face is to the right. You can find the legend of the sleeping Indian princess here.

Lots of people were on the head of the Indian

On the way down, we saw some "strangler figs".  These fig trees start with a seed being dropped by a bird in the upper branches of a tree.  The roots grow downward until they reach the ground, after which they grow up around the host tree and strangle it.  The trees below haven't killed off their host trees yet.

Last Sunday was Heather's birthday.  We decided to go back to our favorite waterfall, "El Salto".

We passed the house of one of our students, Migdalia, who joined us with her sister, brothers and cousins.  They swam with us for a while, and then asked us if we wanted to climb to the top of the waterfall.  We agreed, and they led us up a scramble up a steep slope with lots of loose dirt. Fortunately we could grab on to trees and roots.

Heather with Migdalia, Mileidis, Adelicio, Jorge, and Alberto

View from the top of the waterfall

They also took us to their private swimming hole a little further up the river, complete with a small water slide.

Their swimming hole/water slide

A few days later, we were sitting on our front porch around nightfall and two of our neighbors passed by, excited to show us that they had caught some giant cicadas, called totorrones.  They were very proud of themselves, describing in detail how they were able to sneak up on the big insects and trap them with a drinking glass against a tree trunk.

Kevin and Meicol (Michael) show off their catches

Kevin and Meicol also explained to us how you could keep a totorron as a pet by tying a piece of thread around its neck as a leash and allowing him to fly around a bit.  They gave me one of their bugs, but I let him go after they left.

My share of the day's catch

The next day they told me that the thread around the neck idea hadn't worked.  Neither bug survived :(  I guess totorrones just aren't cut out to be pets.

That's it for now!
Steve and Heather