Serendipity

Serendipity is one of the attractions of nomadic travel.   In this case, I found an enchanted forest.

Boquete, rejected us.  This famous town in Panama’s Highlands was celebrating the “Flower and Coffee Fair”, and all the beds were taken.  I was relieved.  A place where all hotel owners are white and all beers are expensive, maybe fine for expats, but is no place for me.  Instead, we headed to Volcan, which is on the other side of the Baru volcano.  It had the look and feel of a gold-rush California settlement, and was clearly my kind of town.  The following day, we continued to Cerro Punta, which is higher on the same road.  This village has a distinct European flavor.  Its clean streets, steep-angled roofs, and decorative flower gardens are reminders of the Swiss group that settled here a hundred years ago.  Men on horses share the road with Toyota Hilux trucks and with indigenous women dressed in colorful embroidered dresses.  The villagers grow vegetables on the steep flanks of the volcano.  However, agriculture went high tech, and it was not too surprising to learn that Israelis were the consultants behind the plastic greenhouses and the renowned strawberries.  In the village, we stumbled on the office of Ecotreat, which brews a good Cappuccino (that was the initial draw), and rents cabins inside Amistad National Park.  The cabins were built long ago, and were grandfathered into the protected area. 

It took half an hour driving up a tough 4X4 road to reach the site.  At an altitude of 2200 meters, the cabins are surrounded by forest, and within sight and sound of the headwaters of Chiriqui Viejo River.  As I stepped into the forest, I entered a magical kingdom.  The trees are huge, and the ground level is covered by dense tropical vegetation.  I realized that I found the prototypical cloud forest which I was seeking in El Salvador (Parque Impossible), and Nicaragua (Reserva Miraflor).  The atmosphere is cool, humid, full of animal voices, but devoid of any man-made sounds.  The scene is eerily reminiscent of the movie Avatar, and as I walked, I felt the savage within me getting ready for the hunt.  The trail was not easy.  When not muddy, it was steep and slippery, but we endured, driven by the quest to find the Quetzal, a small bird with a long colorful tail.  Looking for birds, first you hear them, and then you spot them.  Adi was my hearing aid as she pointed at various birds; pretty, colorful, but no quetzal.  Night approached, and our rain jackets proved useful as the cold rain demonstrated why this is called a Cloud Forest.  Nacho, the only caretaker on the premises, lit the wood-burning furnace, which easily heated the cabin.  At sunrise, when I ventured out to look for the early bird, the thermometer read 5 degC,

Pardon the commercial, but our time in the forest cabin (ecotreat.com) was the highlights of our trip so far.  Nacho claimed that later in the season, the quetzals can be seen from the cabin deck, and we booked another stay for our way back after the Carnaval.  Maybe this time we will be lucky.

  Click for a quetzal photo