Zip Lining and a Canopy Walk
August 27, 2017, Boquete
We flew into the city of
David yesterday afternoon and drove into the mountains to the town of
Boquete. The weather is distinctly
different, cooler and more humid if possible.
The mountains are dramatically beautiful and the town is lovely. Our hotel, the Panamonte, is delightful, with
extensive gardens:
This morning after
breakfast we went into town and boarded this truck for a ride up to Bouquete
Tree Trek, about a half-hour up and up and up on gravel and dirt roads.
We arrived at the lodge and were fitted for
out zip-lining gear:
You’ll notice Joyce’s
absence; she opted out and took a coffee farm tour instead of zip-lining. After signing forms which basically said if
we died it wasn’t their fault, we got back into the truck and went higher and
higher and higher, into the clouds of the cloud forest. We reached the first of 12 lines, and made
preparations to go down the mountain the fast way. At this line you pull yourself up to the line
to be snapped on as Oren is doing here:
Get into position:
And off you go into the
void, over chasms:
I was able to get one
video of Oren coming into a station. At
this one, being fairly light, he didn’t make it to the platform. On all the others, he did. I had no such problems.
And after all of that on
one line, you start all over again:
After that excitement, we
met Joyce at the lodge, and had lunch overlooking the mountains, the valley
where the town of Boquete is, and the clouds.
As we finished, a huge
downpour began, and stopped as quickly as it began. Then a gentle rain began to fall. Our rain forest guided hike goes no matter
what the weather, and we started out.
Oren tried to stay a
little dry under a leaf of a plant locally called “the poor man’s umbrella”:
There are astonishing
lichens here:
We went on three amazing
canopy walks up in the clouds:
And we saw things from a
totally different perspective. Here’s
the top of a tree in bloom with a beautiful bromeliad in a crotch:
The rain forest floor had a
selection of bromeliads. This one is
related to pineapple:
From our last canopy walk
we had a great view of a waterfall, and of the zip lines we had flown just a
couple of hours previously. Here’s Oren
in the canopy.
Back to the hotel to get
clean and dry, dinner and to bed to get ready for the next adventure:
white-water rafting tomorrow.
Wow, again! I love those plants, like nothing I've ever seen. I don't suspect that there's anything in that pineapple-relative that I'd want to put into an upside-down cake. But it looks fabulous! Fun that one can be too light to make it all the way to the end of a given zip-line stretch. That never occurred to me. (It wouldn't have been a problem for me, at least in that one respect!) Thanks for the great photos. Oren certainly looks happy with his choice of a country to visit!
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