Hello everybody! We are in El Valle for several days this week. Took the 2.5 hour, $3.50 van/bus ride breakneck through the mountains to get here with blaring spanish go-go music (with "D-D-DJ Nonstop") to serenade us. It was great, but i wished i had my earpeace which was in my pack on the roof. I had this perma-bop going though and it actually made the trip quite short...coupled with the fact that we were going 180 mph. It was a bit of an ab workout leaning into the turns because i refused to hold on to the "oh-shit" bar. excellent! Yesterday, we walked to the top of indio dormida mountain range which is the rim of a huge volcano crater that makes up the valley. The top ridge there forms the silhouette of a sleeping woman. We of course got totally lost winding our way up the trails because, they're not hiking trails so much as the way people get to their mountain houses from town. We were stopped on a trail to take a break and this homeboy came trucking up the trail with rubber wader boots on and a big sack of crap from town over his shoulder. He asked us (or signed to us) whether we were coming up or down. We said up and i made a little mountain peak with my fingers and pointed to the top. He said, oh, this way goes to my house, come up with me and i'll show you how to get to the peak. He had a little shack in a notch of the mountains that looked down on the valley. it was really spectacular, if flush toilets and electricity are not your thing. :) it really was very beautiful and he had a little garden and his wife was really nice too. They looked like they were 60, but Michelle says they were probably 27. I used my excellent spanish to figure out that he was telling us we could cut through on a path around the back of his garden to get to where we wanted to go. he pointed to the peak a ways off and we saw two people standing at the top of it. He said, that was inido dormida. We marched out the way he said, but were barely out of sight of his place when we hit another fork and, of course, were instantly lost again. fortunately, everyone up there was fantastic and we got directions from a few other people (I just kept thinking about what kind of reaction i would get if we were hiking around the mountains of kentucky...probably would have been a very different outcome.) and then just wandered some more but eventually we found the peak. I got out my binoculars and we looked back at the dude's house. He and his wife were sitting on their porch apparently waiting for us to summit. We waved our arms and i saw through the binos that they waved back. Gotta love Guerro TV. Anyway, we sat on her face for a while and then climbed down her arm along a fucking single track goat trail. it was a blast. When we got down we bought four cans of ron and coke. yup cans. Which turned out good because it started to do the afternoon rain thing (which lasts about 15 minutes usually and cools everything down really well) and a couple from edinburough on their honeymoon (he's english) just got into town with all their gear asked us if we knew were to find a ride to their hotel. I said, no, but i have these two extra ron and coke. The guy smokes Kools (hehe). So we had a good time chatting with them and they told us to contact them if we were ever in scotland and they'd show us around. we also ran into them at dinner last night and had some more laughs when we shared a cab back to town. in particular at the group of americans that came to dinner out in east jesus with their navy blue dinner jackets complete with gold buttons. How much stuff to you have to pack for dinner jacks to make the list?! who am i kidding, these are not the kind of people who "pack." Did i mention they were wearing boat shoes too. The brits were fun but they apparently want to be all honeymoony and crap because they don't really seem to want to play with us. Which is strange because i'm just so entertaining and everything. After we meandered off the crater rim, we went to the thermal baths and exfoliated with some mud which i subsequently got in my eye. We were soaking in the pool for a while and then an inundation of quebecua entertained us with their...well, just being (somebody must have spilled the beans in montreal about panama because, to the extent we see any tourists here, they seem to be french canadians). We chilled there for a while (at the cost of 1 dollar each) among the trees and pools and then went back to the hotel for some more ron and cokes. well, that was yesterday anyway. It's been a great trip so far. And we just figured out that we have an extra day here (We forgot our itinerary at home) so that's great. if you come to panama, you have to come to el Valle. Tomorrow is zip-line canopy tours. Today is laundry, interwebs, and more ron and cokes (not in a can). We have more pics to upload, but i have no wifi yet to send them to facebook. Hope you are all well. I'm heading back in for some more paradise. ciao, rich |
P.S. Ron is spanish for Rum and i can't stop saying ron, in case you didn't notice.
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