Panama Rainforest Discovery Center

Tom was up early and out the door for his morning walk by 6:30 (5 miles this morning). I rolled over and tried to get some more sleep but found myself up by 7:00. I headed down to the beach to see if there were any more treasures to be found. The tide was up and on it’s way back out to sea and I found just a few more pieces of glass and a couple of shells. I took the long way back to the condo to get some extra steps, but didn’t do a long walk so I could get back to start packing up.

We took the kids to the Jumbo Grocery store so they could get an Uber back to the airport. Ubers aren’t allowed in where we were staying so we thought it would be easier for them to get picked up there since it’s right off the exit. We bought some water while we were there, said our goodbyes and headed back to the condo to load up our cars and head our separate ways.

Tom and I headed to Soberania National Park to hike the Pipeline Road that Pete and Laurie had done the day we went to Carnaval. We saw the sign for the entrance of the park and drove along assuming we would find a trailhead for the Pipeline Road. We drove until we got to the city of Gamboa. I recalled Laurie saying that they were in that town, but we still hadn’t found the trail. We stopped and asked someone who looked like he was waving cars in to a parking lot. When we talked to him he he said that this was the parking for the Monkey Island tours, and he told us to cross the bridge. We still didn’t find the trail, but we did see signs for the Panama Rainforest Discovery Center. We decided to follow those and thought once we got there that maybe someone there could tell us where to go. It ended up being a slow 2.5 kilometer drive off the main road on a very bumpy, rocky dirt road.

We finally pulled into the Discovery Center parking lot and talked to the attendants. We learned that the Pipeline Road ran behind the center (although I don’t think this is the official starting point for the hike), but the Center itself had a nice looping trail (they told us it would take 2 hours to hike) and a 32 meter high observation tower. Admission cost $30/person. Although hiking the Pipeline Road trail is free, we decided to spend the money to help out the rain forest and experience the center.

While at the car getting ready for our hike (Tom prepping the 360 degree camera and me prepping the camelback with water, snacks, bug spray, etc) we saw 3 monkeys in the trees. We didn’t take any pictures because we assumed we would see more on our hike, but sadly we did not.

The first stop along the trail was a pit stop location to relax and watch hummingbirds. There were several hummingbird feeders set out along a large deck area and there were a couple of employees there to tell us about the birds. They even had small hand held feeders that we could hold to see if a bird would come feed off of it. With a little patience, to our delight they did! This was a cool experience and Tom said it was worth the price of admission for him.

We next went to the tower. With all the geocaching I have done in Wisconsin state parks I am no stranger to climbing an observation tower, but I think this is the first one that was made completely out of metal and had a spiral staircase to the top. It was a little dizzying but worth the climb. We saw several butterflies and had a nice view of the rain forest.

The rest of the hike was peaceful and not too strenuous. It was hot and humid, but every now and again there would be a nice breeze. The trails didn’t take a full 2 hours to hike, but we enjoyed it none-the-less. When we got back to the start the monkeys had moved on, but we could hear them off in the distance. We walked a very short way along the Pipeline Road Trail but decided it was best to get on with our day since it was still an hour and a half drive to our next AirBnB.

The GPS navigated us back to the highway and we were soon on our way. There was hardly any traffic. In fact there were points on the highway where we were the only vehicle. It seemed so strange after the last week of traffic. We headed straight to the AirBnB and found it without any issues. We met up with the local contact who led us to our room on the 7th floor and showed us around the apartment. The apartment is quite spacious with a nice view of the ocean, but boy is it windy!!! Not sure if it’s this windy all the time, but today it’s really blowing. We settled in and then walked down to check out the pool and beach. On the beach we ran across an interesting site. Tom said don’t touch it, it’s a jelly fish (technically not a jelly fish). I hadn’t seen one look like that before, but I think Tom was absolutely correct when he said it was a Portuguese Man O’War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war).

We decided to drive into town to find dinner. The town we are staying in (Maria Chiquita) is quite small. Honestly it’s a little weird that there is this big tall high-rise beach club right next to what appears to a run-down town. We drove back towards the much larger city of Sabanitas and found a tiny little restaurant that sells chicken. We order a half of chicken with a side of yucca for $6 and share it. They didn’t have any Coke’s and we forgot to bring our water so Tom was going to go see if there was a store nearby that he could buy one, but before he could the owner of the restaurant called another guy over. He spoke English and he said he would run and get the cokes for us, so we gave him $5 and a few minutes later we had Cokes. The chicken was in some kind of red sauce that was similar to barbecue and the yucca tasted like potato salad. Both were good and we were glad to try something local. After dinner we went to the grocery store to buy some more water.

We made it back to our AirBnB and settled in for the night by going through our photos and writing the blog. Tomorrow is a free flowing day in which we hope to relax and maybe do a little geocaching.

Stats of the Day:

Steps: 13,955
Time Stuck in Traffic: 0 minutes!
Number of Steps on the Observation Tower: 175