After hitting the highway out of Santiago…..

(this guy has got the stance down but needs aviator glasses)

Yes, that’s me praying.

Oh God, for the love of Christ, just let this work…. We drove off the road, literally.  The front wheels made it, but there wasn’t any road left for both of the back ones…  pfffft.  Good thing this forklift driver was right across the street and my bumpers are strong.  Luvvittt!!!  No harm done.  Gas tank ok.  Bailing wire for muffler pipe?  Check.  Moving on….

Ya, so the other day we ended up at Playa el Palmar, a place I had truly been looking forward to as I had spent a lot of time there in past years.  “Name withheld”, a beach house, was owned by Sr. Russel, who used to work the canal zone once upon a time until he re-located to the beach and began his retirement.  Over time, he and his son Jay turned the house into a hostel, and surfers from all over would come to stay to surf one of the several beaches within minutes of the door, with Playa el Palmar itself having an excellent reef break at times.  To give you an idea of it’s reputation, at one point the entire cast of Survivor Panama stayed there after the season was shot.

Sadly, Sr. Russel has since passed on from cancer, and quite frankly, the place has gone to hell.  Surf instructors still congregate there, doing what surfers do, but now the ‘surf school’ is next door.  To be fair, there are several surf schools in the immediate proximity.  When I was staying, it was only the cream of the surfers that would actually stay in the dorms.  This hasn’t much changed, I guess, but with Sr. Russel out of the picture, there has been no one to crack the whip keeping the place up or drive things forward.  The rest of the area seems thriving, but here, it looks more like a crash house than anything else, and the dorm is empty, of course.

Cass and I spent one night there, and it wasn’t worth a picture.  The pool was so green you couldn’t see the bottom, the house furniture was all gone — no fridge, no table, missing light bulbs, the whole place smelled like dog sweat, and we couldn’t leave there soon enough.  Again, I’m sad for what was lost, because it was a helluuva lot, but everyone deserves the freedom to make bad decisions.

Sr. Russel left his son a gold mine on the beach, and the son just sits on it doing nothing of substance.  I hope he starts digging soon, because it appears he is either on the verge of making all the right decisions, or about to accelerate downwards.  In any case, I guess these are the stories behind many of the “se vende” signs I see down here, so I should learn to have a thicker skin about it.

Now we find ourselves in San Carlos, just a few feet up the road, at San Carlos Beach Inn.  It’s a little pricey, but the closer you get to Panama City, the harder it is to find accommodations that are reasonable, and this place has all that I need at this point in our travels.  With the markets heating up (melt down warning) as they are, I need to be able to monitor the situation a little closer than I have been.  Nailing down a location is important.

San Carlos has a flavor all it’s own.  From prosperity…

To oddity…

To disparity in a driveway…

This little fishing village is suffering the same growing pains as the rest of the country.

The reason to be here, is that we can base ourselves for several day trips, including El Valle de Anton, where we were yesterday.

El Valle, as it is called locally, is a little town located in the valley of an extinct volcano.  It is high, thus cool, began as cottage houses for politicians from Panama City (old money), and has become sort of a tourist trap over the years.  There is now a large market for all things touristy, and restaurants, and bicycle rentals, and mud bath yoga surf mega max super marts….  🙂   but the real prize here is out the back door.

There are waterfalls you can pay to see.  Nahhh.  Full up on that, thanks.  A zip-line tour, consisting of a whole 4 lines, for $65 ($91 CAD right now).  Never done it yet, don’t want to now.  Pass.  On up the road, wayyyyy up into the hills in the back, you find the chicken ranches, and Cerro Gaital.

The road leading up to all that is STEEP, alternating between pavement and gravel, and passes where the real money is in El Valle.  Huge houses you can’t even see from the road, places terraced and manicured daily, huge ranches, and finally the trail that few know about.

Cerro Gaital goes up the back-side of the volcano rim and, at the top, there are a few miradors that overlook the city below on the one side, and the mountains in the other direction.

Love the way the tree grew “into” the sign here.  It would grow, bend the sign into a U, then you would have to bend it flat again.  Neat.

I won’t go much more into it that this, because it was wayyyyy to muddy to even try yesterday.  A group came down, four of them covered in mud, and told us all we needed to know in one glance.  Later in the week, early in the morning, we may try again, but not now.

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Today, Thursday, was spent at Playa el Palmar.  While this isn’t a sunny picture, you can clearly see the two different color sands here.  One is black volcanic glass, that sparkles under foot when you walk across it, and the other is white coral.  The two together mix and separate in wild patterns on this beach, but to be clear, black volcanic glass is like walking on a bed of coals if it is not down by the surf.

Here, I’m practicing my jungle camouflage training, which comes in quite handy on the beach.  You can’t even see me, but I’m there, busy hanging the hammocks…..  hidden under a tree for shade.  It took some doing, but I got it done.