Panama - El Valle

After our two weeks in Colombia we spent 6 days on mainland Panama before going back to Brio. I was keen to see some wildlife in the cloud forests if possible.

Our first stop was a town called El Valle. After the beauty of the towns in Colombia, the Panamanian towns look very plain and unkempt. El Valle was one such town, but the Don Pepe Hotel was clean and comfortable. We were hungry after travelling most of the day to get there so bought some kebabs from a street cart. They tasted of firelighters and were completely inedible so we went to a busy looking restaurant for something else. It wasn’t a great culinary experience here either – the service was incredibly slow and at one point the whole restaurant filled with smoke. My rice arrived and was quite ok, but Ivan’s soup didn’t. We asked for the bill and his soup arrived not long after, but it was inedible glug. My Spanish is good enough to indicate the soup was not good so they struck it off the bill. Other people on nearby tables were also having problems with their food arriving, so it seems the restaurant was having a really bad day. Oh well, we retired to our room to take in the luxury of cable TV and proceeded to watch what looked to be the fall of the Gadafi regime as rebels took control of Tripoli.

Finding a good restaurant is tiring business

We spent the next day in the company of an American couple, Bob and Tammy, and we visited the zoo and frog sanctuary, the Macho falls and the local mud pools. We also found a better place to eat!

at the Macho falls

Having fun at the mudpools