Parque Nacional Soberanía is only about a 20 minute drive from the Miraflores locks, and we had several things we wanted to do there.
Our friend Henry recommended the
Panama Rainforest Discovery Center and the Pipeline Road trail. We also wanted to see the Canopy Tower, which is a special rainforest hotel built into a tower. We found it, but it was gated and locked and you're not allowed in without reservations.
Onward to the Discovery Center. As we got out of the car, we were greeted by this friendly (too friendly) Coati! But it was adorable.
The Discovery Center was great. I was sweating so, so much though. The 'front desk' guy gave us a great pamphlet about birds, snakes, mammals, butterflies, etc that we could see and it had a good map of the trails on it.
We walked on trails around the place. First stop, the hummingbird patio. There was a ranger there to tell us about all the hummingbirds coming up to the feeders. She also had a spotting scope and field guides for us to look at, and we could sit in the chairs and have a cup of tea. She also pointed out some cool birds in the trees to us! We saw a Whooping Motmot and a Slaty-backed Trogon! Wow!
Then we walked to the observation tower and climbed it to above the canopy. Guess what, it was a million degrees up there. We heard howler monkeys! We didn't see any cool birds.
Last stop, the lake. We spent some time on the viewing platform looking around, but I was overheating again, so we went back to the car. That front desk guy was a genius, he had cold gatorades for sale. I would have paid quadruple whatever it cost to get my hands on a cold gatorade.
We drove about 10 minutes to our hotel, the
Gamboa Rainforest Resort. It's weird, because Gamboa is like an almost non-existent town that has one restaurant, one shop, and seems to have a lot of canal industry but no one living there, and the jungle is right next to it. But this resort is this huge, fancy, self-contained place just there.
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| The lobby windows looking out at the jungle and river. THAT IS NOT A PAINTING! |
So I was super hot, exhausted. We got checked in and carried all our luggage for what felt like a mile to our room, opened the door, and THE ROOM WAS ALREADY OCCUPIED!
Lordy!! So we trudged back, got a different room, trudged back again, and finally made it to our beautiful room. Balcony with a hammock looking out over the Chagres River and the rainforest. Stunning.
We got settled in, rested, enjoyed the view, took showers, and went to the bar. The bar has seating on a balcony that has a similar view to the rooms, overlooking the whole rainforest and river. We had some cool drinks, enjoyed the cool breeze, and saw some parrots zooming their way to their night roost.
We went to the restaurant for dinner, buffet style, not bad. I enjoy a buffet, because I like to have hummus, nachos, sweet potatoes, and corn soup at a dinner. (My tone may not indicate it, but I really DO like to have all those crazy things at one dinner.) And the dessert bar, my goodness.
Part of our stay included a 'night safari' so we went on it. At around 8:30 we got on one of their little trams with about 8 other people and a guide. They drove us around the property and the guide told us a bit about the resort and looked for animals to show us. We saw a possum (or squirrel or agouti, who really knows), some Caracaras roosting on an open window of an abandoned house, a few caimans and turtles, and the highlight, some juvenile capybaras!! They were pretty cool to see. The rest of the 'safari' was mediocre.
We came back to our room, read for a while, and went to bed.
Feb 14th
I had booked a birding guide in advance, Clarivel, and this morning we went to meet her. We were supposed to meet her promptly at 7, and breakfast didn't start until 7! Oh, sad day for me. I just had a granola bar.
We met Clari and did some great birding for a couple hours. She really only spoke Spanish, so I'm sure we missed some things, I was especially struggling sometimes with getting down the names of the birds we were seeing. But I think I got them all written down! See my bird post for more about what birds we saw.
I also didn't really get any pictures, because I'm not a photographer. Adam got a few, which I will share in the bird post, but here is one cool guy we saw in the jungle.
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| Greater Ani. Photo by Adam. |
We also saw Howler monkeys and Capuchin monkeys and Coatis!
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| A Capuchin monkey having a good ol' time! |
Then a fun thing happened, which was I locked the keys in the car. I also locked all my snacks in the car, which was arguably worse. I also locked all of Clarivel's belongings in the car, but she was quite sanguine about it. I was able to figure out how to call the rental car company and tell them what happened, and they said they would send someone out to unlock it. Thank goodness we were only in the half-hour-away jungle and not the across-the-country jungle! And we had birding to do while we waited. The rental car guy was like, "I must inform you, there will be a $15 fee for this service." $15!? That can't possibly cover the person's time, mileage, and gas to come out to us. Of course I will pay the $15! (Also, I don't think I ever paid the $15).
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| Waiting for a guy with an extra key to meet us in the jungle |
After the car got unlocked and Clari got her stuff back, and I had a snack, Adam and I did a bit more exploring on this road, the Pipeline Road. It's a popular road for birders and hikers, and I wanted to see it, but I was also really tired and hungry and so so sweaty. So we did just a little hike, then went to lunch in literally the only restaurant in Gamboa. There are small family restaurants all over called Fondas. We went to this fonda in Gamboa and I had fried fish with rice and it was outstanding. It was so good.
Back to the room for a rest, then we went on a little tour to the resort's biodiversity houses- the frog house, the orchid house, the butterfly house, and the sloth house. We saw poison dart frogs, blue morpho butterflies, and several sleepy sloths. This tour was also just okay, I would have preferred to be able to go on our own, but that's not how it works.
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| Just a sloth living its best life |
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| Poison Dart Frog |
After that tour we decided to wander the grounds a bit on our own, and we saw so many cool birds! I will list them in the bird post, but just take a look at this beauty!! This is a Golden-hooded Tanager, and I did not take this picture, this is from the ebird.But i did see it! Wowsers.
Back to the room, showered, to the bar, where we enjoyed the live music and had dinner there (pizza and salad).
Feb 15
Woke up and had the breakfast buffet. It was fine, but the one in Panama City was better. We packed up, checked out, and hit the road. We mostly drove all day. We ran into Carnivale traffic, but the Panamanian police knew how to handle it. The Pan-American highway is two lanes in each direction, but the police had created a third lane for our direction by shunting cars over into the other side and making that into a one-lane highway. Everyone seemed good with it. People drove nicely. Police were everywhere being helpful. We saw lots of Carnivale preparations like floats, stages, music, etc being set up as we drove through towns. We drove for about 7 hours today.
Lessons learned:
- It really would have been nicer to have a birding guide who spoke English
- Don't lock your keys in the car in the jungle
- Regular tennis shoes would have been totally fine for what we did. I took hiking shoes because they were waterproof, but in the dry season, sneakers would have been fine.
For next time:
- We want to spend longer on the Pipeline Road trail, I think.
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