Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Onward and - Gasp - Upward

When we woke up, not only had it rained fairly hard during the night, but it was quite cold in our room. And I suppose because we are somewhere between the Tropic of Cancer and the equator, they decided we did not need a heater in the room. Of course, even if there had been one, the electricity did not really turn on until close to seven o’clock. So we hurried tossed on some warm clothes and went over to have breakfast. As we did, we took another look at our hotel. It is built in a vaguely mid-century alpine style. 

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In addition to the main lodge section, which looks sort of like a motel, there are a few “cabañas.” John had thought about asking for one of these, but they did not really have any better views than our room did. 

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The main attraction for Tree Tree is its zipline, one of the longest in Central America. We watched tourists get suited up and listen to the safety instructions. 

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Breakfast was not that exciting. The hotel room came with the “continental” breakfast, basically a couple pieces of toast, some fruit, orange juice, and coffee. John decided to order some pancakes, too. 

We caught the shuttle from the hotel down to town. It was just the two of us and several large plastic trash bags filled with used linens. They dropped us off right by the stall where we had figured out the day before we could rent the bike. There were a few other stalls here including this place selling fruit. There was also another stall with a man selling a “jungle remedy” that was supposed to cure everything. I wish I had taken a picture of that instead. 

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The bike rental was run by a transplanted Southern Californian named Mike. We talked to him about doing the Baja Mono route. He smiled, told us it was “great,” but did mention that it was “all uphill.” I did not have any idea just how true that would be. 

We adjusted our seats and started riding out of town. We had read in a guidebook about a great garden called, not that creatively, “Mi Jardin es Su Jardin.” We had been told, however, the owner had died and that it was now seldom open to the public. Indeed, when we came there, we discovered that it was “cerrado."

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Our next stop was Cafe Ruiz, one of the major producers of high-quality coffee in Panama. I had read in the Moon guide that they had a great tour, but when we arrived we learned that the tours were at nine and at one. Since it was ten thirty at this point, we were too late for the first and far too early for the second. We bought a cup of coffee and a pound of beans and pushed onward. 

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It had been so cold when we left the hotel that both of us brought along jackets. By this time, we stuffed them in the backpack. We also had a couple guidebooks, bottles of water, and the coffee in the backpack. It was heavy, though I didn’t mind it so much when the road was flat. 

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But as the road started its relentless incline, I not only felt the weight of 25 pounds or so on my back but I became keenly aware that we are at about 4000 feet above sea level here. I ride a bike nearly every day at home. I walk the dog three or four miles a day. I figure I am in generally pretty good shape. But I could barely make it 250 feet without stopping to gasp for breath. I felt like I had emphysema. 

Sometimes we stopped because there was something interesting. The coffee harvesting season is starting right now, and there were coffee plants growing on the fields by the side of the road. I suspected that most of the labor to harvest the crop was probably provided by the indigenous people. This man, probably from the Ngäbe-Buglé people, kindly allowed us to take his picture.

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One of the main attractions along the Baja Mono route is this “cascada” or “waterfall.” It really was not all that impressive, but we were both so winded that we would have stopped for just about any reason. 

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The other attraction along the route is the “haunted castle” of Boquete. No two accounts of this place are precisely the same, but the story is usually something like this. A wealthy American married a Dutch woman and wanted her to live with him in Boquete. She was not happy about the housing choices here, so she moved back to the Netherlands while he built her a more proper house. He built a huge house in the countryside north of Boquete. But when the house was nearly finished, he died of a heart attack. Neither he nor his wife ever lived there. There were a couple tenants, but they all declared that the house was haunted and moved out. It has been abandoned now for over forty years. 

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I have no idea how much of this is really true. But we did decide that somebody had already cut a hole in the cyclone fence, we would explore the place. Most of the windows have been smashed, and the inside is creepy enough even if there are no ghosts. 

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Vandals with spray paint have also been visitors here. 

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We did not finish the whole loop. Another cyclist had told us that the road really started to climb after the castle, and we decided that we had traveled enough of the route. Of course, the return was much easier. We saw some unusual sights along the way including this tree trunk carved to look like a serpent

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and this scarecrow. 

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We had a well-deserved cup of ice cream and caught the shuttle back to the hotel. Tree Trek is only seven kilometers from the center of Boquete, but what a difference that short distance makes. It had been warm and sunny in Boquete. At the hotel it was cold and raining! We sat on the little patio outside our room and watched the people on the zip line go through the air in the rain. I was glad I was somewhere dry. 

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We decided to walk to town for dinner rather than sit in a somewhat chilly hotel room watching television. As we left the hotel grounds, we discovered a small botanical garden. 

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Despite the drizzle the walk to town was just magical - at least the first three or four kilometers. The most striking thing about this area is the incredible profusion of bromeliads. Just about any tree has a few on them, and some trees are completely covered in a dozen different varieties. 

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We also saw “fincas” or small plantations of coffee and bananas on either side of the road along with the occasional pasture. As we turned from the Tree Trek road onto the main highway, the rain stopped. As it approached sunset, the light on the damp landscape was beautiful.

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It was dark by the time we arrived in town. Just on the far side of the river, the final preparations for this weekend’s Flower and Coffee Festival continued. The music stages and some of the exhibit spaces were still not finished. 

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The gardens, however, are definitely finished.

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John and I split some fried rice for dinner. It was not particularly easy, but we managed to finally convince a taxi to take us back to the hotel.