Panama: Part 6

And on for a hike to the most spectacular waterfall I've ever seen!

Check out this log we encountered-- how many kinds of fungi can you see?

In front of one of many bridges we crossed to the waterfall. They were all just barely wide enough for my feet to walk one in front of the other, and for some reason there was only a handrail on one side. Yikes.

Seriously?!

And wild watercress abounds! Look at it all! We enjoyed a handful in our guacamole that evening.

We brought along a cacao fruit from one of our earlier hikes that Drew left at the waterfall as an offering. This waterfall really was humbling.

Wild jungle papaya! See? All the way at the top of the photo, baby fruits forming under the umbrella of wide papaya leaves.

Someone was growing corn right alongside the pathway. In this climate, people have to grow crops on challenging landscapes like mountainsides. But the soil is so fertile from the nearby dormant volcano, Volcan Baru.

Since our promised bus never showed up after our hike, we started our way back to town on foot. We noticed some things we probably wouldn't have otherwise-- like these coffee plants. Like cacao, they're an understory plant, liking the biodiversity and shade other trees offer.

On our last full day in Boquete, we wanted to hike to another waterfall. This went awry pretty quickly, when the cab driver dropped us off at a very obviously CLOSED hiking site, which wasn't even the right trail! So no waterfall, but a very pretty walk if nothing else, over rolling hills (kind of an understatement) of beautiful Heidi-like pasture. The views finally snapped me out of my 2-year-old tantrum I was throwing about the steep hills and no waterfall goal in sight. If you can read this, I think the bottom line says in Spanish that the altitude here is 1990 meters. That's over 6500 feet! Could that be right?

I think I see Heidi walking with her grandpa!

We took our time on the walk back to the "closed" trail head, focusing on the micro the jungle was offering. Not sure what this is, but the whole tree was blossoming with these wonders. A type of hibiscus perhaps? You can see by my hand the scale of this flower.

And thus our online travelogue of our journey to Panama finally comes to an end. Whew.