Day 128 - Wednesday 25th January 2006

The only reason I went to David was to take a trip from there to the area of Chiquiri in the highlands, from where there were supposed to be a lot of interesting hikes. This would enable me to see some of the countryside, as well as get some much needed exercise.

Markus (Swiss guy I met in Bocas), Aaron (American from the bus) and I made the two hour bus journey from David to Cerro Punta. The plan was to do a little walk in Cerro Punta on that day, stay overnight, walk 17km to Boquete the following day, stay overnight there before making our way back to David for Friday night.

The Purple House offered a good service where we could leave our bags there for a day or two while we went off and did these hikes, so thats what we did. Armed with only a small pack each we took enough things for two days hiking. When we arrived in Cerro Punta the climate change was remarkable. From being stifling hot in David, it was cold, windy and raining in Cerro Punta. I was glad I had packed my rainjacket!

The rain cleared up however and after we checked into a hotel (pretty expensive at US$11 pppn -Panama uses Balboas as their legal tender, but 1Balboa=US$1, and all notes are US Bills, apparently the only country in the world to have their own currency but not produce any bank notes) we took a taxi to the national park where we hiked a trail in the Parque La Amistad. The hike took about an hour each way and was a good trail through the rainforest. At the start I began to flag from the physical exertion but I soon managed to find my fitness again and was ok after that. We reached the end of the trail, a waterfall, stood around for a bit and made our way back to the ranger station from whence we had came.

It was approaching 6pm and we still had a way to go to end up back in town so we jumped into a taxi and got a lift back. We got back just as it was starting to get dark. As the daylight disappeared the temperature dipped, which was pretty decent as it had been too hot to sleep comfortably in David the night previous. We didn’t do much during the evening, our hotel had cable TV so that was pretty much the only activity going on. I did manage to find something I haven’t seen for a few months which did make laugh - Turbo Shandy anyone?