Group about to head out for the Millennial Trail
Greetings from the cabin 6 squad! We are all currently in Cerro Punta, about 7,000 feet above sea level. To get here we took a bus from Almirante, Bocas del Toro. En route, we popped a tire, and spent some time at a hydroelectric dam where we sampled some local cuisine: queso blanco and a paste made from tamarinds. They were all wrapped in banana leaves, and went great together. After we were back on the road for a while, we stopped at the Elfin forest (6,000 feet), whose winds made our hair fly backwards. When we arrived at the base of the mountain, we loaded into a massive tractor, which took us on an incredibly bumpy ride to the cabins near the top.
These cabins are awesome! They are solar powered, so if we conserve our energy use we have “lento” Wi-Fi and power throughout the day. We also have constant hot water, a major luxury after the 3-minute freezing military showers at ITEC. Brr! Outside every cabin is a hummingbird feeder. They are plentiful here, and are very beautiful; you can even see them mock-fight each other for access. At night, bats take the place of hummingbirds and sip the sugar-water we fill the feeders with. More night creatures to be spotted are kinkajous and cacomistles, which are monkey and lemur-like animals.
So far we have done a lot of hiking. The first day we hiked 2 different trails, each to different cascades. The forest is magnificent, and surprisingly cold: about 50 to 70 degrees. This is too cold for most insects, thank goodness. There are humungous trees, some dating to over 1,000 years old. Tarzan-worthy vines hang from them, as do other epiphytes, and there is so much life that it is hard to see very far in front of oneself on any of the trails. The day after (today) we hiked the “Millennial Trail,” the toughest one at Los Quetzales. It was 40 minutes of “subir, subir, subir” (in the words of our hilarious guide, Abel, which means “up, up, up”). He was not, for once, joking. The trail was slippery and challenging, but it was a ton of fun and very much worth it when we saw the view at the top: Cerro Punta, the small town, situated in a valley surrounded by mountains covered in farmland. We really can’t describe how amazing it is here, but we hope some of our pictures can do it justice.
Tomorrow we plan on doing group projects in town, and working with some local farms. Adios, y hasta luego!
( Cabin 6 (Dean, Cora, Molly, Joey, and Steve)
Note: there were some photos uploaded earlier. Click on Photos ’15 tab