welcome to mitchwood

Anton Valley

The Anton Valley trip proved to be worthwhile, even though the 45 minutes it was billed at turned out to be almost double that uphill, and nearly an hour coming back down. Being in the very back of the bus as it wound up the mountains didn’t help much either, and 4 of the 5 kids in the bus lost their breakfast along the way.

Once there, it was a series of interesting visits around the valley, which is the crater of a huge (mostly) extinct volcano. The view is stunning from almost anywhere you go, and the temperature a good 5 degrees cooler than it is down at sea level. As with just about anywhere you go in Panama, there were many vacation homes, but these were particularly opulent and well established. This is clearly a great place to be during the dry season.

Everywhere there was evidence of a prolific wet season. Each yard was trenched with runoff ditches, and the side of every road had gullies leading down to the nearest river. Someone said that it sometimes rains for days on end during the wet season and I can well believe it.

Our first stop was at a zoo and botanical garden. It wasn’t clear if this was a private attraction or something run by the government, but they had a collection of birds and various animals including ocelots, a sloth, and several tapirs, which are huge piglike animals. The garden there gave the best view of the valley walls which soared sharply up to the cloud draped summits.

Next, we were herded back into the bus and taken to a small coffee ‘factory’. This was essentially someone’s home with a small building at the back where local coffee was sorted and roasted. They gave a tour of their beautiful gardens, and offered samples of their coffee. Before we left, many people bought a few bags at a very reasonable $6 per lb.

After that we went to a waterfall hidden away inside the rainforest. This place had a zipline through the canopy and as we negotiated the path, every few minutes there would be a rattle and a shriek as someone passed by overhead. This was the closest to walking in the rainforest that we had experienced.

Once everyone was rounded up, we took off for the hot springs, evidence (to my mind) that the ‘extinct’ volcano isn’t quite dead yet. I was a bit disappointed to find that the hot spring is actually piped into a couple cement pools. Somehow I had visions of bubbling mud pits with Old Faithful happily spouting off in the distance. Ah well.

The last stop was a half hour of shopping at a little plaza which seems to have been set up expressly to serve the busloads of tourists brought into the valley. Sylvia and I bought an interesting bit of art, painted in oil on canvas — no idea where we’ll put that — Alex added a carved wooden mask to his collection, and Isabel bought a butterfly display. We probably spent a bit more than we should have, but I have often wished after the fact that we had not passed by things on vacation.

The trip home was mostly downhill and rather shorter than the way up. Alex *just* managed not to toss his cookies, earning himself the distinction of being the only one of the kids to retain both breakfast and lunch. God forbid I miss a meal, and we managed to get back just before the lunch buffet closed.