2019/04 Panama trip - Valle de Anton |
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Tuesday April 30th
We were up early for our last morning on the platform, graced by this distinctive collared aracari and black-cheeked 
woodpecker. The birders were going down to the bottom of the hill to walk along the park’s Plantation Road. We said our goodbyes, checked out, and paid for the few beers we’d drunk, cheaper than we’d have paid in a Canadian liquor store. Interestingly, Panama’s gasoline costs about 80 cents a litre or $3 a gallon, even though Panama has no oil of its own.
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Canopy Tower (3.54) |
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We were the only passengers going to the Lodge that day. Our driver took us close to the locks, then over the canal’s suspension bridge to join the Pan-American Highway. This is the road that connects the Arctic with Patagonia, with just a single break, the Darien Gap along the Panama-Columbia border
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Tower to Lodge (1.38) |
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The four-lane highway is quite close to the coast, but never close enough for us to see the Pacific Ocean. Mostly it is a commercial sprawl of businesses, factories, malls, and hotels. After a couple of hours we turned north into the mountains onto a pleasant two-lane road bordered by small farms, cabins, villages, and beautiful gardens. Everyone seems to have a bougainvillea.
The Canopy Lodge is in the Valle de Anton, an ancient volcanic caldera ringed by strangely shaped green hills, relics of the original volcano. 
The Lodge is quite different from the Tower; much more luxurious, and set in its own land, about 75 acres, with a rocky stream and extensive gardens and ponds. 
Our room was 3 or 4 times the size of our Tower room, with two king-sized beds and a large balcony looking out on the jungle.
The common and dining areas were outside, under a shelter, with views of the stream and an extensive bird-feeding platform. Guests could eat and drink and birdwatch at the same time. The manager Ayden filled us in on the essentials.
Amongst the guests we recognized Martin and Garrulous George, who’d moved there from the Tower a day or so earlier. George had one of the other guests pinned down but we knew better than to butt in. There were Sue and Graham, originally English but now retired from Boeing and living in Arizona. Wally and Sandra came from San Antonio, one of the nicest parts of Texas, and Alan and Rosemary were there from Poole, in Dorset. Much younger than the rest of us was Rachel from Sydney, Australia.
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Lodge birds (5.08) |
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Lodge gardens (5.12) |
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The bird feeder was refreshed with fruit, usually bananas, every hour or so and there was a constant stream of birds: tanagers, woodpeckers, euphonias, and clay-coloured thrushes, Costa Rica’s national bird, chosen for its song not its colours.