1,700 miles part 3

At long last....PANAMA!!!!

Watching the monkeys eat fruit from a balcony where we were staying in Panama City

Poison Dart Frog

Panama City!!!

Bridge to the Americas

Panama Canal

Part of the group

The 1960's Indiana Jones plane we rode on to Bocas del Toro...so scary!

The bat cave

Thousands of BATS!!!! The guys hiked in a cave through knee to waist deep water (only lights they had were their headlamps). Bats and cave spiders littered the walls. The cave got so small that the startled bats actually ran into the guys!!

Cave Spiders

The boys at the cave opening

Snorkeling at Starfish Beach (there were hundreds of starfish!)

We drove scooters to the bat cave and starfish beach. It rained all day. Makes driving scooters very fun! Our scooter only slid out sideways on the mud once with only one other scooter running into us ;-) haha

Ready to drive back to our hotel

Skyler and Bert were good scooter buddies :-)

One of the places we stayed...this one was called Beverly's Hill

Our room at Beverly's Hill (and yes, we had to use the bug net when we slept...there were bugs EVERYWHERE!!!)

The outdoor sink and bathroom 6 of us shared

Going on a hike through the jungle with local villagers as our guides

Very rare night monkeys. We woke them up so they would come say hi. That's as far as they ever came out of their tree home.

Little local boy trying to lure the monkeys out with a banana

Pond where we saw a caiman

Our group

Sloth Andy spotted up in a tree during the hike

So hot and humid!

Andy pretending to eat a sea cucumber (but it kind of looks like something else...it grossed everyone out!!)

The private deck off of our room in Bocas del Toro

From the deck looking in. I think 8 or 10 of us stayed in this room for a few nights. We had so much fun!!! We played lots of euker (a card game)

Team Brazil River Rafting!!

Top of Volcan Baru. It was a 14 mile round trip hike. Took us just under 4 hrs to hike up and just over 4 hrs to get back down. The trail was very steep and rugged. We started hiking at 2 am in order to summit at sunrise....absolutely breath taking!! Volcan Baru is the highest point in Central America and the only place where you can see both the Pacific and Carribbean Oceans in one spot.

The boys at the very highest point (it was a sketchy hike to get to this point)

I stayed down and the actual summit

A very fat and happy kuwati living at the summit. He had very sharp teeth!!

The hikers at the summit

The trail to Volcan Baru

There are radio towers at the summit...workers who maintain the towers ride up in this tractor and then stay on the summit for about a week before coming back down to town.

The summit was above the cloud forest, we hiked through it on our way back down

4 wheeling our rental in order to get to the trailhead

We had to get out of the car in order for it to not bottom out on some of the passes

After the hike, we joined up with the rest of the group at an animal santuary that rescued animals from human owners.

Very rare blue parrot

We had an awesome opportunity to get into a cage with monkeys and feed them craisens. They jumped and climbed all over you!!

The little stinker looking for more treats in my camera case!! Haha.

Baby sloth...so precious!!

The balcony at a place we stayed at in a cloud forest

The kitchen and tables were open to the outside. Andy looking out over the valley.

The pathway to the bathrooms and sinks

Rocky, a rescued kinkajou

Another sloth Andy spotted

The hike we had to make to get to the place we stayed in the cloud forest. Our cars were parked down on that road.

Very poisonous Coral Snake....another animal Andy spotted.

Andy spotted a sloth on the side of the road during the last hike before leaving Panama

Panama Zoo

A wild caiman living in the pond at the zoo....it wasn't in a cage!!! You could walk right up to it, if you were really sneaky. We weren't and it immediately submerged itself.

Panama Canal