El Valle

We`ve spent about a week visiting small towns and villages in the interior of Panama. There are pretty much no other tourists to be seen, so it provided us with a great opporunity to see a bit more of the real Panama. We started in El Valle, little more than a few buildings strung out along a sleepy road, populated by bicycles and horses, but the location was spectacular. It`s high up in the mountains, but is nestled inside the crater of an extinct volcano, so has dramatic peaks encircling the village. It was wonderful to have some peace and quiet away from the chaos of the city and the only noises we could hear at night were insects and frogs. We`ve both been very aware of how noisy everywhere is in Central America, so far. There`s always music playing, cars honking their horns, dogs barking and, wierdly, everywhere seems to have a marching band who practice at every hour of the day, including sunrise!
The countryside around El Valle is very accessible, so we walked up to see a dramatic waterfall nearby. It`s called El Macho.



We also visited some petroglyphs, which are designs and patterns carved into an enormous rock. Apparently no-one knows who created them or what they mean, but I`m not entirely convinced of their significance and they looked quite like graffiti to me! But we did have a very cute guide who offered his services to take us to the sight, where he promptly whipped out a pointing stick and gave us a long lecture about the petroglyphs. Only problem was, it was all in incredibly fast and totally uninteligible Spanish! Don`t worry, we still gave him a tip.



As you can see below, the clouds hang very heavily around the village and the weather changes in an instant, so we went from boiling hot to soaking wet many times during our day of walking. Mum, it would have been a nightmare for you knowing what to take with you!



Here`s Rob suffering a down-pour...



and here he is 10 minutes later in glorious sunshine!



As you can see, when it rains, it really rains! We took this while spending about half an hour sheltering outside a supermarket until it slowed to merely torrential.



Can`t wait for dry season! Rachel xx