Maps to help orient you:

First, a topographical map - Tisingal is just to the left of the Volcan triangle, which is on the far left:



& the provinces of Panama:

Around our area ....

A local stone mason carves statues out of solid rock. He makes things to custom order as well as copy ancient designs:

IMO (in my opinion) his work is far superior to things I've seen at Pier 1.

And this palace is the house to the west of our lot... can not understand why it's uninhabited -

This is what the plants look like in the wild -
These wild orchids are my favorite -

This is one of my favorite neighbors - I call her Linda, which is Spanish for pretty:

And this is the house to our east ... it's inhabited, but I suspect that it will soon be sold to another gringo & whoever buys it will have a lovely bonfire - this assumes that the Ngobe who lives these doesn't burn it down himself ... I've seen smoke billowing out of the cracks more than once:

Canyon trip

Hello from 'the canyon', which is a fast moving little river about a half hour drive from Volcan. As you can see, it's quite spectacular:

A few of Panama's birds...

The above photo was taken by our friend, Nariño V. Aizpurúa, who is a local ornithologist. In case anyone is interested, he has a company called Western Wind's Venture and will take people on birding trips - his knowledge is amazing.

While I haven't had much luck photographing birds, as you can see, others have, so I've borrowed a few bird photos from others, too - if you like what you see, you can view lots more at http://panamabirding.com. The first photo is of Panama's famous quetzal, which nests on the slopes of Baru - I think its christmasy colors are appropriate since poinsettias and mistletoe grow wild in this area:

Another map & further explanation of the area ...

Though Panama is roughly the same size as South Carolina, it doesn't resemble it in any other way. At its narrowest point, about 50 miles of rugged mountains separate the Caribbean Sea from the Pacific and I'm told that if you stand atop the correct peak on a clear day, you can see both oceans. I'm just trying to figure out why I want to climb a mountain to do that.

Ehem, getting back to the map: Volcan is on the far left (west). This is where we've rented a house. The lot we purchased is about 5 kilometers farther west - it's on the slopes of the Tisingal volcano, which last erupted 300 years before Christ. The core is cold, so we think we're pretty safe. Tisingal spawned the lovely creek, appropriately named Rio de Tisingal, that borders our property.


AND, 2,300 years ago, when it erupted, it blessed our property with a million rocks,.

Flowers & butterflies

Until coming here, we'd never dreamed that citrus trees, impatiens and orchids grew wild. I mean on some level of thought we must have known this, but to us, these were exotic plants only grown in greenhouses.

Not any more.

When we purchased our lot, we also purchased one full grown grapefruit tree and three lemon trees... and we've been getting a 'citrus education', particularly about lemons, which can be small as a ping-pong ball or large as a five-pound bag of sugar; their taste ranges from sweet (practically tasteless) to bitter (this sort taste good if dipped in a bit of sugar).

We also learned that parakeets fly in noisy flocks, while parrots and falcons seem rather solitary. Despite the fact that the area our lot is in in a prime location for birders, we haven't had much luck taking photos of birds ... butterflies and flowers are calmer, so we'll share these with you:











Not all the flowers are small the ones below are seen on the 'flame of the forest', which is the national tree of Panama and each blossom is the size of a teacup:



AND, until now, perhaps you could say that you'd never seen the flower of a banana tree:


While I wouldn't call a banana blossom beautiful, I would certain call it sculptural...

And, I promised photos of the butterflies which were slow enough to focus on (beleive me there are some really fast species around here):

Beautiful vistas are everywhere you look ...

Beautiful as the mountains are, and desolate as they can seem, I must remember that many farms (fincas) have coffee plantations here:



At the moment, the ripe beans (red) are being picked. Workers need to be very careful about how they work and not let beans drop to the ground, as this can create problems. They pick beans into 5 gallon buckets and, depending on who they work for either get paid by the bucket or pound.




As you can see, coffee plants are very attractive. The factories that process the beans are generally off the beaten path, some of them are so remote that 4 wheel drive is necessary.