French Toast

Our second weekend in Panama was spent in El Valle. We arrived friday night and after getting acclimated to the small town, I spent the rest of the evening enjoying the quiet, "weefee", and going to bed early! Saturday brought many activities; the most unique and fun combination of things I have ever done in one day! In the early morning I rediscovered the amazing french toast I had at the hotel the night before and set off to go zip-lining, followed by horseback riding for an hour, then lunch, hiking for 1 hour, and ending the earlier part of the day with a mud bath!

The hike up to go zip-lining was beautiful! It was so interesting to see the "rubber tree" and the "medicine" tree. The Panamanian people use the saps of these trees for things like making baseballs and for those people with cancer etc (respectively).

The waterfally "torro grande" was beautiful! There was a short trail that we took after the final ziplining station that took us to a small bridge that crossed over the waterfalls base. It was so peaceful and green and pictures will never capture all the beauty that Panama's nature does have that I was able to see both on the zip-lining hike and the short hike we took up the Sleeping Indian Mountain.

The mud baths were quite the experience. Kelsey and I decided to do the whole body mud bath experience, and that was very interesting! We could not help but laugh at ourselves, but I believe it was worth it! During our stay at the "warm" we spoke with other visitors from missionaries to business men and even two men down for what I understood to be something like a WHO meeting. For certain their purpose for coming was related to health.

After returning to the hotel I took my first temporarily warm shower since the start of the trip, it was fabulous!

We all went out to eat together as a group at a local Italian restaurant and celebrated Meilssa's 21st Birthday with pastries for everyone :D It was a very satisfactory day.

Before leaving back to Chitre, again I had the french toast at the hotel's restaurant to make a delicious number 4 or 5. After one last glance at the sleeping indian mountain I took a "mental picture" of the panoramic view of the landscape got on the bus and we left.

It was such a blessing to have been able to experience as much of the Panama nature in one day as I was able to. I will continue to sing praises of the experience I had and made of the trip to Panama and would do it all over again given the opportunity!

The End :)