“Follow me,” Nando said. “I know where he lives.”
It was late in the morning, warm, humid and quiet. The axes of sunlight cut the jungle as we followed a path through the shade. A few hundred meters away, giant cargo ships stacked with containers hit along the Panama channel. But that was another world.
Where we walked was a strip of loom tropical forest that separates the banks of the channel and serves as a home in hundreds of bird species. We were looking for a particular one.
In a verdant spot in the woods that looked like me, Nando, our driver, stopped.
“Who; who; who“She’s spoiled gently. Then he heard.
“You can’t only use your eyes,” he whispered. “You must use your ears.”
The third time he called, I heard, slightly calling back, “Who; who; who. ”
It was remarkable. Nado was talking bird.
A plump little chested Intpitta fell down on a stick, a few meters away. I stood, awe, as the man and the bird sought gently and back.
“This is the same bird I have asked for for years,” Nando said, the happiness of beating his voice.
“Do you mean the same kind of birds?” I asked.
“No, no,” he smiled. “The same person. This bird has become quite special for me.”
It was a moment of connection between a person and a tiny animal, which lasts only a few minutes. But unforgettable trips are made of moments like these and our recent trip to Panama was full of them.
Last December, my family and I went with birds to Panama. It is a country that quickly creates its ecotourism industry. It is in the same time zone as Chicago, so no jet delay for most Americans, and can boast of a rich, cosmopolitan story due to the channel. And Panama hosts a thousand species of birds, both immigrant and native, from the magnificent bird that rises to the air currents for thousands of miles, in a gloomy variety of small, charismatic forest birds, such as Chesting Chesthed, so thin.
The same reason why the Panama channel was created in the early 20th century, a revolution in world trade, explains why so many birds can be identified here. It is a land between two continents, North and South America. Among the largest oceans in the world, the Pacific and the Atlantic. And between dramatically different altitudes and climates, from flat sunny beaches to cool, mountains covered by rainforests rising more than 10,000 feet.
We planned our trip in a week ago, President Trump entered the office and began to thunder for the United States to take the channel back. The issue did not arise much in the three bird monitoring sites we visited. Colleagues were very obsessed with their bird lists, and the Panamans we met tend to reject threats as bombers and they didn’t seem to be very worried.
And, as Nando said, “everyone knows the country for one thing, but there is in fact much more.”
Second.
We started in the city of Panama, which was founded more than 500 years ago and became one of the most living commercial hubs in America. The Old Town is in a Renaissance and comes under its red bricks, are some spectacular refurbished hotels such as La Compañia, which was a monastery and drink holes that put a sweaty, romantic, old-fashioned tropical vibe, where people sit in long bars and underwriters It shines with the conspiracy. We got some excellent jazz in a speakeasy, Villa Ana, which reminded me of a classy old house in Savannah, GA.
Wild animals next to cargo ships
Our first morning we associated with Nando, whose full name is Ismael Hernando Quiroz Miranda. He started his own bird monitoring operation a few years ago and is recommended by someone I know in the hotel business. As we did the time by car from the city in the channel belt, he shared a little of the story of his life.
“I was part of the people who had no chance,” he said.
He explained how he grew up in a village that took crops and saw wood after someone cheats on his father from the family farm. The outdoor world has been his environment and over the years, as he worked a series of hard work, taught himself about birds, trees, habitats, climate change and Panama ecosystem.
Within a few minutes of arrival in the channel belt, he and his sonmael son who work with him helped us identify Red Lory Parrots sink into heaven. A tired keel that hit like a frog. a reddish motmot with a long iridescent tail; And a social flycatcher, a pipsqueak of a bird with an inflated chest and bright yellow wings. Nando walked with his head slightly distorted to hear – he always heard. When he found a bird, he used a laser index to guide our eyes to the tree trunks. We started around 6am, as a muddy sunrise spread over the channel. By 9, we had identified more than 55 species of birds.
But it wasn’t just birds. My family is birds and I have learned to appreciate that poultry is a gate to see a whole bunch of other things. While we were behind the Nando, we saw spectacular blue morpho butterflies, mixed rodents called agouti and leaf ants that moved to the floor of the jungle from the thousands, a red carpet. At distance, we heard Howler monkeys, well, screaming. They were incredibly strong and spooky, but we could never see them, just a wall of trees: cedar trees, ficus trees, giant figs and tall bamboo stems.
“Whoa, look at this,” my wife, Courtenay, said, playing a dragon fly that fell in the past, swirling his wings like a helicopter.
“Helicopter dance,” Nando said. “Probably female.”
His knowledge surprised me.
Magic Valley
After our fruitful day with Nando, we drove two hours from the channel zone to a city called El Valle de Antón. As we reached the outskirts, I noticed that the houses are becoming bigger and the gardens become more beautiful. I saw travelers with nice backpacks walking down the main road. Some driving bikes.
El Valle looks like something of a fairy tale-a perfect small town with a red haciendas roof enclosed from deep green mountains. At 2,000 feet higher than the city of Panama, it is essentially cooler and less wet, making the magnet for travelers and rich Panama. New cafes with highly painted tables align the sidewalks. We have Empanadas sampling for many and we just think of these perfect crusts and the gooey interior makes me hungry. El Valle had the feeling of Ubud, Bali, 25 years ago: on the verge of long time.
We spent two days at Lodge Canopy, a comfortable shelter created by a bird observer for bird observers. The first morning I woke up early, grabbed my laptop and fell into the dining room.
“Hi!” A tall guy told me, surpassing out of nowhere. “Did you see Rufous Motmot?”
It was 6:30 am And I was just trying to check my email.
“It’s a beautiful bird,” he said.
It had a three -foot camera uniform with a camouflage hood and a lens as large as a storm.
E -mail, after reflection, seemed stupid. So I followed his instructions to a bush behind the kitchen where the Rufous Motmot sat all over his splendor: wonderful deep colors – green, yellow and blue wings – and a long thin tail of racket swept like a metronome.
Canopy Lodge is part of a nature accommodation network founded by Raúl Arias de Para, an economist from one of Panama’s most famous families. “Panama,” he told me, “is a beautiful country, very different from the unfortunate image created by a tax refuge, money laundering and corrupt banana democracy.”
Raúl has worked with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and creates a 24-7 bird camera behind the dining room. We spent our meals talking about the birds and watching Marah, the Arakades, the woodpeckers and the barbecue. Then we searched the nearby jungles for more birds.
One highlight was to visit a banana farmer who has turned his small, rich threshold into a giant bird feeder. The guy didn’t speak much English, and my Spanish is quite weak. So we sat quietly in plastic chairs on his terrace and watching colorful winged creatures come to his feeders and eat banana pieces. My favorite was a red eggplant foot, the size of a glass with a stunning dyeing job-olive blue body, shiny red legs.
Coconut ice cream, caimans and owls
Our last stop was Isla Palenque, a luxurious resort in Western Panama, in the Pacific. So we drove back to the city of Panama and took a short flight to a city called David. We came here with my widespread family and there was a lot of cooling by the pool, throwing football on the beach and slaps at dinner (the beef fillet impregnated with delicious coffee sauce, pasta loaded with fresh seafood, lemon tarts).
Beyond our villa, the wildlife looked like in the woods and several members of the resort staff were, like Nando, natural physiologists. So we continued to explore.
One night, a young man named Francis took us on a walk and found the rainbow beetles, the Scorpions, a past and a three -foot caiman. Dawn brought us to a palm tree, where a herd of serving Oropendolas ran through the air that carries long vines in their beaks, building their nests. The nests hang from the trees like socks. I spent 15 happy minutes watching them.
Francis made the mistake of saying to my 15 -year -old son, Apollo, the top Birder of our family (he is the one who brought us to it), for an indefinite spectacular owl living in the jungle. Apollo was constantly demanding the resort staff though and where they had seen it. On our last day, with just a few hours to go, we made one last knife to find it.
A few minutes’ walk from our villa he felt as if we had entered a remote jungle. We could hear the birds but not see them. We were covered with errors and dripping with sweat.
As we threw a path, Francis kept a tight punch. I had seen the Marines do this on the battlefield. Means immediately, immediately.
We stopped immediately. Hung. I heard.
In a branch in a piece of sunlight, the owl landed and looked at us with big, bright, strange yellow eyes.
We had a face -to -face face with one of the most wonderful creatures in the forest and it was the hearing that had guided us, as Nando had taught us that first day.
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