April 2026

April 11 I woke up in the Caracoral Hotel in Valle de Anton, Panama. It had been a quiet night; quite a contrast from the previous night spent in the Intercontinental Hotel in Panama City. The cars and motorcycles raced through the city until maybe 1:30 in the morning, long enough to snatch a couple hours of sleep and have breakfast before cramming into a van for the drive to the Pacific beach. My room at the IH was cold and I couldn’t get the temperature adjusted so I had to just turn it off. The beach was cooler than the city but just as clammy. Got to see Manuel Noriega’s house and dip my toes in the ocean. I don’t remember much about the drive to Valle de Anton because I had gone numb but I’m pretty sure it took a while.

The Caracoral Hotel was a nice change. Just getting out of the van was a relief on the order of exiting the airplane in Panama. After a pleasant dinner, I turned in early. Tour guide and host Chuck Holton led a strenuous hike up the mountain at 6:00 a.m. the next morning to catch the sunrise. I elected not to go but K&A did and verified the hike lived up to Chuck’s billing (strenuous). I had gone in search of and was shown to a table on the back patio where I was soon by joined by Chuck who had just returned from the stroll up the hill. We had a nice one-on-one because nobody else was around, something of a rarity.

It was raining this morning, so we went the central market and window shopped. Actually, there were no windows since it was an open-air venue. Following that we went to a natural history museum where we learned that the area of the little town we were staying in, though called a valley is actually a caldera formed by an exploding volcano, which most caldera are. Over time the caldera filled with water running down the sides of what’s left of the mountains that surround the caldera until the resulting lake got high enough to spill over the top of the caldera and find its way to the sea. I guess that formed a valley in the caldera and thus the name of the town, Valle de Anton (Anton’s Valley), isn’t a misnomer.

April 12 It is cool this morning and there is a breeze but it’s not raining, a nice morning for a stroll. Breakfast is a little later this morning so plenty of time for one before breakfast. During the night there were sounds of gunfire and I feared a revolution had broken out. As I listened, I decided it sounded more like fireworks but was too lazy to get up and investigate. It was cloudy and windy so I’m not sure a fireworks show would show up much anyway. Regardless, all is calm this morning. The birds are singing; they never stop. There is an insect on the order of a katydid that starts singing about twilight, just as the katydids at home do. Its song resembles that of the katydids I’m used to but louder…much louder. It sounds more like some sort of device gone haywire.

We went to the Holton’s church this morning. Chuck gave the message. We stood and sang hymns for an hour, which got pretty old, but I didn’t see anyone fall out. I’m told people from the outlying area walk for hours to get to church so they want to give them their money’s worth, I guess.

Lunch at the Golden Frog after church. The Frog is also a hotel, kind of like the Caracoral, the hotel we stayed in while we were in the Valle. Chicken enchiladas were good and plentiful. That was followed by a visit to the butterfly garden. There were lots of pretty butterflies of various sizes and colors.

Monday we visited the Panama Canal since we would be spending the night in The City prior to flying home. The Canal visitor center has a nice theater where we watched a film on the Canal. We also stood on an observation platform to watch a couple of ships pass through. That drew a crowd and many of the people were taking photos and videos. To me it had all the charm and excitement of watching grass grow so I soon found somewhere to sit out of the sun.

We enjoyed a pleasant dinner that evening sitting with Ben and Juliette. Abigail shared her views on the flat earth theory and had a pretty good back and forth with them, most of which I couldn’t hear because of the ambient noise, plus I was busy with dessert anyway.

The discomforts and tedium inherent in air travel aside, it was a pleasant trip, one I would recommend. The Holtons were excellent hosts and tour guides, the features we visited were interesting; the food, breakfast, lunch and dinner was excellent. K&A enjoyed themselves and I’m glad I got to go along with them.

April 19 Back home last Tuesday after a long day. We left the hotel at 7:30 to catch a 10 o’clock flight to Houston. Then we hung around for hours before boarding a flight to Amarillo. Chris and Rebecca were there to pick us up and we finally got home shortly after 10:00. Too bad one can’t confine the tedium of travel to the middle of the trip, get it out of the way and enjoy the destinations.

April 30 The Master Naturalist group assembled down in Palo Duro Canyon to celebrate the 2026 City Nature Challenge and I was on hand to make observations and to eat hamburgers, etc. Our weather the last couple of days was unbeatable and carried over into Sunday. Though the canyon looked lush and green, other than the mesquite and junipers, it wasn’t. Just like poor ol’ SA, it was dry dry dry. Not complaining(much). The Panama trip was a success and gave us some nice memories, especially as dry as we are and probably when cold weather returns a few months from now.