Isla Palenque

Palenque is over 200 miles from Panama City. The island at over 400 acres has 5 miles of shoreline and 3 beaches. It has a variety of terrain, with a lot of nice equatorial jungle canopy, palm groves, brine swamps, a few large hills and some kind of open grassland from some small farms that happened years ago. People lived on it in Pre-Columbian times and possibly even earlier than that. Today, the island supports a rich array of wildlife in the surrounding ocean as well as on land, including monkeys and jungle cats.


In this image we are flying towards Palenque over the small island at the far right in the next photo. However, this image was taken earlier in the morning.

The Northwest area of the country is already a popular tourist destination for the Panamanians. The coastline explodes into an archipelago of small tropical islands with beautiful beaches. From those islands one can look back toward land and see high mountains obscured by clouds in the distance. Often times sweating in the boat, i would gaze up at those mountains and wish i was there instead. I found that surprising. There i was, in a tropical paradise, wishing i could go up into the cold mountains, where you could die from hypothermia. Ahh that would be great. I guess Alaska has definitely changed my tolerances over the years, especially considering that i grew up in a climate not too far removed from tropical.


You can see half of Panama from this altitude. Palenque is in the center. In the distance high volcanoes that make up the spine of the country are hidden in clouds.


And in this image we are looking back at that smaller island at the far right in the photo above. Additionally, this is the same beach pictured in the title photo. The rocks in the bottom of this photo are the ones that stretch out into the water in the center of the first picture. The water level is different in the two images. Confused yet?

One day we did visit the mountains, very briefly. We drove up to Boquete, a mountain town (only about 35 miles from Costa Rica) famous for it's coffee. During the drive up we went through a very gradual rise, across flat expansive fields of high grass with black stone walls.

Boquete is famous for it's nice climate, and it's coffee. This windy hilltop was the first time i'd felt comfortable in a week.

Homes on the road up into the mountains. Notice the variety of coloring in the foliage.

Yo, this is the river. It runs down from the mountains and destroys all the bridges so you have to go a different way. I mean, it REALLY destroys the bridges. The cliff on the right side was hexagonal basalt. I like this river. It's angry but not so big in the dry season.

At some point i put everything together and realized that the entire region was created through volcanics. The islands out in the ocean appeared be be volcanic rock, possibly remnants of old flows from the land (although i did find some old pillow lava, created underwater). The large fields were from a massive flow pouring from the higher summits, and the cliffs around Boquete were also basalt. It's no coincidence that above Boquete is the highest point in Panama, Volcan Baru. From the dormant volcano's summit it is possible to see both the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. That's pretty cool.

Two of the many other islands. This one had cool wind blown trees on it with underlying rock that was volcanic in origin.

Ben is briefing the engineers on how the marina must be made of solid gold. I could tell they were good engineers when one of them mentioned that simply gold plating the shells of a bunch of tied together sea turtles would be cheaper, as sea turtles are a renewable resource.


The morning view from our breakfast table. You can see the long dock in the middle. We arrived and left at the long dock and had to walk up the steep hillside to get to the lodge. If you forgot something it sucked. But it's a nice view!

The view in the evening. This must have been while the engineers were visiting because after that we never got back until well after sunset.

I should mention that while i was in Panama i was terribly ill until the last day of the trip. I somehow manage to get sick every time i go to the tropics, but this time i managed to catch something on the flight from Seattle to Houston. By dinner of my first day in the city, i knew i was already screwed. I ended up with one of the worst colds i've ever had. The fact that it was actually making me nauseous and unable to eat, and causing cold sweats with goosebumps in the middle of the jungle, makes me think i either had a cold and then also came down with some other typical tropical illness, or i was the first person from the US to get swine flu. My first two days of going out to the island i was in the deepest part of this sickness. Fortunately we were spending most of our time on those days boating around with some engineers who were looking at the possible locations for a marina on the island.


A river delta that has formed in a sandbar, temporarily connecting Palenque to a larger island next to it. A large tropical storm could eradicate the area on the right.

I learned that Palenque was not entirely uninhabited. On one side of the island lives an old man and his wife. Menique has lived on the island since his youth, when he arrived to work as a servant for an old woman named Catalina. Menique was now something like 60 years old, but he's as badass as Charles Bronson.


Looks to me like a nice place to hang out. If there was a resort here, people would probably come.


Looking the other direction the beach continues on for a long distance after this rocky outcrop. We were at this beach nearly every day, as there was a work camp in the jungle here. Notice that some trees still lose their leaves in winter, even at the equator.

On the other side of the tree close to sunset. Cesar waits for us in the boat.

He lives in a kind of a shack house and I don't think that he can read or write, and is also uneducated about the outside world. If you showed him a computer he would have absolutely no idea what is, but he can survive on that island no problem. He fishes, grows a few crops and kills feral pigs which he then hangs up, skins, and eats. One day not so long ago he decided he needed a wife, so he got into his boat and went off to some town where he visited the bar. He returned soon after with a 30 year old wife. I'm telling you, he is badass.




Dozens of the islands in the archipelago are reachable by boat from Palenque.

A high tide island.

A big tree that hung off the cliffs on the beach. It hinted at what was in the jungle.

Although a resort is to be built on the island, part of the agreement on the use of the land was to allow Menique and his family to continue to live as they do. It is all they've ever known. Ben pays him to look over the crews of workers that were, at the time i was there, clearing out trails across the island. Apparently people listen to him. Maybe he threatens to cut their throats.

This was the smallest helicopter i've ever been in. I loved it. It was very maneuverable and light.

I almost forgot. The first photo on this page is an entry in the World in Focus photo contest. It's already in the top ten of the Peoples Choice contest, so if you feel like it head on over and vote. If i win that portion of the contest, i'll get a small.... Duffle Bag!!! You know how hard those are to come by????

Palenque has nice sunsets. The end of a days work.

Next time we head into the jungle....